Short answers, pulled from the story.
Denton, Texas is known for its active independent music scene, its two major universities, and its annual cultural events. Paste Magazine named Denton's music scene the best in the nation in 2008, and the city hosts events including the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival, which draws over 200,000 people each year, and the North Texas State Fair and Rodeo, which began in 1928.
Denton County was formed by the Texas Legislature in 1846, and the city of Denton was incorporated in 1866. Both were named after John B. Denton, a preacher and lawyer killed in 1841 during a skirmish with the Kichai people in what is now Tarrant County.
Denton is home to the University of North Texas and Texas Woman's University. The University of North Texas enrolls over 42,000 students and is the fifth largest university in Texas; its College of Music was the first school to offer a degree in jazz studies. Texas Woman's University, founded in 1901, enrolls more than 13,000 students and operates the largest nursing doctoral program in the world.
Notable people born in Denton include Sly Stone, founder of Sly and the Family Stone; Meat Loaf, born Michael Lee Aday; Ann Sheridan, a Hollywood actress; Phyllis George, the 1971 Miss America and later First Lady of Kentucky; jazz musician Herschel Evans; and Parquet Courts co-frontman Andrew Savage.
Denton had a population of 139,869 as of the 2020 census, making it the 20th most populous city in Texas and the 177th most populous in the United States. An estimated 164,096 people lived there in 2024. Between 2022 and 2023, Denton ranked 13th nationally in numeric population gain.
Quakertown was a Freedmen Settlement established in Denton after the Civil War, located just south of what is now Texas Woman's University. Around 1920, the city government forcibly removed its Black residents to make way for a public park, which was created in 1923. The neighborhood's school, the Frederick Douglass School, was burned down the night before its scheduled opening in September 1913 under unexplained circumstances.