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| Dallas Apartment Locator Services : Dallas Apartments |  | Contents | |
| History |
Dallas skyline from a levee on the Trinity River |
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| The city of Dallas was founded by John Neely Bryan
in 1841 after first surveying the area in 1839. Dallas County
was established five years later in 1846 and was named after
George Mifflin Dallas, who was the eleventh United States Vice
President at the time. However, the origin of the city's name
is debatable. Dallas was so called by its residents at least
as early as 1843 and there are four theories as to the origin
of the city's name: |
- Named after George Mifflin Dallas;
Named after George Dallas' father Alexander James Dallas,
a commodore who was stationed in the Gulf of Mexico and was
the United States Secretary of the Treasury around the end
of the War of 1812;
- Named in a town-naming contest in 1842;
- Named after the friend of founder John Neely Bryan's son,
who later stated that his father had said he had named the
town "after my friend Dallas" (a person whose
identity is not certain).
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| Dallas was formally incorporated as a town in
1856, and in 1871 became a city. |
| In 1855, a group of European artists and musicians
set up a utopian community west of Dallas called La Reunion.
When that venture collapsed in 1857, many of the artists moved
to Dallas where they established the base of the artist culture
that exists today in the Deep Ellum neighborhood near downtown.
In the 1970s, Reunion Arena and Reunion Tower (a trademark of
the skyline) were named in honor of the La Reunion colony. Today,
Dallas is home to a healthy theater community, with room for
both traditional and experimentatal works. Dallas also boasts
an active music scene, with numerous venues in the Deep Ellum
and lower Greenville Avenue areas. |
| In 1871, railroads were beginning to approach
the area and Dallas city leaders did not intend to be left out.
They paid the Houston and Central Texas Railroad $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 off the Texas and
Pacific Railroad and so tricked it into running its east-west
line though Dallas by having 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.
The major north-south and east-west Texas railroad routes intersected
in Dallas in 1873, thus ensuring its future as a commercial
center. |
| Dallas quickly became the center of trade in cotton,
grain, and even buffalo. As it 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.
Then in 1958 the integrated-circuit computer chip was invented
in Dallas by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. By the 1980s,
when the oil industry mostly relocated to Houston, Dallas was
beginning to benefit from a burgeoning technology boom (driven
by the growing computer and telecom industries), while continuing
to be a center of banking and business. In the 1990s, Dallas
became known as Texas' Silicon Valley, or the "Silicon
Prairie." |
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