Plano, Texas

Plano (/ˈpleɪnoʊ/ PLAY-noh) is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, located mostly within Collin County, but with a small portion that extends into Denton County, twenty miles northeast of downtown Dallas.

The city's population was 269,776 at the 2010 census, making it the ninth most populous city in the state of Texas (Corpus Christi was ranked at #8 and Laredo #10), and the 70th most populous in the United States. The city is an affluent hub for many corporate headquarters, such as Alliance Data, Cinemark Theatres, Dell Services, Denbury Resources, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Ericsson, Frito-Lay, HP Enterprise Services, Huawei, J. C. Penney, Pizza Hut, Rent-A-Center, Traxxas, Siemens PLM Software, and Toyota Motors USA.

History

European settlers came to the area near present-day Plano in the early 1840s. Facilities such as a sawmill, a gristmill, and a store soon brought more people to the area. A mail service was established, and after rejecting several names for the nascent town (including naming it in honor of then-President Millard Fillmore), residents suggested the name Plano (from the Spanish word for "flat"), as a reference to the local terrain. The name was accepted by the post office.