Dallas,

 

city (1990 pop. 1,006,877), seat of Dallas co., N Tex., on the Trinity River near the junction of its three forks; inc. 1871. The second largest Texas city, after Houston, and the eighth largest U.S. city, Dallas is a commercial, industrial, and financial center. Its manufactures include aerospace and electronic equipment, cosmetics, textiles, chemicals, and leather goods, as well as aircraft, automobiles, and other transportation equipment. The Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area (known as the Metroplex) is a leader in high-technology industries—its computer manufactures have given the area the nickname “Silicon Prairie”— and receives many defense contracts. Oil is refined, and there are meatpacking plants. Its banks and insurance company headquarters make Dallas the Southwest's center for those industries. Publishing and printing are also important. The Dallas–Fort Worth airport is one of the busiest in the nation; regional airlines continue to use Love Field.

Founded c.1841, Dallas was early populated by French artisans and gentlemen who abandoned a nearby Fourierist community, La Réunion. The city was named in 1846 after Vice President George M. Dallas. Developing as a cotton market in the 1870s, Dallas later became known as a center for retail stores, including Neiman-Marcus Co., which was founded in 1907. The oil industry boomed in the 1930s; aircraft production in the 1940s. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Rapid metropolitan-area growth in the 1980s was evidenced by construction of postmodern office buildings that dramatically changed the city's skyline. North Dallas, sprawling, affluent, and almost entirely white, continues to expand.

Southern Methodist Univ., a branch of the Univ. of Texas, the Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, a theological seminary, and the Texas A&M Univ.'s Baylor College of Dentistry are in the Dallas area. A fashion center, the city is also known for its museums (e.g., Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Natural History, Nasher Sculpture Center), and for its interest in music, literature, and drama (the Dallas Theatre Center boasts the only public theater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright). In the 1980s, Dallas helped revitalize its downtown through the creation of an “arts district,” which includes the Dallas Museum of Art (1984) and the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center (1989). The Texas State Fair and the annual Cotton Bowl football game are held in the art deco Fair Park. Reunion Arena is home to the Mavericks (basketball) and Stars (hockey); the Cowboys (football, in Irving) and Texas Rangers (baseball, in Arlington) play in nearby suburbs.

Bibliography

See S. Acheson, Dallas Yesterday (1977); P. M. Seib, Dallas: Chasing the Urban Dream (1985); D. Tomlinson and D. Dillon, Dallas Architecture, 1936–1986 (1985).

City of Dallas
Flag Seal
Nickname: Big D, D-Town, Triple D, The 2-1-4
Motto: Live Large. Think Big.
Location in Dallas County and the state of Texas
Coordinates: 32°46′58″N 96°48′14″W / 32.78278, -96.80389
Country	United States
State	Texas
Counties	Dallas, Collin, Denton, Rockwall, Kaufman
Incorporated	2 February 1856
Government
- Mayor	Tom Leppert
Area
- City	sq mi (km²)
- Land	sq mi ( km²)
- Water	sq mi ( km²)
Elevation	ft ( m)
Population (2007)
- City
- Density	/sq mi (/km²)
- Metro
Time zone	Central (UTC-6)
- Summer (DST)	Central (UTC-5)
Area code(s)	214, 469, 972
FIPS code	48-190002
GNIS feature ID	13809443
Website: http://www.dallascityhall.com

The City of Dallas (pronounced [ˈdæl.əs] or [ˈdæl.ʊs]) is the second-largest (according to 2000 census) city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest city in the United States. The city covers  square miles ( km²) and is the county seat of Dallas County.^[4] As of July 1, 2006, U.S. Census estimates put Dallas at a population of 1,250,280.^[1]The city is the main cultural and economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area—at 6 million people, it is the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States.^[5] Dallas is listed as a gamma world city by the Loughborough University Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network.^[6]

Dallas was founded in 1841 and formally incorporated as a city on 2 February 1856. The city is well known for its role in the petroleum industry, 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^[7]—Dallas's 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.^[8]

History

Main article: History of Dallas, Texas

See also: Historical events of Dallas, Texas

Before Texas was claimed in the 1500s as a part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain by the Spanish Empire, the Dallas area was inhabited by the Caddo Native Americans. Later, France also claimed the area, but in 1819 the Adams-Onís Treaty made the Red River the northern boundary of New Spain, officially placing Dallas well within Spanish territory.^[9] The area remained under Spanish rule until 1821, when Mexico declared independence from Spain and the area became part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. In 1836, the Republic of Texas broke off from Mexico to become an independent nation.^[10] In 1839, four years into the Republic's existence, John Neely Bryan surveyed the area around present-day Dallas. He then left for Arkansas, but returned in 1841 and founded the city of Dallas. In 1846 the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States and Dallas County was established.

According to the City of Dallas, the origin of the name “Dallas” 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 Vice President of the United States. 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. Another idea, was that the name was influenced from a small town in Pennsylvania, named "Dallas" ^[11]

Other leading candidates for Dallas's eponym 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. This possibility has much support, in that founder John Neely Bryan stated that he had named the town after "his friend," and he was indeed friends with Joseph Dallas at the time.^[12]

A notable fact is that, while the namesake of the city of Dallas is not known for certain, the namesake of the county of Dallas is clear, as noted in the transcripts of the Texas legislature. Dallas County was named after Vice-President George Mifflin Dallas, leading to the intriguing possibility that the county seat was named for a different person than the county of the same name.^[13]

Dallas was founded in 1841 and formally incorporated as a city on 2 February 1856^[8] 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 Texas Central 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.^{[verification needed]} 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. ^{[verification needed]} In 1873, the major north-south and east-west Texas railroad routes intersected in Dallas, thus ensuring its future as a commercial center.^[11]

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 continued to lead the world in manufacture of saddlery and cotton gin machinery.^[8] 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.^[11] In 1958 the integrated circuit was invented in Dallas by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, which 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-Temco-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.^[14] 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 a building boom that produced a distinctive contemporary profile and prominent skyline for downtown Dallas. The 1980s also saw many oil industry companies relocate to Houston in order to be closer to offshore operations and the Port of Houston. However, Dallas was beginning to benefit from a burgeoning technology boom at the same time, driven by the growing computer, microchip, and telecommunications industries. Dallas also remained a strong center of banking, insurance, and business. The mid-to-late 1980s were tumultuous for the city when many Dallas banks collapsed from the Savings and Loan crisis. The hit effectively threw the city's economy to its knees and plans for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development were scrapped. The city remained in recession during the 1990s but the explosive growth of technology-based businesses kept the city's economy fairly stable—During the 1990s, Dallas became known as the Silicon Prairie, similar to California's Silicon Valley.^[15]

Recession continued to plague the city into the early 21st century. From 1988 to 2005, not a single high-rise structure was built within the downtown freeway loop, and the city was running out of developable land in north Dallas and Lake Highlands. Totally hemmed in on the north by suburbs, most new housing was being built in Carrollton, Coppell, Frisco, McKinney, Plano and Richardson. By the mid-2000s, the dried up downtown market began to turn around with the construction of multiple art venues, office towers, residential towers, and residential conversions. Downtown housed little over 1,600 residents in 2000, but by the year 2010, the North Central Texas Council of Governments expects over 10,000 residents to be living in the neighborhood.^[16] Just north, Uptown is one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, and major advances are taking place in the underdeveloped south Dallas and Oak Cliff areas, including the construction of the University of North Texas at Dallas.^{[citation needed]}

Geography

Dallas is the county seat of Dallas County. Portions of the city extend into neighboring Collin, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of  square miles ( km²)— square miles ( km²) of it is land and  square miles ( km²) of it (11.03%) is water. Dallas makes up one-fifth of the much larger urbanized area known as the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex—about a quarter of all Texans live in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington metropolitan area.^[17]

Topography

Main article: Geology of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex

Dallas, and its surrounding area, is mostly flat and lies at an elevation ranging from  feet ( m) to  feet ( m). The western edge of the Austin chalk formation, a limestone escarpment, rises  feet ( m) and runs roughly north-south through Dallas County. The uplift is particularly noticeable in the neighborhood of Oak Cliff and the adjacent cities of Cockrell Hill, Cedar Hill, Grand Prairie, and Irving. Marked variations in terrain are also found in cities immediately to the west in Tarrant County surrounding Fort Worth.

The Trinity River is a major Texas waterway that passes from the city of Irving into west Dallas, where it is paralleled by Interstate 35E along the Stemmons Corridor, then flows alongside western downtown, and through and alongside south Dallas and Pleasant Grove, paralleled by Interstate 45, where it exits into unincorporated Dallas County and heads southeast to Houston. The river is flanked on both sides by  feet ( m) tall earthen levees to protect the city from floods.^[18] The river has been treated much like a drainage ditch throughout Dallas's history, but as Dallas began shifting towards a postindustrial society, public outcry about a lack of aesthetic and recreational use for the river ultimately gave way to the Trinity River Project. The project, which began in the early 2000s and is scheduled to reach completion in the 2010s, will result in lakes, new park facilities and trails, and transportation improvements.^[19]

White Rock Lake is Dallas's other significant water feature. The lake and surrounding park is a popular destination among boaters, rowers, joggers, and bikers in the Lakewood/Casa Linda Estates neighborhoods of east Dallas. The  acre ( m²) Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden lies on the lake's eastern shore.^[20] Bachman Lake, just northwest of Love Field, is a smaller lake and park also used for recreation. Lake Ray Hubbard, a  acre ( km²) lake, is a vast and popular recreational lake located in an extension of Dallas surrounded by Garland, Rowlett, Rockwall, and Sunnyvale.^[21] Mountain Creek Lake is a small lake along Dallas's border with Grand Prairie and is home to the (defunct as of September 1998) Naval Air Station Dallas (Hensley Field).^[22] North Lake, a small lake in an extension of Dallas surrounded by Irving and Coppell, served primarily as a water source for a nearby power plant, but the surrounding area is now being targeted for redevelopment due to its proximity to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (a plan that the neighboring cities oppose).^[23]

Climate

Main article: Climate of Dallas, Texas

Dallas has a humid subtropical climate, yet this part of Texas also tends to receive warm, dry winds from the north and west in the summer. Winters are generally mild, although strong cold fronts from the north sometimes pass through Dallas, occasionally plummeting nightly lows between  °F ( °C) and  °F ( °C). Snowfall is seen on average 5 days out of the year and snow accumulation is seen 3 days out of the year.^[24] Occasionally, warm and humid air from the south overrides cold, dry air, leading to freezing rain, which usually causes major disruptions in the city for a day or two if the roads and highways become dangerously slick.

Spring and autumn bring very pleasant weather to the area and are usually the best times to visit. In the spring months, residents and visitors appreciate the beauty of the vibrant wildflowers (such as the bluebonnet, Indian paintbrush and other flora) which bloom in spring and are planted around the highways throughout Texas.^[25] In the spring the weather can be quite volatile and can change dramatically in a matter of minutes. Barring storms, springtime is very mild and enjoyable in the city. The weather in Dallas is also very pleasant between late September and early November, and unlike springtime, major storms rarely form in the area.

In the spring, cool fronts moving from Canada collide with warm, humid air streaming in from the Gulf Coast. When these fronts meet over northern and central Texas, severe thunder storms are generated with spectacular lightning shows, occasional torrents of rain, hail, and at times, a few tornadoes. Over time, tornadoes are perhaps the biggest threat to the city. Dallas was hit by a powerful tornado on 2 April 1957, The tornado would have likely been an F3.^[26] On March 28, 2000, the “Fort Worth Tornado” impacted Dallas's neighbor Fort Worth's downtown,amd tornado in Arlington, Texas also happened that day damaging some homes. Even though Dallas lies at the lower end of the "Tornado Alley", that day had the worst tornadoes to happen to the metroplex in the last 50 years.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture places the city of Dallas in Plant Hardiness Zone 8a.^[27] Dallas has the 12th worst ozone air pollution in the nation according to the American Lung Association, ranking it behind Los Angeles and Houston.^[28] Much of the air pollution in Dallas, and the DFW Metroplex in general, comes from a hazardous materials incineration plant in the southern-most suburb of Midlothian, as well as concrete installations in neighboring Ellis County.^[29] Another major contributor to air pollution is exhaust from automobiles. Due to Dallas's spread out nature and high amount of urban sprawl, automobiles are the only available mode of transportation for many. All time recorded high is 113F,and all time recorded low is 2F.

The average daily low in Dallas is  °F ( °C) and the average daily high in Dallas is  °F ( °C).^[30] Dallas receives approximately  inches ( mm) of rain per year, much of which is delivered in the spring or summer.

Cityscape

Architecture

See also: List of tallest buildings and structures in Dallas

Dallas's skyline contains several buildings over  feet ( m) in height and the city is considered the fifteenth-tallest city on earth while Houston, its intra-state rival is ranked 7th in the world.^[31]

Most of the notable architecture in Dallas is modernist and postmodernist. Iconic examples of modernist architecture include I. M. Pei's Fountain Place, the Bank of America Plaza, Renaissance Tower, and Reunion Tower. Examples of postmodernist architecture include the JPMorgan Chase Tower and Comerica Bank Tower. Several smaller structures are fashioned in the Gothic Revival (Kirby Building) and neoclassical (Davis and Wilson Buildings) styles. One architectural “hotbed” in the city is a stretch of homes along Swiss Avenue, which contains all shades and variants of architecture from Victorian to neoclassical.^[32]

Neighborhoods

The City of Dallas has many communities and neighborhoods. Major areas in the city include:

Central Dallas is anchored by Downtown, the center of the city and the epicenter of urban revival, coupled with Oak Lawn and Uptown Dallas, new urbanist areas anchored by dense retail, restaurants, and nightlife. Downtown Dallas has a variety of neighborhoods, including the West End Historic District, the Arts District, the Main Street District, Farmers Market District, the City Center business district, the Convention Center District, the Reunion District and Victory Park. North of downtown is Oak Lawn, a densely-populated area that contains parks along Turtle Creek and the popular Uptown area with LoMac, Cityplace and the West Village.

The east side of Dallas contains the community of east Dallas, home to Deep Ellum, a trendy arts area close to downtown, homey Lakewood, the historic Vickery Place, Bryan Place, and historically and architecturally significant homes on Swiss Avenue. Above the Park Cities is north Dallas, home to mansions as palatial as Versailles in Preston Hollow, strong middle and upper-class communities north into Bent Tree and Far North Dallas, and high-powered shopping at Galleria Dallas, NorthPark Center, and Preston Center. East of north Dallas and north of east Dallas is Lake Highlands, one of the most unified middle-class areas in the city, with the strongest definition—it is in the northeastern part of the city above White Rock Lake and east Dallas.^[33]

The southern portion of Dallas is home to Oak Cliff, a hilly area in southwest Dallas that is predominantly Hispanic and includes entertainment districts such as the Bishop Arts District. South Oak Cliff became a predominantly African American district after the early 1970s and has struggled with high rates of poverty and crime.^[34] To the east, south Dallas lays claim to the Cedars, an eclectic artist hotbed south of downtown, Fair Park, and areas west of the Trinity River and east of Interstate 35E. The University of North Texas at Dallas, currently located south of Oak Cliff along Interstate 20,^[35] is being built in the area along Houston School Road.^[36] Further east, above (north and east of) the Trinity River, is Pleasant Grove—once an independent city, it is a predominantly black collection of neighborhoods stretching to Seagoville to the southeast.

The city is further surrounded by many suburbs and encloses the following enclaves: Cockrell Hill, Highland Park, and University Park.

See also: List of neighborhoods in Dallas, Texas

Culture

Main article: Culture of Dallas, Texas

In a larger context, the Dallas-area is seen as right-wing politically, with a heavy cultural emphasis placed on Protestant Christianity and close historical and cultural ties to both the rugged American West and agricultural South. The popular television series Dallas bolstered this view epitomizing the city with wealthy oil barons, big hair, and cowboy hats. However, a closer look at the city proves this image to be nothing more than an outdated stereotype.

Politics

Present-day Dallas as a singular entity can be seen as fairly moderate, exceptionally so relative to its position in what is seen as an extremely conservative area (The nearby suburb of Plano was ranked as the 5th most conservative city in America by The Bay Area Center for Voting Research). In 2004, only 25% of votes cast in the City of Dallas were cast for conservative candidates, while they narrowly won Dallas County as a whole.^[37][38] In the 2006 electi