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French traders had contact with the Anadarko people in the area around Dallas in the 1700s. In 1841 John Neely Bryan founded a trading post on the east bank of the Trinity River, near the junction of two Native American trails. Bryan was unaware that he had settled on land granted by the Texas republic to an immigration company, but he eventually legalized his claim. The extensive promotion efforts of the company brought settlers to the area, and in 1844 a townsite was laid out. The town was incorporated in 1856, and in the late 1850s, the collapse of a nearby cooperative community, La Réunion, augmented the population and added skilled European craftspeople to the workforce. In March 1861 Texas seceded from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Dallas served as a supply and storage post for the state. After the war ended, freed slaves flocked to Texas and founded a freedmen’s town on the outskirts of Dallas. By 1870, the year Texas was readmitted to the Union, Dallas had a population of about 3,000.

Dallas grew steadily for the next 30 years. The successful lobbying for two railroads, the Houston and Texas Central in 1872 and the Texas and Pacific in 1873, initiated this growth. As a rail crossroads, Dallas became a regional transport center for products headed to Northern and Eastern manufacturing centers. Cotton became the principal source of income, but the city also attracted merchants and banking and insurance companies eager to exploit available transportation and communication facilities. Throughout this period, business and political leaders forged close ties, thus shaping the character of the city and guiding its economic direction. By 1890 Dallas had 38,067 residents and was the largest city in the state.

The Panic of 1893, a national economic crisis, slowed the city’s business development. Dallas recovered with the increase in agricultural prices in the early 20th century, and doubled its size with the annexation of Oak Cliff and other areas. In the century’s second decade, Dallas began implementing an urban design plan created by George Kessler, a city engineer. The Kessler Plan connected Oak Cliff and Dallas, established greenbelts, and attempted to chart and direct urban growth. Control of the Trinity River also took a high priority. The city built levees and steel viaducts, and in a massive engineering project, the river channel was moved, straightened, and confined for flood control. The Great Depression of the 1930s had a severe impact on Dallas, but the crisis was partially alleviated by the discovery of the East Texas oil fields, which made Dallas a center of the petroleum business. Oil and the booming defense industry during World War II (1939-1945) stimulated growth and helped Dallas to diversify its economy.

Dallas won a reputation as a politically ultraconservative city in the 1950s. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza was a shock to the residents of Dallas and moderated somewhat the city’s politics. Nevertheless segregation continued in the city, and the flight of white residents from the inner city intensified racial animosities. The city prospered economically with the rising oil prices of the 1970s and the resulting construction boom. The collapse of oil prices in the 1980s, the failure of many local savings and loan institutions, and the resulting collapse in real estate prices caused the city to tumble into an economic depression. Dallas civic leaders launched an economic program that included renovating part of the downtown area and attracting new industries. The city leadership also worked hard at smoothing racial tensions, which remained despite sizable growth in minority populations and improved sensitivity on the part of white leaders. Although Dallas was one of the last major cities to recover from Texas’s mid-1980s economic collapse, the strength of its basic economy, its geographic location, and the recovery of the state economy ultimately combined to slow the economic decline in the Dallas region.

Texas - America Real Estate Directory