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About Dallas, Texas

Dallas is the third-largest city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The city covers 385 square miles (997 km²) and is the county seat of Dallas County. As of 2005, U.S. Census estimates put Dallas at a population of 1.2 million. The city is the main cultural and economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area—at over 5.8 million people, it is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Dallas is recognized as a world-class city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network.

Dallas was founded in 1841 and formally incorporated as a city on 2 February 1856. The city is known globally as a center for telecommunications, computer technology, banking, and transportation. It is the core of the largest inland metropolitan area in the United States and lacks any navigable link to the sea—Dallas' prominence despite this comes from its historical importance as a center for the oil and cotton industries, its position along numerous railroad lines, and its powerful industrial and financial tycoons.

Caddo Native Americans inhabited the Dallas area before it was claimed in the 1500s, along with the rest of Texas, as a part of the Spanish Province of New Spain. The area was considerably proximate to French territory, but the boundary of the Spanish-speaking territory was moved upward a bit in 1819 with the Adams-Onís Treaty. Present-day Dallas remained under Spanish rule until 1821, when Mexico declared independence from Spain. The land that would become Dallas became part of the state of Coahuila y Tejas in the new nation. In 1836, the Republic of Texas broke off from Mexico to become an independent nation. It remained an independent nation for nearly 10 years. In 1839, four years into the Republic's existence, John Neely Bryan surveyed the area around present-day Dallas. Two years later in 1841, he founded the city of Dallas on a site where several Caddo trails in the region intersected at a rare natural ford on the Trinity River. In 1846 the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States and Dallas County was established.

According to the city's own official website, the origin of the city's name is a mystery, despite claims to the contrary. Bryan stated only that it was named "after my friend Dallas." It has often been claimed that both the county and the city were named after George Mifflin Dallas, the eleventh United States Vice President at the time. However, there is no evidence that Bryan ever met George Mifflin Dallas, and the area was called Dallas several years before the latter was elected.

Other leading "Dallas" candidates are:

1. Commodore Alexander James Dallas, brother of George Mifflin Dallas, stationed in the Gulf of Mexico; 2. Walter R. Dallas, who fought at San Jacinto; 3. James L. Dallas, Walter's brother and a Texas Ranger; 4. Joseph Dallas of Arkansas, who lived in the Cedar Springs area in 1843, and moved from Washington County (near Bryan's land holdings in Crawford County) to the Dallas area a few years after Bryan's arrival.

Dallas was formally incorporated as a town in 1856. The city had a few slaves, mostly brought by settlers from Alabama and Georgia. Dallas was just another small town dotting the Texas frontier until after the American Civil War in which it was part of the Confederate States of America, and only legally became a city in 1871. The city paid the Houston and Central Texas Railroad US$5,000 to shift its route 20 miles (32 km) to the west and build its north-south tracks through Dallas, rather than through Corsicana as planned. A year later, Dallas leaders could not pay the Texas and Pacific Railroad to locate there, so they devised a way to trick the Railroad. Dallas had a rider attached to a state law which required the railroad to build its tracks through Browder Springs—which turned out to be just south of Main Street. In 1873, the major north-south and east-west Texas railroad routes intersected in Dallas, thus ensuring its future as a commercial center.

By the turn of the twentieth century Dallas was the leading drug, book, jewelry, and wholesale liquor market in the Southwestern United States. It also quickly became the center of trade in cotton, grain, and even buffalo. It was the world's leading inland cotton market, and it still led the world in manufacture of saddlery and cotton gin machinery. As it further entered the 20th century, Dallas transformed from an agricultural center to a center of banking, insurance, and other businesses.In 1930, oil was discovered 100 miles (160 km) east of Dallas and the city quickly became the financial center for the oil industry in Texas and Oklahoma. In 1958 the integrated circuit was invented in Dallas by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments; this event punctuated the Dallas area's development as a center for high-technology manufacturing. During the 1950s and 1960s, Dallas became the nation's third-largest technology center, with the growth of such companies as Ling-Tempco-Vought (LTV Corporation) and Texas Instruments. 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.[11] On 22 November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Elm Street while his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dallas underwent the building boom which produced a distinctive contemporary profile for the downtown area and a prominent skyline, influenced by nationally acclaimed architects. By the 1980s, when some oil industry companies relocated to Houston, Dallas was beginning to benefit from a burgeoning technology boom (driven by the growing Computer, Microchip, and Telecommunications industries), while continuing to be a center of banking, insurance, and business. Also in the mid-to-late 1980s, many banks, especially in Dallas, collapsed during the Savings and Loan crisis, nearly destroying the city's economy and scrapping plans for hundreds of structures. Because of the immense worldwide success of the hit television series Dallas, the city became one of the most internationally recognizable U.S cities during the 80s. In the 1990s, Dallas became known as the "Silicon Prairie", similar to California's Silicon Valley.

Like many major US cities, Dallas has experienced an "urban renewal" in the 2000s. From 1988 to 2005, not a single high-rise structure was built within the downtown freeway loop, and most new and upscale homes and subdivisions were being built in Richardson and Plano. In 2005, three towers began construction amid residential conversions and smaller residential projects. By the year 2010, the North Central Texas Council of Governments expects 10,000 residents to live within the loop. Just north, Uptown is one of the hottest real estate markets in the country.

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