Monday, October 26 - Friday, October 30, 2009

October Rules Fest 2009
History & Attractions

Transportation•Restaurants •History & Attractions•Little Known Facts•Map

Since its pioneer days, Dallas has grown from a fledgling frontier trading post to a bustling city of more than six and a half million people and is the largest Metropolitian area in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States. The DFW area is approximately 9,286 square miles which is larger than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined.

Dallas was founded in 1841 when a bachelor lawyer from Tennessee, John Neely Bryan, settled on a small bluff above the Trinity River to open a trading post and lay claim to free land. The area, where three forks of the river merge, was part of a large government land grant, Peters Colony. Bryan was impressed with what he believed to be the perfect ingredients for a trading post and eventually a town: plenty of raw land, Indians with whom to do business, and the river. He laid claim to 640 acres which included a sketched plan with a designated courthouse square and 20 streets around it. He planned for his settlement to become the northernmost port on the river, which stretched to the Gulf of Mexico, but the unpredictable, too-shallow Trinity thwarted efforts at navigation.

Without a navigable river, an ocean harbor or plentiful natural resources, Dallas had little reason to thrive. Fortunately, Bryan's town was close to a shallow spot in the river often used by Native Americans and early traders as a natural crossing, and the Republic of Texas was already surveying two "national highways," both of which were to pass nearby. As a result, farmers, tradesmen, and artisans were attracted to the small community.

In 1849 Dallas County was created and named after George Mifflin Dallas, supporter of the annexation of Texas and vice president of the United States under James Knox Polk. The origin of the name Dallas is unknown. Candidates include George Mifflin Dallas, vice president of the United States; Commodore Alexander James Dallas, a brother of George Mifflin Dallas, who was a naval commander was stationed in the Gulf of Mexico; Walter R. Dallas, who fought at San Jacinto, his family had land near Bryan's land holdings; James L. Dallas, Walter's brother and a one-time Texas Ranger; Joseph Dallas, who lived in the Cedar Springs area in 1843; from Washington County, Arkansas, adjacent to Bryan's home county of Crawford Co., Arkansas. In truth, we will probably never know for whom John Neely Bryan intended to name the city. Sadly, Bryan never managed to write down memoirs or reminiscences; he died in the State Lunatic Asylum in Austin in 1877.

The Texas legislature granted Dallas a town charter on February 2, 1856. Dr. Samuel Pryor, elected the first mayor, headed a town government consisting of six aldermen, a treasurer-recorder, and a constable.

Although the Civil War never actually reached Dallas, its effect on the town was significant. Dallas became a food-producing and Texas recruitment center for the Confederacy. In 1861 Dallas voters voted 741 to 237 to secede from the Union. In 1872, when the railroad line, Houston and Texas Central, reached Dallas, the town claimed 3,000 inhabitants. Then in 1873, the east-west line of the Texas & Pacific Railroad was completed through Dallas, making it the first railroad crossing town in the state. The railroads made Dallas a major distribution center and the home of merchants, bankers, insurance companies, and developers. In 1852 French immigrant Maxime Guillot established the first factory, manufacturing carriages and wagons. By 1890, Dallas was the largest city in Texas, with a population of more than 38,000 people.

Fortune, flamboyance and fame came together in 1912 to produce the grande dame of Dallas hotels. The first five star hotel west of the Mississippi. The founder of The Adolphus, Missouri beer baron Adolphus Busch, chose to honor his adopted city with 21 stories of unabashed baroque splendor as a gift to his wife. Critics have called this Texas landmark the most beautiful building west of Venice.

The city's position as a regional financial center was enhanced when a branch of the Federal Reserve Bank opened in 1914. Dallas attracted oil company headquarters, partly because Dallas banks were willing to finance exploration and production. Manufacturing arrived as companies were formed to produce supplies for the petroleum industry and, later, for the defense effort in World War II.

In 1915 the Methodist Episcopal Church founded Southern Methodist University (SMU) in University Park which is an annex of Dallas. The George W Bush Presidential Library will be housed at SMU and is currently under construction.

In 1920, the Trinity River, a source of some early central city flooding, was re-channeled westward as part of an ambitious construction project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Farming gained importance in the early twentieth century and Dallas was the largest cotton trading center in the nation. Also beginning in the 1920s and extending through the 1930s, popular music was centered in the Deep Ellum district on the eastern edge of downtown, close to one of Dallas's original freedmen's towns. Major black jazz and blues musicians such as Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter and Blind Lemon Jefferson performed at Ella B. Moore's Park Theater, Hattie Burleson's dance hall, and other local clubs. Today, Deep Ellum includes night clubs and restaurants. Many of the old manufacturing building and shops are being remodeled into residental condos. It's currently one of Dallas' hotest addresses.


The pain of the depression was eased somewhat for Dallas by the discovery of oil in East Texas in 1930. Dallas bankers such as Nathan Adams of the First National Bank were the first in the nation to conceive of the idea of lending money to oil companies using oil reserves in the ground for collateral. Dallas soon became a center for petroleum financing. In a massive engineering effort begun in 1930, the channel of the Trinity River was moved, straightened, and confined between levees to prevent future flooding. Dallas businessmen also succeeded in making Fair Park the site of the Texas Centennial celebration, thus providing work for local builders, contractors, advertisers, concessionaires, and construction workers. Fair Park is the largest Art Deco art and architecture district in the world.

In 1957 two developers, Trammell Crow and John M. Stemmons, opened a Home Furnishings Mart that grew into the Dallas Market Center, the largest wholesale trade complex in the world.

Racial integration of public facilities began on August 15, 1961, when a carefully orchestrated plan sent African Americans to lunch counters and businesses throughout the city for equal service. This plan, which proceeded without incident, was the work of a biracial committee appointed by the Dallas and Negro chambers of commerce, which devised a publicity campaign and notified business owners in advance. Integration of the public schools proceeded more slowly, and the school district remained under court supervision in 1994

Modern historic preservation efforts began in the 1970s with the formation of the Historic Preservation League. The city's Landmark Commission has designated numerous buildings and several neighborhoods as landmarks, including Swiss Avenue, Munger Place, South Boulevard-Park Row, and State-Thomas. Old City Park, a museum of architectural and cultural history on the site of Dallas's oldest public park, is located just south of downtown.
No city is without its share of fires (Dallas' worst destroyed most of its business district in 1860), floods, other tragedies, and infamous citizens. The notorious thieves Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were Depression-era Dallas residents who captured the imagination and property of a large segment of the American public before their deaths in 1934. But Dallas' greatest trauma came on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a cavalcade through the Dallas streets. Harsh world attention was focused on the city and its leaders. As a result, Goals for Dallas, a private planning program that helped promote a climate of involvement, openness, and sensitivity, was formed.

While much of the nation suffered an economic recession during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dallas enjoyed unprecedented growth. As northern factories were idled, a rush to the "Sun Belt" created new businesses, industry, and jobs in Dallas. The downtown skyline changed rapidly as construction boomed. In 1984 Dallas was the site of the Republican National Convention, and many saw the occasion as a chance for the city to erase some lingering negative memories in the minds of the American public. In the 1980s Dallas witnessed a real estate bust that drove prices so low that in time many thriving businesses began to move in and take advantage of the bargain real estate. By 1990 Dallas ranked first in the country for the number of its new or expanded corporate facilities.
In the mid-1990s Dallas ranked as Texas' second largest city, next to Houston, and the eighth largest in the United States. Closing in on the twenty-first century, the city continued to thrive with a healthy and diversified economy and ranked high in the nation in convention activity, as an insurance and oil industry center, in concentration of corporate headquarters, in manufacturing, and in electronics and other high-technology industries.

After national economic downturns in the early part of the new century, Texas is primed for growth. Abundant job growth in many business sectors, coupled with a rapidly-growing population and a healthy economy, mean Dallas is poised for a bright future.