De Kalb, TX

De Kalb is a Bowie County city in the Texarkana area, with the De Kalb Independent School District giving the place its clearest local center. Its best-known chapter is much stranger and darker than the usual small-town history. On December 31, 1985, a Douglas DC-3 carrying musician Rick Nelson, his fiancée, and members of his band went down in a wooded area near town while flying from Guntersville, Alabama, toward Dallas for a New Year's Eve performance. The crash made De Kalb part of music and aviation history, even though the town itself was not the destination.

De Kalb's everyday map is straightforward: City Hall, a police department, water service, and local schools handle the basics. US 259 connects it with nearby communities such as Hubbard and Dalby Springs to the south, so the city's map reaches beyond its incorporated boundary. In the end, De Kalb is a school-and-city-government town whose name is permanently tied to a nationally known flight that ended in the surrounding woods.