Big B in Big D: A History of Business in Dallas County

BIG B IN BIG D 

 

A History of Business in Dallas County 

 

 

by David E. Perryman 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A publication of the 

 

Dallas Historical Society

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BIG B IN BIG D 

A History of Business in Dallas County 

by David E. Perryman 

Commissioned by the Dallas Historical Society 

Historical Publishing Network 

A division of Lammert Incorporated 

San Antonio, Texas

First Edition 

Copyright © 2009 Historical Publishing Network 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the 

publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (800) 749-9790. 

ISBN: 9781935377061 

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2009933250 

Big B in Big D: A History of Business in Dallas County 

author: David E. Perryman 

cover photography: Justin Terveen 

contributing writers for “Sharing the Heritage”: Joe Goodpasture 

Karen Karinja 

Scott Williams 

Historical Publishing Network 

president: Ron Lammert 

project manager: Barbara Lane 

Sydney McNew 

administration: Donna M. Mata 

Melissa G. Quinn 

Evelyn Hart 

book sales: Dee Steidle 

production: Colin Hart 

Glenda Tarazon Krouse 

Craig Mitchell 

Charles A. Newton, III 

Roy Arellano 

PRINTED IN CHINA 

2 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

CONTENTS 

4 EPIGRAPH 

5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

6 INTRODUCTION 

9 CHAPTER I a log cabin trading post, 1841-1850 

14 CHAPTER II the rise of early industries, 1850-1872 

21 CHAPTER III railroads transform Dallas into bonafide 

boomtown overnight, 1872-1900 

35 CHAPTER IV business leaders organize, take charge, 1900-1918 

47 CHAPTER V Dallas economy diversifies following World War I, 1918-1930 

54 CHAPTER VI East Texas oil strike buffers Dallas from 

depths of Depression, 1930-1940 

63 CHAPTER VII Dallas becomes “war capital of the Southwest,” 1940-1944 

67 CHAPTER VIII city experiences economic boom in postwar era, 1945-1960 

75 CHAPTER IX business leaders, entrepreneurial spirit help 

city rebound after Kennedy assassination, 1960-1970 

81 CHAPTER X business rises with new airport opening, falls from crises 

in banking and real estate, 1970-1990 

87 CHAPTER XI Dallas recovers from crises, economy continues 

to diversify, 1990-2000 

93 CHAPTER XII business community continues to thrive despite 

back-to-back crises, 2000-2007 

100 AFTERWORD 

101 ENDNOTES 

109 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

113 SHARING THE HERITAGE 

166 SPONSORS 

167 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

CONTENTS ✧ 3

EPIGRAPH 

“No pen will ever fully record the heroic deeds that have been wrought, the hardships and perils endured, the sacrifices made, and the untiring 

labor performed by our noble pioneer men and women…if we fail to treasure up and perpetuate the lives and memories of our benefactors by some 

suitable record or testimonial, we will have proven ourselves recreant to a sacred duty.” 

- From the program of the 1927 annual meeting of the Dallas County Pioneers’ Association 


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

This work would not have been possible without the cooperation and support of a number of people. Specifically, I would like to thank Dr. Al 

Niemi, dean of the SMU Cox School of Business, for his early insights about whom to interview for the book as well as for granting me the flexible 

schedule to occasionally conduct research during work hours. For their research support, I am grateful to Jan Hart Black, Dr. Lyssa Jenkens, and 

Paul Hendershot of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce; Dr. Russell Martin and his archives staff at SMU’s DeGolyer Library; Dr. Michael Cox, 

Kay Gribbin, and their research team at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; and Beth Andresen and her colleagues in the Texas/Dallas History & 

Archives Division of the Dallas Public Library. I would also like to thank Dr. Bobby Lyle, Selwin Belofsky, and Bob Rogers for the insights and 

impressions they shared through personal interviews. In addition, I would like to acknowledge John H. Cochran, William L. McDonald, and Dr. 

Darwin Payne, whose earlier histories of Dallas provided a foundational knowledge upon which to begin building this book. Special thanks go to 

Susan Richards at the Dallas Historical Society who helped me find valuable resources throughout my research efforts, Dr. Thomas Smith, who 

helped edit the book, drawing upon his considerable knowledge of Dallas history, and Barbara Lane, whose tireless efforts secured the photos that 

truly bring the narrative to life. I am also grateful to the Dallas Historical Society and Ron Lammert of the Historical Publishing Network for giving 

me the opportunity to write this book. 

Most importantly, I would like to thank my family for their love, encouragement, and hands-on help. My parents raised me with a deep respect 

for history, and for that I am grateful. My brothers, Tom and John, whose opinions on writing and all things I hold in highest regard, offered valuable 

editorial input along the journey. And my dear wife, Laurie, provided the final expert edit to ensure that the book is clear and concise. Finally, my 

three boys, Braden, Ethan, and Calvin, gave me the inspiration to keep going and served as constant reminders of our responsibility to keep history 

alive to guide the thoughts, feelings, and actions of future generations. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ✧ 5

✧ 

Citizens of Dallas gathered for the 1940 dedication of Dealey Plaza honoring George Bannerman Dealey, the “father of newspapers” in town and one of the city’s most influential business and 

civic leaders. The plaza is located on the west edge of downtown Dallas where Elm Street and Commerce Street converge. The Texas School Book Depository, from which Lee Harvey Oswald is 

believed to have shot President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, can be seen in the background. 

COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

INTRODUCTION 

In 2007, roughly eight generations after 

its humble beginnings as a log cabin 

trading post on the Trinity River, the City of 

Dallas powered the nation’s fourth-largest 

metropolitan area to nearly $290 billion 

in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This 

economic output placed Dallas-Fort Worth 

(DFW) in the top twenty-five among all 

countries of the world in terms of GDP. Put 

another way, in 166 years of battling the 

natural elements out on the rough and 

tumble North Texas prairie, Dallas had 

accomplished something that neither 

Norway nor Poland had done in their more 

than ten centuries of existence. Underlying 

the city’s impressive level of economic 

output—achieved in such a relatively short 

period of time—is a remarkable, instructive, 

and uplifting history of business. 1 

As this book’s title, Big B in Big D, 

suggests, business in Dallas today is big and 

booming…not just for large corporations 

but for companies of all sizes and in every 

major industry. While DFW was home to 

twenty-four Fortune 500 companies in 

2007, ranking fourth in the nation, the 

metropolitan area had more than 1,500 

regional and corporate headquarters 

operations and over 100,000 business 

establishments. 2 The vast majority of these 

are private enterprises with less than 100 

employees and annual revenues of less 

than $10 million. 3 So while the city’s large 

corporations garner most of the ink, its 

small- to medium-sized companies are the 

lifeblood that keeps the powerful economic 

engine pumping. This book attempts to 

document the stories of these smaller 

businesses as well as those of the global 

brands that make Dallas their home. 

That being said, I would like to 

acknowledge from the start that this is one 

of many histories that could be written 

about business in Dallas. The aim here is 

to present a representative story of the 

city’s humble business beginnings and 

remarkable evolution rather than producing 

an exhaustive encyclopedia including every 

key business leader, all crucial decisions, 

every business milestone, and each heroic 

effort. In researching this book, I was 

dependent upon those story lines that have 

been documented in some form or that are 

still present in the minds of living figures. 

There are undoubtedly countless inspirational 

stories of successful Dallas businesses founded 

and led by individuals whose creativity, 

business acumen, dogged determination, 

and personal sacrifices—because heretofore 

undocumented—are not reported in this 

book. Even among the many stories I read 

and tales I heard, only a portion have found 

their way into the pages of this history due 

to the space constraints of the book’s format. 

It also bears mentioning up front that this 

book traces the origin of business in Dallas 

back to the trading post John Neely Bryan 

established in 1841, fully acknowledging 

that other types of commercial activities had 

been going on in the Trinity River’s Three 

Forks area for centuries among frontier 

traders, Native Americans, French and 

Spanish explorers, and Mexican nationals. 4 

The majority of historical business 

documents preserved today in private 

collections or public libraries—particularly 

those produced during the city’s first century 

of existence—were written by whites 

about white-run businesses, even as African 

Americans and Hispanics struggled to improve 

their lives by participating more fully in the 


city’s commercial activities. Some of Dallas’ 

early business leaders were entirely self 

made; some parlayed fortunes made on the 

backs of slave labor into subsequent ventures 

in agriculture, manufacturing, real estate, or 

banking; still others, hailing from affluent 

circumstances “back East,” managed to 

successfully transplant existing business 

operations to Dallas’ fertile and burgeoning 

marketplace. More recently, the story of 

business in Dallas has become increasingly 

diverse. Globalization has attracted a host of 

businesses and professionals from around 

the world, while the competitive playing 

field at home has been leveled somewhat 

to provide greater opportunities for 

minority professionals, business leaders, 

and entrepreneurs. 

As I embarked upon the task of sifting 

through almost two centuries of pioneer lore 

and urban myths about the city to get to the 

heart of the matter, I initially read a number of 

general Dallas history books written by early 

chroniclers such as John H. Cochran as well as 

more recent historians like Darwin Payne, 

without whose work this book would have 

been much more difficult. To shed greater 

light on key events and people identified 

through these books, I subsequently read 

marketing brochures and annual reports from 

famous and lesser-known Dallas-based 

businesses, articles from the city’s early and 

current newspapers and magazines, and 

various correspondence of such business icons 

as Erik Jonsson and Stanley Marcus. To 

capture insights about more recent events, 

I interviewed or drew upon interview 

transcripts of prominent business leaders, 

including TXI Chairman Bob Rogers, former 

American Airlines CEO Al Casey, and On- 

Target Supplies & Logistics CEO Albert C. 

Black, Jr. In those instances in which two 

sources offered divergent recollections of the 

same event, I sought a third source or 

eyewitness. If I could not find such sources, I 

painted the events with broad brushstrokes to 

convey their general significance without 

including those details in question. 

So what did I uncover after all this digging, 

sifting, and sorting? Surprisingly, the dominant 

myth explaining Dallas’ greatness—that the 

city utterly lacks any natural resources and 

has succeeded solely because of its founders’ 

pioneer grit and later citizens’ can-do 

attitude—has been greatly exaggerated. This 

myth initially had been perpetuated by word 

of mouth but later found its way into materials 

as diverse as Fortune magazine and flyers for 

civic bond issues. In a 1949 Fortune article 

called “The Dydamic Men of Dallas,” Holland 

McCombs and Holly Whyte wrote that Dallas 

“sat astride no natural routes of trade” and 

that the city was “a monument to sheer 

determination…owing nothing to accident, 

nature, or inevitability.” 5 Thirty-six years later, 

a flyer for a 1985 bond issue declared that 

“there is no real reason for a place called 

Dallas. No harbor drew people here, no 

oceans, no mountains, no great natural 

beauty. Yet people made out of Dallas what it 

is today: the shining city of the Sunbelt, a city 

of opportunity, a great place in which to live 

and work.” 6 

In fact, Dallas possessed, from its 

“founding” in 1841, a number of natural 

resources that have figured prominently in 

the remarkable growth of business in and 

around the city. The black, waxy soil on 

which Dallas sits, coupled with North Texas’ 

prevailing sunny climate, are nearly perfect 

for the cultivation of staple crops. Dallas 

was nationally renowned for its wheat 

production and high-quality flour in the late 

1800s and became the world’s largest inland 

cotton market by the early 1900s. 

Most significantly, Dallas possessed from 

day one, and still possesses, perhaps the 

single greatest natural resource a city could 

have; one that is lauded by real estate agents 

and retail pundits alike as the Holy Trinity of 

attributes: Location! Location! Location! 

In the beginning, the city’s location was 

strategic in the narrow context of North 

Texas. It was not blind luck or an irrational 

whim that led John Neely Bryan to select the 

site for his new city. The Three Forks area 

was already a natural crossing point where 

Native Americans embarked upon buffalo 

hunts to the north and west as well as a 

place where pioneer traders invariably 

crossed paths, exchanged goods, and shared 

news from “out West” or “back East.” By 

1838, the Texas Congress had authorized a 

national highway to pass through the Three 

Forks area, connecting South Texas with 

Fort Preston on the Red River and more 

distant cities to the north. 7 

Ironically, the most widely lauded natural 

resource early in the town’s existence—the 

Trinity River—has never paid long-promised 

dividends as a navigable waterway. In fact 

civic and business leaders’ continued belief 

in this possibility well into the twentieth 

century impeded the city’s ability to achieve 

progress by diverting attention and resources 

from other more promising initiatives. 

In the early 1870s when leaders of the 

Houston and Texas Central Railroad (H&TC) 

and the Texas and Pacific Railway (T&P) 

started evaluating towns through which their 

trains might pass while traversing the North 

Texas terrain, Dallas’ location made it a natural 

candidate. On July 16, 1872, the whistle of the 

H&TC engine was heard in Dallas for the first 

time, ushering in one of the greatest periods 

of growth in the city’s history. Dallas was 

transformed almost overnight from a sleepy 

frontier outpost into a bona fide boom town. 

Later, in the darkest days of the Great 

Depression, the city’s proximity to the East 

Texas oil fields helped attract some 34,000 

residents in the 1930s (an increase of 13.2 

percent for the decade), establishing it as an 

operational center and funding source for 

numerous oil exploration and production 

companies and independent operators as 

well as the many firms that provided oilfield 

equipment and services. 8 As a result, Dallas’ 

economy actually grew at a time when most 

cities throughout the nation struggled 

desperately to create enough jobs for their 

citizens amid rising unemployment and 

civil unrest. 

Today, the city’s central location—between 

the East Coast and West Coast, and Canada 

and Latin America—makes it a strategic home 

base for companies looking to minimize 

distribution and travel costs as oil and energy 

prices soar. CEOs also frequently cite the 

city’s position in the Central Time Zone as a 

key benefit for conducting business on both 

coasts and beyond. 

So from its very beginning, sun, soil, and 

central location—among other natural 

resources—endowed Dallas with virtually 

unlimited potential as a place to do business. 

These resources constituted a fertile tabula 

rasa on which entrepreneurs, terminus 

merchants, civic visionaries, and corporate 

tycoons could project far-fetched visions of 

new companies while inscribing their triedand-true 

business practices. But these 

natural gifts in and of themselves did not 

guarantee the city’s success. After all, the 

road to “world-class” city status is littered 

with naturally gifted towns that, for a variety 

of reasons ranging from lack of civic 

leadership and poor decision-making to 

undesirable climates, were not able to 

convert potential into reality. Once-thriving 

Rust Belt cities like Buffalo, New York, and 

Detroit, Michigan, today find themselves 

losing record numbers of businesses and 

professionals because of their unfavorable 

tax environments and harsh winter weather. 

Several hours’ drive east of Dallas, Jefferson, 

Texas, is today a small, sleepy town after 

earning the title “Gateway to Texas” as one 

of the state’s leading ports of entry around 

the time of the Civil War. Situated on Big 

INTRODUCTION ✧ 7

Cypress Bayou, which steamboats coming 

up the Mississippi River from New Orleans 

could access through the Red River, Jefferson 

officials refused Jay Gould’s offer to lay 

railroad tracks through town and paid a 

heavy price, suffering a severe economic 

decline at about the same time that train 

whistles were heralding a new era for Dallas. 

Even after embracing the railroads in the 

1870s and making tremendous strides 

throughout the first half of the twentieth 

century, Dallas’ fate as a global business 

center still hung in the balance until 1968, 

when its leadership was finally able to 

resolve a longstanding dispute with Fort 

Worth to create DFW International Airport 

(originally called Dallas-Fort Worth Regional 

Airport)—the single most important 

economic engine in the city’s history. 

While the story of Big B in Big D begins 

with natural resources, it quickly broadens 

to include myriad tales of larger-than-life 

characters whose vision, tenacity, and 

occasional superhuman efforts imbued 

the city with “man-made” attributes that 

complement and enhance the city’s natural 

gifts. Time and time again, when the city was 

rocked by crises ranging from fire, flood, 

and drought to a presidential assassination 

and economic busts in oil, banking, real 

estate, and telecommunications, its business 

leaders responded with acts of altruism, 

wisdom, and imagination so that Dallas 

could live to see another day. 

Beyond responding to natural and manmade 

crises, these same business leaders 

possessed the prescience to identify significant 

opportunities for the city to flourish— 

proverbial forks in the road of the city’s 

destiny—and then exhibited the resolve to 

turn those opportunities to the city’s 

advantage. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, 

leaders such as banker and benefactor William 

Henry Gaston and former mayor turned state 

representative John W. Lane relentlessly 

pursued the H&TC and the T&P railroads, 

employing aboveboard as well as under-thetable 

tactics to secure the strategic crossing 

within the city’s limits. After the city had 

hosted the Dallas County Fair off and on since 

1859, Gaston, real estate developers John B. 

Wilson and J.T. Trezevant, and several other 

businessmen committed the land, money, and 

resources to secure Dallas as the host city for 

the Texas State Fair and Dallas Exposition in 

1887. Business leaders’ repeated efforts to save 

the fair from financial collapse in subsequent 

years guaranteed that Texas farmers and 

ranchers early on, and consumers and 

businesses throughout the Southwest later, 

would beat a path to the city every fall to 

exhibit and sample a variety of goods and 

services. In 1913, when the U.S. Federal 

Reserve Bank set its sights on establishing a 

dozen regional reserve banks around the 

country, the efforts of such men as banker J. 

Howard Ardrey and newspaper publisher 

George Bannerman Dealey ensured that Dallas 

was selected for the Eleventh District Bank 

over competitors including San Antonio, 

Houston, Austin, and New Orleans. This 

milestone gave the city an immediate influx of 

capital that would fund new commercial 

activities and firmly establish the city as the 

financial center of the Southwest in the years 

ahead. When the host site for the 1936 Texas 

Centennial Exposition was up for grabs in the 

early 1930s, Dallas again rose to the occasion, 

with bankers Nathan Adams, Fred L. 

Florence, and Robert L. Thornton leading the 

charge. This event focused the eyes of the 

nation on Dallas and bolstered its claim as the 

dominant city in Texas, much to the chagrin of 

its intrastate rivals. When the federal 

government was creating the national highway 

system in the 1940s and 1950s, Dallas leaders 

lobbied to bring new arteries into the city, 

facilitating the ingress and egress of leisure 

travelers and conventioneers as well as freightcarrying 

trucks. 9 As a result, Dallas today 

arguably has more inter-regional highway 

spokes than any other U.S. city. In the 1960s, 

when the city was still reeling in shame and 

infamy from President Kennedy’s assassination, 

Neiman Marcus CEO Stanley Marcus and 

Texas Instruments co-founder Erik Jonsson 

helped heal the city and galvanize the resolve 

to rebuild Big D’s reputation. 

The difficult decisions made at these critical 

junctures, along with the best qualities 

of the men and women who made them, 

shaped the character of the city whose key 

attributes former SMU history professor 

Herbert Gambrell once described as “aggressiveness, 

metropolitanism, promotionalism, 

opportunism, investmentism (which is a sort 

of civic merchandising...).” 10 Today, Dallas 

offers a pro-business attitude (manifested in 

tax abatements, favorable zoning regulations, 

a non-union labor force, and availability of 

capital), global transportation and distribution 

infrastructure, a low cost of living (made 

possible by an affordable housing market 

and no state personal income tax), and a high 

quality of life (featuring myriad cultural, 

entertainment, recreational, and medical 

resources and facilities). These factors—in 

combination—create an environment that is 

extremely attractive to skilled professionals 

and corporate executives alike, along with a 

diverse economy that is resilient to industryspecific 

downturns. 

In addition to the city’s considerable natural 

resources, talented business leaders, and probusiness 

environment, the element of luck has 

also played a role in the city’s business success. 

In 1873, a national financial panic originating 

in Philadelphia temporarily cut off funding 

to the T&P, whose tracks by that time ran 

through Dallas as far as Eagle’s Ford about six 

miles west of the city. During the three years 

that Fort Worth languished just out of reach 

of the railroads, 75 percent of its residents, 

including buffalo traders, cattle drovers, and 

businessmen, moved to Dallas. By the time 

work on the T&P resumed and its tracks 

entered Fort Worth in 1876, “Cow Town’s” 

population had been severely depleted. Dallas’ 

population, meanwhile, had more than 

tripled. 11 So from the early days of both cities’ 

existences, Lady Luck intervened to give Dallas 

enough of a head start to leave Fort Worth, 

from an economic standpoint, forever walking 

in its neighbor’s shadow. 

As I delved deeper into the history of 

business in Dallas, I began to experience a 

certain satisfaction from learning about the 

city I’d grown up in but had remained 

relatively ignorant of for too many years. 

Researching the book brought to life the 

colorful histories of many of the companies 

I’d benefited from—brands that had been 

embedded in the fabric of my upbringing, 

including Tom Thumb, where my family 

shopped for groceries; our beloved Dallas 

Cowboys; 7-Eleven, where we procured 

Slurpies and Big Gulps to sate our thirst in 

the torrid Texas summers; and EDS, where I 

landed my first corporate job in 1990. 

As I studied these and other icons of 

the Dallas business landscape, I came to 

understand that each brand represented, at 

one time if no longer, the hopes and dreams 

of enterprising individuals or families— 

something more fundamental and profound 

than the sum of their present-day products, 

services, strategic plans, or quarterly earnings 

statements. I hope I have captured some of 

this intangible magic that has played a key 

role in the history of business in Dallas. 

Finally, this book is a celebration of the 

men and women who have made business 

in Dallas what it is today. As the Epigraph 

suggests, failing to record their history would 

prove ourselves “recreant to a sacred duty.” I 

sincerely hope that their stories will guide 

and inspire future generations of business 

leaders who will be faced with making key 

decisions at critical junctures to ensure the 

continued success of this remarkable city. 


✧ 

John Neely Bryan’s log cabin trading post stood for many years in front of the Old Red Courthouse in downtown Dallas before it was moved to a temporary location behind the Old Criminal 

Courts building. 


CHAPTER I 

A LOG C ABIN T RADING P OST, 1841-1850 

Long before any European explorers, 

American pioneers, or Mexican nationals 

noted the confluence of the East Fork, the 

West Fork, and the Elm Fork of the Trinity 

River, the Caddos, a Native American tribe, 

valued the place because it offered a strategic 

low point for crossing the river. Created by 

millions of years of natural forces, the 

limestone bedrock floor (called “Austin 

chalk”) underlying that part of North Texas 

rose slightly and was exposed as the river 

narrowed, providing sure footing for horses, 

oxen, and humans as well as a solid 

foundation for wagons. For hundreds of 

years, the Three Forks of the Trinity had 

served as a crossroads for the Caddos, 

carrying hunting parties north and west into 

buffalo country and linking their tribes to the 

south and east. 1 It was one of the few natural 

fords on the river within a hundred miles or 

so, acting as a passageway through which 

indigenous peoples could acquire the 

material goods they needed to survive. But 

by the 1800s, the Caddos were not the only 

people who recognized the value of the Three 

Forks crossing. 2 

Not long after its founding in 1836, the 

Republic of Texas initiated an effort to 

populate the Three Forks area with settlers 

and homesteaders. The Texas Congress 

approved a bill on May 26, 1838, authorizing 

a road to be constructed from South Texas to 

the Red River. The first section of the 

National Central Highway would be built 

from Bastrop on the Colorado River to the 

Trinity River near the upper Three Forks. The 

second section would stretch from Three 

Forks up Preston Trail to the Red River near 

Coffee’s Station, a trading post on the river 

dividing Texas and Oklahoma. 3 

In late 1839 and early 1840, John Neely 

Bryan, a pioneer originally from Tennessee, 

made an initial foray from Coffee’s Station on 

the Red River into North Texas in hopes of 

finding a suitable place to establish a town. 

On that journey, he identified the most 

appealing spot to be the white rock bluffs of 

the Trinity River just below the confluence of 

the West Fork and Elm Fork. He thought it 

would make an ideal spot for a trading post, 

since the Caddos already placed a premium 

on the Three Forks area as a hunting and 

gathering place. 4 

At that time, there were ongoing 

hostilities between the Caddos, early Anglo 

settlers, and expeditionary forces of Texas 

soldiers, so the legislation called for the 

National Central Highway to be protected by 

a series of eight forts. In the spring of 1841, 

two Republic of Texas-commissioned raids 

on the Caddos living in the Three Forks area 

initiated the tribe’s permanent withdrawal 

from the area, clearing the way for white 

settlers. 5 Bird’s Fort was subsequently 

established on the banks of a small lake 

seventeen miles west of where Dallas would 

be founded. 6 

As soon as these efforts to secure the 

Three Forks area were underway, the 

Republic of Texas commissioned W. S. Peters 

and Associates to recruit settlers into an 

area about 1,300 square miles, including the 

upper Trinity. This group was formally known 

as the Texas Emigration Land Company, and 

the development the company promoted 

near Three Forks was called Peters Colony. 

Each family settling in Peters Colony 

received 640 acres. Single men over the age 

of seventeen received 160 acres. For each 

one hundred families homesteading in Peters 

Colony, Peters and Associates received 6,400 

acres of premium land. 7 

By the time John Neely Bryan set off for 

the Three Forks area a second time in 

November 1841—this time to establish the 

town on the spot he’d earlier identified—a 

number of roads, literal and figurative, had 

CHAPTER I ✧ 9

already converged on the area. Bryan, his 

Cherokee friend called Ned, a dog named 

Tubby, and a horse called Neshoba—a mangy 

and unlikely foursome—followed the wellworn 

trade route called Preston Trail (today 

Preston Road in Dallas) until they reached the 

bluff on the east side of the Trinity River 

overlooking Three Forks. And it was there 

that Bryan hunkered down to start his town 

on 640 acres he claimed as a headright. 

He built a camp out of poles, brush, and 

dirt on what was then the east bank of the 

Trinity River. He later erected a modest 

cabin on this spot near today’s “triple 

underpass,” where Main Street, Elm Street, 

and Commerce Street converge to pass under 

a railroad bridge. 8 

EARLY BUSINESSES 

CROP UP AROUND 

BRYAN’ S TRADING POST 

Upon arriving at Three Forks, staking his 

claim, and founding his town, Bryan 

established a trading post in his cabin. 

(There is some disagreement about why 

Bryan named the town Dallas, though many 

believe it was for his friend, George Mifflin 

Dallas, a Philadelphia lawyer and diplomat 

who was elected Vice President of the United 

States under President James K. Polk in 

1844). In 1842, Bryan borrowed an oxdrawn 

covered wagon from John Beeman 

and his family—recent arrivals from nearby 

Bird’s Fort—and headed up Preston Trail to 

Preston Bend on the Red River to buy 

stock for his store. He returned with a 

wagon full of powder, lead, tobacco, and 

whiskey. While this initial stock did not 

meet all the needs of the settlers in the area, 

the goods reportedly attracted customers to 

Bryan’s store. 9 

In the early years of Dallas’ existence the 

commercial activities in town were primitive 

and simplistic by today’s standard. Several 

business-minded men living in and around 

Bryan’s cabin opened trading posts and 

general stores. These men underwent great 

trials and tribulations to procure the barest of 

essentials, which settlers either bought or 

bartered for with buffalo or cattle hides or 

crops they’d raised. While failing to offer a 

wide array of wares, these stores provided 

locals with the basic supplies they needed 

for survival and served, just as importantly, 

as places where people could congregate 

and commiserate over the hardships of 

pioneer life. 

The memoir of John B. Billingsley, one of 

five brothers who came to Dallas in 1842, 

✧ 

This historical map of the City of Dallas shows major settlements and events in the area from 1831 to 1867. 

COURTESY OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY, 

portrays a bleak picture of Bryan’s town one 

year after its founding: 

“We had heard a great deal about the 

Three Forks of the Trinity and the town of 

Dallas. This was the center of attraction. It 

sounded big in the far-off state. We heard 

of it often, yes, the place, but the town 

where was it? Two small log cabins, the 

logs just as nature found them, the walls 

just high enough for the door boards and 

the covering of clapboards held to their 

place with poles, chimneys made of sticks 

and mud and old mother earth serving as 

floors; a shelter made of four sticks for a 

smith shop, a garden fenced in with 

brush, and mortar in which they beat 

their corn into meal. This was the town of 

Dallas and two families, ten or twelve 

souls, were its population. After taking in 

the town, the next thing was to see the 

river. A few yards away and we were on its 

banks. One deep, narrow and crooked 

channel was all we could see of the far 

famed Trinity river.” 10 

Throughout the early 1840s, skirmishes 

with Native Americans continued to thwart 

the efforts of Bryan and the Peters Colony to 

attract newcomers, driving some settlers 

away and scaring off other would-be 

residents. But Bryan’s spirits remained upbeat 

and his resolve unwavering. An Englishman 

named E. Parkinson visited Dallas on a trip 

with Sam Houston to Bird’s Fort in 1843. He 

described Bryan as a “handy backwoodsman, 

and a sensible, industrious, ingenious, and 

hospitable man.” Yet despite Bryan’s efforts, 

only twenty-five families had settled in the 

area between Bird’s Fort and Dallas by 1843. 11 

In January 1844, J. P. Dumas and his wife 

arrived from central Texas in an ox-drawn 

wagon full of corn, trailing 100 head of 

cattle and a dozen men. That spring, Dumas 

worked with Bryan to survey a town half a 

mile square, laid out in blocks 200 feet by 

200 feet, extending eight blocks west to east 

and 10 blocks north to south, including a 

block for a courthouse square, which still 

serves the same purpose today. 12 That same 

year, a pioneer blacksmith and storekeeper 

named Lundy reportedly displayed next to 

his barrel of whiskey three bolts of calico 

priced at 25 cents a yard. 13 

In 1845, with work finally beginning on 

the National Central Highway, the flow of 

settlers crossing the Red River to enter the 

Republic of Texas picked up considerably. 14 

In one six-week span, more than 1,000 

wagons were reported to have crossed the 

Red River into Texas. In response to the 

influx of settlers, the Republic of Texas 

established a post office in Bryan’s cabin 

alongside his trading post and named Bryan 

the postmaster. 15 The majority of these 

settlers came from Arkansas, Illinois, 


Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, 

and Virginia. In his history of Dallas County, 

John H. Cochran, son of two of the town’s 

early settlers, William and Nancy Jane 

Cochran, describes the early settlers as a 

“hopeful, optimistic lot full of charity.” 16 

With the influx of new settlers, the town’s 

first business community began to spring up 

✧ 

John Neely Bryan created this map of the town of Dallas following the creation of Dallas County by the first legislature of 

the State of Texas on March 30, 1846. The blocks and lots on this map were entirely within Bryan’s survey and formed the 

original township of Dallas. The area above the diagonal line was a part of a league and labor of land patented to John 

Grigsby in 1842 and known as the Grigsby League. 

COURTESY OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 

around the courthouse square Dumas had 

marked on his original survey. A few farmers 

who grew wheat and corn in the fertile soil 

around Bryan’s settlement came to his 

trading post to sell and trade their produce. 

The town’s first attorney, John C. McCoy, 

came to Dallas about this time to represent 

the Peters Colony in its various land 

transactions and handle any disputes that 

arose from conflicting claims. 17 

In 1845 a trading post opened at Cedar 

Springs, three miles north of the town of 

Dallas, where settlers exchanged buffalo 

hides for ammunition and basic groceries. 

The next year, James M. Patterson and John 

W. Smith opened the first general store in 

Dallas. They displayed $700 worth of 

merchandise, retrieved from Shreveport, 

Louisiana, by no small effort. The 380-mile 

roundtrip journey from Dallas to Shreveport 

reportedly took forty days, as Patterson and 

Smith, driving two ox-drawn wagons, had to 

construct several rafts to make water 

crossings along the way. 18 

As commercial activity picked up around 

the courthouse square and citizens began to 

feel part of a larger community, a civicminded 

spirit began to take hold. In 1845 

thirty-two Dallas residents voted on Texas’ 

annexation to the United States, favoring the 

proposal by a count of 29 to three. Later that 

year, Texas became the country’s twentyeighth 

state. Around this time, Bryan 

established a ferryboat service to help 

settlers, traders, and other travelers 

negotiate the Trinity River on their way 

into and out of town. Many of the people 

passing through town over the next few years 

were “49ers” on their way to California, 

chasing dreams of prosperity inspired by the 

gold rush. 19 

In 1846, Adam Haught opened the town’s 

first saloon in a tent pitched not far from 

Bryan’s cabin. The modest watering hole 

served as a place where buffalo hide traders, 

cattle drovers, local wheat and vegetable 

farmers, and the like sated their prairieparched 

palates, exchanged news, traded 

stories of the trail, and negotiated business 

deals. 20 Renowned Dallas historian Darwin 

Payne notes that most of the people coming 

to Dallas during this time period did so not 

to escape civilization but rather to find 

temporary solace and refuge from the harsh 

life that existed out on the edge of the bleak 

and often hostile frontier wilderness. 21 

In 1848, J. W. Lattimer hauled a press 

and type by ox-drawn wagon from Paris, 

Texas, and set up the town’s first newspaper 

called the Cedar Snag. The name of the paper 

CHAPTER I ✧ 11

soon changed to the Dallas Herald. It served 

as the town’s only paper until the Dallas 

News was founded in 1885. Since there were 

so few established companies that could 

afford to advertise in the newspaper, the 

Dallas Herald survived on subscription 

revenue in the early years of its existence. 

While the newspaper struggled to stay in 

business, it managed to exert a positive 

influence on the city and its residents by 

promoting increased development and 

commercial activities and encouraging the 

moral character of the town. 22 

According to accounts by Frank Cockrell, 

the son of Alexander and Sarah Horton 

Cockrell, two prominent citizens in the early 

years of Dallas, John Neely Bryan had lost 

considerable favor and influence in the 

community by 1850. At the age of 40, only 

10 years after founding the town, he felt that 

he was not enjoying the well-deserved fruits 

of his labor. As he embarked upon his fourth 

decade of life, he turned to drink, withdrew 

from social life, and became increasingly 

bitter. 23 At this juncture, the city’s commercial 

activities diverged from the fate of its 

founder, as a new group of leaders assumed 

responsibility for growing business in the 

still modest town. 

FOUNDED ON A 

FLAWED PREMISE 

John Neely Bryan deserves credit for 

recognizing the commercial potential of 

Three Forks’ strategic location and then 

summoning the intestinal fortitude to 

exploit that potential. He imagined a town 

that, if properly promoted and developed, 

could become an economic and social center 

for merchants, traders, and settlers 

throughout North Texas and beyond. But 

while his vision for the city was grand 

and, in many ways, prescient, his ideas 

about how his dream could be achieved 

were flawed. 

Bryan’s plan for the future of Dallas was 

inextricably bound to a clouded vision of the 

Trinity River becoming a viable commercial 

channel. As Darwin Payne notes in Dallas: 

An Illustrated History, Bryan dreamed of 

transforming Three Forks into the head of a 

great waterway that would one day serve as 

the lifeline between a major trading center 

and the Gulf of Mexico. Not long after he 

staked his claim, he began promoting his 

town and the Trinity River to inhabitants at 

Bird’s Fort, which at that time amounted to 

little more than a blockhouse and several 

cabins overlooking the West Fork of the 

✧ 

Not long after founding Dallas, John Neely Bryan 

married Margaret Beeman, daughter of John Beeman, 

who’d moved his family to Dallas from Bird’s Fort west of 

town. The Bryans had five children. Bryan was a 

salesman, if nothing else, whose ability to promote his 

vision for Dallas helped the fledgling town attract settlers 

and survive its lean early years. 


Trinity some seventeen miles west of Bryan’s 

cabin. Most of the Bird’s Fort settlers 

ultimately chose to move back to more 

established settlements along the Red River, 

but several key figures, including John 

Beeman and Captain Mabel Gilbert, decided 

to relocate near Bryan’s claim. They would 

make significant contributions to the town’s 

early business activities. 24 

Bryan was not alone in believing 

the Trinity could be transformed into a 

navigable waterway. At the time, steamers 

and flatboats were traversing the lower 

reaches of the Trinity north of Galveston, 

and there were almost 30 ports along the 

river spaced out roughly every 20 miles, 

including Trinity City, Porter’s Bluff, Buffalo, 

and Acker’s Ferry. Several years before the 

city’s founding, a steamer called Scioto Belle 

had allegedly navigated the Trinity as far 

north as the Three Forks region. In addition, 

W. S. Peters, in advertising the Peters Colony, 

promoted Dallas as an inland port, much 

to the disappointment of settlers when 

they arrived. 25 

In 1849, Bryan, John M. Crockett, and 

the Reverend James A. Smith served as 

delegates at a convention in Huntsville 

aimed at improving the Trinity as a navigable 

waterway. Three years later, merchant J. W. 

Smith built a flatboat named the Dallas to 

help transport his goods to Houston. Smith 

selected the town’s first saloonkeeper, Adam 

Haught, to serve as captain of his vessel. The 

two men loaded the Dallas with twenty bales 

of Smith’s cotton crop and several bundles of 

cowhides before heading out on March 2. 

After four months spent negotiating the 

river with poles, oars, axes, and other 

implements, they arrived at Porter’s Bluff, 

about seventy miles south of Dallas, where 

they transferred their load to ox-drawn 

wagons for the remainder of the trip to 

Houston. Shortly thereafter, the Dallas hit a 

snag and sank. 26 

Following a Congressional order to 

survey the river in 1852, a group of army 

engineers concluded in 1853 that the Trinity 

was the deepest and least obstructed river 

in the State of Texas. But establishing it as a 

viable commercial channel continued to 

elude the citizens of Dallas. In 1867, James 

McGarvey left Galveston on his steamboat 

called Job Boat No. 1 and arrived in Dallas a 

year later on May 5, 1868. McGarvey toiled 

for much of the year clearing snags, but his 

labor was not lost on the citizens of Dallas, 

who were overcome with joy when they 

heard the first steamboat whistle ever to 

sound in Dallas. The town celebrated with a 

party and rewarded McGarvey with deeds 

to several town lots and $5,000 in cash. 

McGarvey’s accomplishment stoked the 

flames of hope that Dallas businessmen and 

citizens harbored for their river. 27 

Throughout the remainder of the 

nineteenth century, as Dallas blossomed into 

the economic center of North Texas, a 

number of efforts to navigate the Trinity, all 

led by forward-looking businessmen, would 

be launched and would ultimately fail. One 

year before the Houston & Texas Central 

Railroad (H&TC) steamed into town in 

1872, the Trinity River Navigation Company 

was founded by a group of Dallas 

businessmen. After several failed attempts at 

successfully navigating the waterway with 

boats carrying loads of cotton and other 

supplies bound for Houston and Galveston, 

the company’s efforts fizzled. 28 

However, the city experienced a 

steamboat revival of sorts in the 1890s. On 

March 8, 1893, the Trinity River Navigation 

Company purchased a steamboat called 

the H. A. Harvey, Jr. Six days later, Captain 

J. W. Rodgers piloted the steamer out of 

Galveston and arrived in Oak Cliff on 

May 20. In the ensuing years, the Harvey 

carried passengers on pleasure trips back 

and forth between Dallas and McCommas 

Bluff, some thirteen miles south on the 

river where a temporary dam had been built. 

But for years the Harvey’s maiden voyage 


from Galveston to Dallas remained an 

isolated success. 29 

Investors in the Trinity River Navigation 

Company were not alone in their efforts to 

promote the town as a waterway. By 1894, a 

local newspaper proclaimed the city “a big 

river town.” 30 After various civic leaders and 

local businessmen made repeated appeals to 

the U.S. Congress for aid in improving the 

Trinity, the federal government appropriated 

$400,000 in 1902. In 1905, Dallas citizens 

contributed $66,000 to build a dam and 

nine locks at Parsons’ Slough, twenty-five 

miles south of the city. 31 By 1909, the Trinity 

River Navigation Company had spent 

$165,000 on a range of improvements to the 

river. In the ensuing years, Congress would 

spend several million dollars more to build 

locks and dams along the river south of 

Dallas. But again, these efforts failed to 

transform the river into a viable channel for 

the transport of people and goods, and the 

onset of World War I diverted investment 

dollars and brought a temporary suspension 

to these efforts. 32 

By that time, Dallas was being serviced 

by a number of railroads carrying flour, 

cotton, and other home-grown products to 

cities throughout the country as well as to 

seaports allowing their distribution across 

the globe. It would not be long before 

commercial air transportation took off, 

relegating the river to tertiary status for 

preferred modes of transportation. 

✧ 

On May 20, 1893, the H.A. Harvey steamboat pulled into Dallas on the Trinity River after leaving Galveston on March 14. 

Owned by the Trinity River Navigation Company, the Harvey’s early success renewed citizens’ hopes of establishing Dallas 

at the head of a navigable waterway to the Gulf of Texas. 

COURTESY OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 

The tenuous relationship between Dallas 

and the Trinity River is one of the great 

ironies in the history of business in the city. 

Many businessmen who carried the 

leadership mantle for Bryan’s city into the 

1900s held out hopes of transforming 

the river into a navigable waterway. The 

recent debate over the Trinity River Corridor 

project represents only the latest chapter 

in a 168-year-old struggle between the 

citizens of Dallas and their river. While the 

city was founded on the premise that its 

prosperity depended upon harnessing the 

river’s currents, thus far Dallas has 

succeeded, instead, by taming the Trinity 

and keeping it out of the way of the city’s 

growth and development efforts. 

✧ 

In the 1890s, a steamboat called the H. A. Harvey, Jr. carried passengers on pleasure trips back and forth between Dallas 

and McCommas Bluff, thirteen miles south on the Trinity River. 


✧ 

Citizens of Dallas enjoyed picnics on the H. A. Harvey, 

Jr. steamboat during their leisurely voyages up and down 

the Trinity River. 


CHAPTER I ✧ 13

✧ 

Built in 1852 by Thomas F. Crutchfield, the Crutchfield House was the town’s first hotel. It was rebuilt after burning in 1860, only to burn again in 1888. 


CHAPTER II 

T HE R ISE OF E ARLY I NDUSTRIES, 1850-1872 

After Dallas County was formed in 1846, 

an election was held in 1850 to select the 

county seat. Dallas beat nearby Hord’s Ridge 

by a narrow margin of 244 to 216. Winning 

this election ensured the city’s preeminence 

in the county for the foreseeable future, 

spurring another influx of nearby settlers 

and emigrants from afar who would 

stimulate business in town. By 1851 the City 

of Dallas had 160 residents: 123 whites and 

37 African-American slaves. 1 

By this time, wheat farmers in the area 

were coming to Dallas to use a nearby 

gristmill. While these farmers were in town, 

they visited stores to trade goods. One Dallas 

merchant’s inventory, listed at his death in 

1850, included hoop skirts, silk stockings, 

bridal bouquets, Bibles, accordions, mustang 

liniment (used to relieve aching joints 

caused by arthritis), snakeroot (a medicinal 

herb), and castor oil—a veritable cornucopia 

compared to Bryan’s paltry offerings in the 

early days of his trading post. 2 

By 1850, Dallas was also situated along 

the trail of the major cattle drives that 

reached northward. The drives would grow 

in size through the 1870s, generating 

considerable traffic through the fledgling 

town, putting it on the maps of cattledrovers, 

merchants, and hide traders. The 

route that crossed through Dallas was 

known as the Shawnee Trail, which ran 

parallel to the more famous Chisholm Trail. 

The Shawnee Trail meandered from the 

southern and southwestern parts of the state 

through Austin and Waco to Dallas, where 

it followed Preston Trail to the Red River. 

In addition, Dallas was an important stop 

on the Great Northern mail and stage line, 

which ran from San Antonio to St. Louis. 

From Dallas, you could catch stagecoach 

connections east to Marshall and Shreveport, 

southeast to Tyler and Nacogdoches, and 

south to Houston and Galveston. 3 

Local wheat farmers began to exploit the 

area’s agricultural potential in the early 

1850s. Increased demand for vehicles that 

could transport crops from the fields to 

local mills and dry goods stores, in turn, 

gave birth to the city’s wagon manufacturing 

industry. Several wagon makers also 

produced carriages and stagecoaches to 

support citizens’ business and leisure 

transportation needs. In addition, the city 

benefited from an influx of European 

artisans and craftsmen, many of whom came 

to town after a failed attempt to establish a 

utopian society called La Reunion on the 

outskirts of Dallas. Overseeing and guiding 

the city’s growth, a handful of businessminded 

individuals played prominent roles 

in creating the necessary environment 

and infrastructure to nurture the town’s 

incipient commercial activities. Despite 

racial tensions surrounding the outbreak of 

the Civil War, business in Dallas actually 

thrived during the war and continued to 

expand during Reconstruction. 

BUSINESS- MINDED 

SETTLERS CREATE 

MINDSET, BUILD 

INFRASTRUCTURE TO 

SUPPORT GROWTH 

Even as traffic to and through Dallas 

began to pick up, the city’s commercial 

activity in the early 1850s was comprised 

almost exclusively of one-on-one transactions 

in which individuals sought to meet specific 

rudimentary needs by paying or bartering 

with service providers, artisans, craftsmen, 

or farmers. As Darwin Payne notes in Dallas: 

An Illustrated History, there were no mature 

industries at the time in which collections 

of providers competed for the mindshare 

of sophisticated business clients or savvy 

consumers. By 1850 the city had three 

dry goods stores, two grocery stores, and 

one drugstore. In addition to numerous 

outlying farmers and migrant traders, the 

city had seven lawyers, five carpenters, 

three doctors, two tailors, two blacksmiths, a 

cabinetmaker, and a stone mason. These 

providers fulfilled the basic needs of 

clothing and shelter, mending the oxen and 


horses that served as the primary modes of 

transportation, tending to the various health 

problems attendant to scratching out a 

hardscrabble existence on the prairie, and 

resolving legal disputes that invariably 

arose when a diverse collection of people 

attempted to stake out their respective 

claims in a wild, untamed land. 4 

In this stark and relatively simplistic 

business setting, several figures emerged 

who possessed the vision, tenacity, business 

acumen, and leadership instincts necessary 

to achieve personal success while improving 

the lives of others through more formal 

business and commercial endeavors. 

Alexander Cockrell, a Kentucky native, and 

his Texan wife, Sarah Horton Cockrell, were 

two such characters. Alexander Cockrell had 

come to Dallas after serving in the U.S. Army 

in the war with Mexico. There, he married 

Sarah Horton in 1847 and took a claim of 

640 acres from the Peters Colony about 

ten miles southwest of Dallas. 5 Cockrell 

had lived for a time with a Native American 

tribe, and during that experience, he 

developed resilience, resourcefulness, and 

adaptiveness that served him well in his 

entrepreneurial endeavors in the fledgling 

town. Cockrell ran two primary businesses 

in the Three Forks area. He and his wife 

raised livestock on the 640-acre claim they 

had next to Mountain Creek southwest of 

town. Cockrell also ran a freighting business 

in which his ox-drawn wagons carried 

loads of cotton, corn, and other crops grown 

by local farmers to Shreveport, Houston, 

and Jefferson, a booming East Texas town at 

the time. 6 

Cockrell’s freighting business represented 

one of the first formal ventures that linked 

Dallas’ commercial activities to other 

markets and established a means by which 

its citizens could gain access to goods 

produced elsewhere. In this sense, the 

business began to exploit the town’s greatest 

natural resource—its location—in a broader 

statewide and even regional context. Cockrell’s 

business also began to satisfy one of the city’s 

most burning impulses, which continues to 

push Dallas to greatness today—the desire 

to connect with the “outside” world. 

In an effort to treat early newcomers and 

visitors to Dallas in a hospitable manner, 

Thomas F. Crutchfield built the town’s 

first hotel, the Crutchfield House, in 1852. 

The modest two-story log cabin was located 

at the northwest corner of Main and 

Houston streets on the courthouse square. 7 

Crutchfield had previously operated the 

Dallas Tavern, a small hostelry that he 

rented from William Beeman. Guests at the 

Crutchfield House included Sam Houston, 

Thomas J. Rusk, and General Jubal A. Early. 

Meals cost twenty-five cents, and room and 

board ranged from $12.50 to $15 per 

month. The hotel burned in 1860 and was 

later rebuilt only to burn again in 1888. 8 

The same year the Crutchfield House 

opened, Alexander Cockrell sold his livestock 

and moved with his wife into the City of 

Dallas, where they began to exert their 

influence on the commercial and civic 

activities of the modest town. He bought John 

Neely Bryan’s entire holdings in town, 

including his cabin, for $7,000, though he 

allowed Bryan and his family to continue living 

in the cabin because of their friendship. One 

year later, Cockrell started a brick business. 9 

Not long after moving into town, 

Cockrell embarked on the city’s first 

significant infrastructure project, focused on 

facilitating the ingress and egress of people, 

horses, and ox-drawn wagons. He replaced 

Bryan’s slow-moving ferry service with a 

wooden bridge that spanned the Trinity 

River, connecting the “West Siders,” namely 

the residents of Hord’s Ridge, who were still 

upset at having lost the 1850 county seat 

election, with the “East Siders,” whose votes 

several years earlier had secured Dallas’ 

dominant position within the county. In 

1855, Cockrell opened the Dallas Bridge and 

Causeway. The bridge featured a tollbooth 

that enabled him to recoup his investment. 

Shortly after the bridge opened, Cockrell 

opened to the public the sawmill his 

company had built and used to construct 

the bridge, leveraging another component 

of his initial investment to generate future 

income. 10 This bridge-sawmill project 

exemplified the type of businessman 

Cockrell was, focused on equipping the 

fledgling town with the tools and resources 

it needed to grow and prosper, knowing that 

such development would, in turn, yield 

greater opportunities for him to introduce 

new ideas and expand his business interests. 

In A History of Early Dallas, Frank M. 

Cockrell, son of Alexander and Sarah Horton 

Cockrell, recalled that the new bridge “not 

only enthused the home people, but it 

spread far and near and caused a flowing 

in of architects, contractors, mechanics, 

carpenters [and] brick masons as well as 

investors.” 11 During this prolific period, 

Alexander Cockrell also found time to build 

a large Greek-revival home, develop several 

choice town sites, and begin construction on 

a three-story luxury hotel. 12 

In 1858, Alexander Cockrell was shot 

and killed by City Marshall Andrew M. Moore 

amid strange and unclear circumstances. 

While details are sketchy concerning the 

nature of the feud between Cockrell and 

✧ 

In 1855, Alexander Cockrell opened the Dallas Bridge and Causeway over the Trinity River (upper right in photo). It was 

the city’s first major infrastructure project and spurred local business development by facilitating the flow of people and 

goods across the river. (1855) 

COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 

CHAPTER II ✧ 15

Moore, one thing is certain: Dallas lost one 

of its most important pioneer businessmen 

when Cockrell’s life was cut short. 13 

In Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers 

and Progress, John Cochran, son of early 

prominent Dallas citizens William S. Cochran 

and Nancy Jane Cochran, observed that 

“wherever Alexander Cockrell lived he made 

a good and energetic citizen, working for 

the best interests of the public. He was a 

benevolent and enterprising man respected 

by all who knew him.” 14 

✧ 

Sarah Horton Cockrell (1819-1892) was one of the most 

influential early business people in Dallas. Following her 

husband’s untimely death in 1858, she opened one of the 

town’s first inns, the St. Nicholas Hotel, managed the 

city’s second commercial flour mill, Todd Mills, and 

became a successful real estate investor, owning 

approximately one-quarter of the land in downtown 

Dallas, several thousand acres in Dallas County, and 

smaller properties in Houston, Mineral Wells, 

and Cleburne. 


When he died, Alexander Cockrell left 

his wife and four children behind. (Sarah 

Horton Cockrell gave birth to their fifth 

child after his death.) But rather than cower 

from the tragedy that had befallen her family, 

Sarah Horton Cockrell boldly assumed the 

responsibility of breadwinner, diligently 

continued and expanded upon her husband’s 

work, and made a number of singular 

contributions to the commercial and civic life 

of the city that established her and her legacy 

on equal footing with her husband’s. 15 

Following her husband’s death in 1858, 

Cockrell opened one of the town’s first 

inns, the St. Nicholas Hotel, named after the 

establishment’s manager, Nicholas H. 

Darnell. When it burned in the fire that 

destroyed most of Dallas in 1860, she 

opened the Dallas Hotel, which later became 

the St. Charles. She would go on to purchase 

a 33-percent interest in the city’s second 

commercial flour mill, Todd Mills. After 

buying the remaining mill stock in 1875, 

she, her son, and her son-in-law formed 

S. H. Cockrell and Company at a time 

when flour milling was Dallas’ major 

industry. She turned her attention to real 

estate in the 1880s, and by 1892 she owned 

approximately one-quarter of downtown 

Dallas, several thousand acres in Dallas 

County, and smaller properties in Houston, 

Mineral Wells, and Cleburne. 16 

Perhaps most significant were her efforts 

to ensure the continued steady flow of 

visitors and business travelers to the city. 

Following her husband’s death, Sarah 

Horton Cockrell applied for and received 

from the state legislature a charter for the 

Dallas Bridge Company. As owner of this 

company, she led an effort that constructed 

the first iron bridge across the Trinity in 

1872 (the same year the H&TC came to 

town) after the original bridge built by her 

husband had collapsed in 1858. During that 

time, she also operated the ferry service her 

husband had started after moving into the 

city in 1852. 17 

John Cochran observed that Sarah Horton 

Cockrell was “the very embodiment of 

kindness and hospitality” who had “as much 

energy, vim, and progressive spirit as did 

her lamented husband.” He also lauded the 

unsung contributions of pioneer women to 

the development of the City of Dallas and 

Dallas County, saying that they “contributed, 

in their sphere, as much as the men to the 

physical development of the city.” 18 

BURGEONING WHEAT 

INDUSTRY HELPS 

CITY FLOURISH 

At the same time that the Cockrells were 

exerting considerable influence on the civic 

and business activities of Dallas, a number 

of incipient industries began to emerge 

in town, including wagon and carriage 

manufacturing, tanneries and saddleries, 

and a wheat market that would establish 

Dallas as one of the finest flour-producing 

cities in the country. 

As John William Rogers notes in The 

Lusty Texans of Dallas, long before Bryan 

built his log cabin, the Caddos inhabiting 

North Texas had discovered the fertility of 

the black, waxy soil in the Three Forks area. 

Over the course of hundreds of years, they 

had established themselves as expert tillers 

of the soil, growing calabash gourds, corn, 

and tobacco in and around Three Forks. It 

did not take long for the early settlers of 

Dallas to appreciate the agricultural potential 

of the Three Forks area. 19 

While John Neely Bryan is said to have 

planted corn on the courthouse square as 

the city’s first crop, Thomas Keenan and 

William Cochran were two of the earliest 

local farmers to report agricultural success in 

Dallas County. Keenan introduced peach 

seeds in the fall of 1842, believed to be the 

first peaches ever grown in the county. 

Cochran later harvested apple and cherry 

trees, which grew fairly well but were not as 

bountiful as the peach trees. Cochran and 

Keenan grew enough corn and pumpkins 

in 1843 to feed their families, sell to 

neighbors, and still retain an ample surplus 

of dried crops to help their families survive 

the winter. Cochran went on to have a 

successful wheat harvest in 1845 followed 

by a banner cotton harvest in 1846, helping 

establish the reputation of Dallas County 

as a viable agricultural area in the minds 

of other settlers. 20 While cotton would 

eventually ascend the city’s agricultural 

throne, wheat became the city’s first major 

crop, and local millers’ ability to produce 

high-quality flour from the wheat initially 

put Dallas “on the map.” 

Until the 1870s, when the railroads 

began connecting far-flung settlements to 

more established consumer markets back 

East, many pioneer communities that grew 

wheat had their own mills. Many were 

combination flour mills and sawmills, 

grinding wheat only a couple of days per 

week. 21 The first grist mills in Dallas County 

had been established by the Reverend 

William Bowles and Elder Eli Merrell in 

1845 in Farmers Branch, which was the 

most prosperous town in the Three Forks 

area until 1850 when Dallas surpassed it. 

Several years later, the Reverend James Bird 

built the first of the area’s water-powered 

mills on White Rock Creek four miles east of 

Farmers Branch. Subsequent water mills 

were established on White Rock Creek 

by men named “Mr. Clark and Captain 

Mounts,” according to John Cochran. 22 A 

number of other water mills, steam mills, 

and horse-drawn treadmills were built 

between 1848 and 1850. Most of these 

early mills charged a toll for the work, 

usually a portion of the grain. 23 In the early 

1850s, Jeremiah Sherwood of Millwood, 


Texas (in Collin County), became an agent 

for McCormick’s reapers and supplied them 

to Dallas County farmers, dramatically 

increasing their productivity. 24 

During the 1850s the north central 

prairies of Texas began proving themselves 

as “The Great Wheat Region of Texas” and 

Dallas became the state’s primary source for 

breadstuffs. By the middle of the decade, 

forty fancy Emory threshing machines were 

operating in Dallas County, each powered by 

two workhorses. Horse- and mule-powered 

mills began to appear at this time to support 

wheat milling. The Dallas Herald reported 

in 1858 that Dallas had become a milling 

center for farmers from a number of 

surrounding counties. 25 Farmers would 

come to Dallas from as far away as sixty 

miles to have their wheat ground into 

flour, which was bolted by hand. Dallas 

flour quickly earned a reputation for its 

superior quality and was preferred to other 

flour grown in the western United States. 26 

By the end of the decade, Dallas-made 

flour was being hauled by ox-team freighters 

to many of the older settlements to the east 

and south, and wagon trains began coming 

from as far away as northern Mexico to get 

it. 27 In 1859 the Dallas Herald reported that 

a train of ox-drawn carts driven by Mexicans 

arrived in Dallas from Brownsville to obtain 

flour. By 1860, Dallas was providing flour to 

a large section of northern Mexico. 28 

But even with the expanded flour market, 

Dallas County wheat farmers didn’t find it 

profitable to work their wheat lands to onetenth 

their capacity. Because there was no 

mode of transportation that could haul their 

crops quickly and inexpensively to distant 

markets, farmers’ grain crops were typically 

only 12- to 14-acre operations, well short 

of what they were capable of producing 

if they had had sufficient means of wider 

distribution. In general, the lack of a 

transportation system supporting the mass 

export of goods and crops hindered Dallas’ 

economic development until the railroads 

arrived in 1872. Many farmers who moved to 

the Three Forks area in Dallas’ early years 

discovered that greater wealth at that time lay 

in raising cattle, horses, and razorback hogs. 29 

Dallas wheat farmers looking to export 

their crops in the 1850s and 1860s would 

grind their wheat into flour and then haul 

the loads of flour in ox-drawn wagons to 

Jefferson in East Texas, where they bought 

or bartered for pine lumber. Once the 

Dallas-area wheat farmers had their lumber 

in tow, they would return to Dallas and 

use the lumber for their own construction 

projects, or they would re-sell it to other 

Dallas residents. This was a time- and 

labor-intensive process to get value for 

their flour, as the 330-mile roundtrip from 

Dallas to Jefferson took between three and 

four weeks. 30 

Before the arrival of the railroads, 

Dallas-area farmers could grow, harvest, and 

sell wheat more profitably than cotton. 

Cotton had to be ginned and exported in 

large amounts to be profitable, and Dallas 

had neither the gins nor the adequate 

transportation to export the crop in large 

quantities until the arrival of the railroads in 

1872. So wheat lorded over cotton as Dallas’ 

king crop during the first three decades of 

the city’s existence, and Dallas County 

became the heartland of Texas’ wheat region. 31 

Even as cotton began to surpass wheat as 

the city’s dominant crop in the late 1880s, 

Dallas’ flour industry continued to flourish 

throughout the 19th century and into the 

20th century. After Sarah Horton Cockrell 

and her son, Frank, took control of Todd 

Mills in 1875, it became the largest and 

most important of the city’s early mercantile 

flour mills. Located at the corner of 

Broadway and Pacific, the operation bought 

raw wheat from local farmers and ground 

it into flour using a widely advertised 

full-centrifugal system before shipping it 

by rail to St. Louis and Kansas. By 1877, 

Dallas County was shipping almost $3 

million of flour a year to St. Louis and 

Kansas. The $2.75 million earned by Dallasarea 

flour mills that year exceeded by 

$300,000 the value of the State of Texas’ 

entire output in 1870. This explosion in 

productivity shows the city’s pent-up 

capacity to produce flour that was finally 

unleashed when the railroads began offering 

a means by which to export wheat products 

to larger consumer markets. 32 

WAGONS AND CARRIAGES 

MEET EARLY NEEDS 

FOR TRANSPORTATION 

✧ 

Todd Mills was Dallas’ second commercial flour mill at a time when flour milling was the city’s major industry (c. 1890). 

(Dallas Rediscovered: A Photographic Chronicle of Urban Expansion 1870-1925) 

COURTESY OF HAMILTON’S HISTORIC DALLAS/BRAD HAMILTON. 

In 1845 the National Central Highway, 

which ran from South Central Texas to the 

Red River by way of the Three Forks area, 

began to take shape after its initial survey 

six years earlier. This spurred an influx of 

settlers from states north and east of Texas. 

By that time, Dallas-area farmers were 

loading their produce on ox-drawn wagons 

and heading east to Jefferson or Shreveport, 

where their goods could be taken by 

steamboat to more distant markets. Most of 

the town’s early merchandise arrived on 

wagons by way of another highway running 

southeast to Houston, a roundtrip of four 

weeks. This route was also the primary 

channel by which Dallas cotton was 

transported for export before the railroads 

arrived in 1872. 33 CHAPTER II ✧ 17

As more and more settlers arrived, 

boosting the city’s population and 

commercial activities, the demand for 

carriages and wagons exploded. In 1852, 

Maxime Guillot, a French carriagemaker, 

settled in Dallas. Guillot had originally 

departed New Orleans for the California 

gold rush. After stopping at Fort Belknap in 

Young County, Guillot had begun repairing 

wagons for the U.S. Army. There, he caught 

wind of Dallas’ growth, moved to the city, 

and opened a shop at the northeast corner 

of Elm and Houston streets to manufacture 

wagons and carriages. By 1854, the demand 

for his products was so great, and the 

potential for future growth so promising, 

that Guillot returned to France long enough 

to recruit four skilled carriagemakers to 

return with him to the United States and 

work for his company in Dallas .34 

Guillot’s shop was the city’s first real 

factory, producing a range of products from 

elaborately designed carriages lined with 

imported French damask to plain buckboards 

for prairie travel. Having earned a strong 

reputation for the quality, craftsmanship, 

and style of its products, Guillot’s company 

attracted a long list of famous customers, 

including F. R. Lubbock, Governor of Texas 

from 1861 to 1863, and John H. Reagan, 

a politician from Texas who served as 

Postmaster General of the Confederacy. 

During the Civil War, Guillot stopped 

manufacturing carriages to serve as 

superintendent of a small-arms factory for 

the Confederate Army at Lancaster, Texas. 

He continued making carriages after the war 

and by the time he retired in 1869, his 

business was serving customers within a 350- 

mile radius of the city. Guillot is reported to 

have exhausted the small fortune he earned 

as a carriagemaker in financing subsequent 

searches for Jean Lafitte’s buried treasure. 35 

INFLUX OF EUROPEAN 

CRAFTSMEN AND 

ARTISANS ENRICHES 

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT 

The majority of settlers flowing across 

the Red River into Texas around 1850 were 

from Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, 

Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia. But Dallas’ 

business environment also received an 

important injection of international blood 

early on thanks to a failed utopian settlement 

called La Reunion just west of town. 

Victor Considerant, a native of France, 

established La Reunion in April 1855. (More 

than a century later, in 1980, the city named 

its new indoor professional sports facility 

“Reunion Arena” after this early society.) 

Considerant and about 200 French, Belgian, 

and Swiss natives—equal to roughly half 

the total population of Dallas at the time— 

settled on a 200-acre plot of land about three 

miles west of the city overlooking the 

“valley” of the West Fork of the Trinity. 36 

✧ 

Julien Reverchon, son of one of the La Reunion settlers, 

became an accomplished botanist and professor at Baylor 

University College of Medicine. 


Considerant and his colleagues were 

students of Charles Fourier’s socialistic 

utopian movement. A French social theorist 

and philosopher, Fourier inspired the 

founding of several utopian societies in the 

United States during this time period. La 

Reunion was based on a simplistic agrarian 

model in which residents participated in 

communal farming—even though the 

group comprised artisans, musicians, tailors, 

watchmakers, and stonemasons who had 

not earned their living as farmers back in 

their native countries. 37 Unbeknownst to 

the peace-loving, well-meaning European 

“colonists,” the same bed of limestone that 

made for easy crossing at Three Forks 

extended west from that point just below 

the surface of the land they had settled on, 

rendering farming there virtually impossible. 

Amid the mounting frustration from their 

early agricultural failures, a harsh winter 

in 1856 dealt a severe blow to the spirit 

and resolve of the La Reunion colonists. By 

1858, the colonists had abandoned their 

social experiment. 38 

Many of the European settlers from the 

failed community moved to East Dallas 

around that time and began plying their 

old-world trades to the benefit of the city. 

A.J. Gouffe opened a tailor shop that 

achieved some local acclaim. 39 M. Monduel 

opened the city’s first brewery in the late 

1850s. 40 Benjamin Long served as Mayor of 

Dallas from 1868 to 1870, and again from 

1872 to 1874. Julien Reverchon and his 

father established a farm where he began 

studying Texas plants. Reverchon went on to 

discover 12 new species of plants in Dallas 

County and became a professor of botany at 

Baylor University College of Medicine. 

Reverchon Park, located just north of 

downtown and east of the Dallas North 

Tollway, was named in his honor. 41 In the 

late 1880s, former La Reunion member 

Emil Remond began experimenting with 

the white rock lying along the western 

edge of the Trinity River, which led to the 

establishment of a cement plant in 1901 

and another in 1907. Remond’s foray into 

cement not only helped support the city’s 

commercial and residential development in 

the early 1900s but also foretold Dallas’ 

evolution into a prolific cement-producing 

city. (By 1940, Dallas was producing more 

than 3 million barrels of cement annually.) 42 

Transplanted members of La Reunion also 

included mechanics, spinners, weavers, 

and expert fruit growers who proved that 

apricots, grapes, cherries, peaches, and 

plums could be raised profitably in Dallas 

and its surrounding areas. 43 

Not long after the La Reunion colonists 

moved to East Dallas, they were joined 

by a number of German, Italian, Austro- 

Hungarian, and Greek families who moved 

there for the mutual support and common 

backgrounds of fellow European immigrants. 

It did not take long for them to start 

making positive contributions to the artistic, 

intellectual, and commercial activities of the 

burgeoning city, which named Swiss Avenue 

in honor of the La Reunion transplants. 44 

FIRE OF 1860 

AND CIVIL WAR 

SPUR BUSINESS, 

FUEL RACIAL TENSIONS 

By 1860 the City of Dallas had a 

population of 775, comprising 678 whites 

and 97 African-American slaves. Dallas 

County, meanwhile, had 8,775 residents, 

including 7,701 whites and 1,074 African- 

American slaves. Most of the slaves at 

that time worked on large wheat and 

cotton farms or as house servants for 

affluent landholders. 45 


Approximately 60 percent of Dallas 

County’s white residents in 1860 were 

farmers, with modest holdings and no slaves. 

Another 23 percent were small producers, 

merchants, craftsmen (saddlemakers, grocers, 

blacksmiths, and millers), and professionals 

(lawyers, physicians, and teachers). The 

remaining 17 percent of the working 

population were wage laborers such as farm 

workers, handymen, and well diggers. As 

Michael Phillips notes in White Metropolis: 

Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841- 

2001, with 77 percent of white adult workers 

being either farmers or wage laborers, the 

majority of the local population was not 

keen on the notion of emancipation. Many 

among the county’s working class felt 

threatened by the idea of a liberated group of 

African-American laborers competing with 

them for work. 46 

Two tragedies during the 1860s—a 

devastating fire on Dallas’ courthouse square 

and the Civil War—had significant impacts 

on the city’s business landscape and fueled 

racial tensions. While these two events 

ultimately improved the quality of life and 

business prospects for whites in Dallas, they 

did little to improve the living and working 

conditions of African Americans. 

On Sunday afternoon, July 8, 1860, a 

fire erupted on the east side of Dallas’ 

courthouse square. Fueled by chemicals in a 

nearby drugstore, the fire spread quickly. 

Within two hours, it had inflicted $400,000 

worth of losses, only $10,000 of which were 

insured. Some twenty-five establishments 

were destroyed, including every building on 

the west and north sides of the square, and 

half of the structures on the east side. 47 Lost 

in the conflagration were several dry goods 

stores, law offices, grocery stores, the 

Crutchfield House, the St. Nicholas Hotel, 

the Dallas Herald operations, and the post 

office. Publisher John W. Swindells, attorney 

Warren Stone, and businesswoman Sarah 

Cockrell lost fortunes in the fire. 48 While 

no lives were lost, the fire temporarily 

brought local businesses to a standstill. Later 

that afternoon, fires broke out in Denton, 

Pilot Point, Milford, Honey Grove, Black 

Jack Grove, Millwood, Jefferson, and Austin. 

Abolitionists were widely suspected of 

having started the fires as part of an 

insurrection movement to free slaves. 49 

In Dallas a 52-man Committee of Vigilance 

was formed, and suspicions about the fire’s 

origins quickly turned to slaves and abolition 

supporters. The committee whipped nearly 

100 African-American slaves as part of the 

investigation to extract confessions. Three 

slaves—Patrick Jennings, Sam Smith, 

and another named Cato—were identified 

as ringleaders of the alleged insurrection. In 

an effort to deter future uprisings, the 

committee decided to round up and whip 

every slave in the county .50 On July 24, two 

weeks after the fire had erupted, Jennings, 

Smith, and Cato were hanged. In addition, 

two white Iowa preachers who were believed 

to have helped organize the insurrection 

were publicly whipped and banished from 

Dallas County. 51 

The Dallas Herald explained later it was 

probably an accidental fire caused by a 

workman’s match cast carelessly into a 

rubbish heap outside the W. W. Peak 

and Brothers drugstore. But this rational 

explanation was lost on the citizens of 

Dallas. Even as the city, its residents, and its 

businesses began to rebuild, whites harbored 

greater disdain for African Americans, whom 

they believed had been responsible for the 

damage. 52 The fire and subsequent executions 

of the three slaves primed the local 

population for the impending vote to secede 

from the Union and the war that would pit 

North against South over the issue of slavery. 

Within three months of the fire, the city’s 

rebuilding efforts were in full swing. The 

Dallas Herald reported that “the sound of 

hammers is heard from morn till night, and 

scores of industrious, active and competent 

mechanics are busy in forwarding on the 

work.” Many of the new structures being 

built around the courthouse square were 

✧ 

made of brick—evidence that the town had 

learned painful but valuable lessons from 

the fire. 53 

Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln 

was elected President of the United States on 

November 6, 1860, four months after the 

fire in Dallas. (He was sworn in on March 4, 

1861.) With the embers of anti-abolitionism 

still smoldering in their hearts, Dallas 

citizens voted on Texas’ secession from the 

Union in February 1861. The city’s vote to 

secede won by a margin of 741 to 237. Texas 

followed the lead of six other Deep South 

cotton states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, 

Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. 

By the end of May, Arkansas, North Carolina, 

Tennessee, and Virginia had also declared 

their plans to secede. Confederate recruiters 

came to Dallas in June 1861 to begin 

enlisting soldiers. Of the more than 8,700 

people who lived in Dallas County at the 

time, some 1,300 men signed up to serve in 

the Confederate Army, including John Neely 

Bryan, who was 51 years old at the time. 54 

By the time the Civil War started on 

April 12, 1861, a number of new or rebuilt 

businesses had cropped up around Dallas’ 

courthouse square. These structures included 

two hotels, two exchange offices, seven 

mercantile houses, two brickyards, two 

blacksmith houses, Maxime Guillot’s carriage 

factory, a jeweler, an insurance company, 

two saddler shops, two mechanic shops, 

two saloons, a barber shop, a tinner, a 

cabinetmaker, a milliner, a steam-powered 

Originally erected in City Park in 1897 (pictured here) but later relocated in 1961 to make room for R.L. Thornton Freeway, 

the Confederate Monument commemorated local soldiers who fought in the Civil War. A number of Dallas businesses 

benefited from the war between the states, providing goods to the Confederate Army’s general quartermasters and 

commissary headquarters established in town. 


CHAPTER II ✧ 19

sawmill, the Dallas Herald newspaper office, 

and a printing office. 55 

By that time Dallas County was considered 

the center of the food-producing counties 

in Texas because its residents had made 

significant strides in growing wheat, corn, 

and forage while raising livestock and 

producing flour. Recognizing the significant 

value of the town’s agricultural activities, 

the Confederate government established a 

general quartermasters and commissary 

headquarters in Dallas for the collection of 

foods such as corn, wheat, oats, and meats, 

as well as various supplies for the army of 

the Trans-Mississippi Department. 56 As part 

of this effort, the government also built a 

number of facilities in Dallas to house army 

and associated staff as well as to warehouse 

food supplies and munitions. 57 

Many counties in Texas suffered 

economically during the Civil War. But 

while the general population of Dallas was 

subjected to rationing and a shortage of 

certain foods and manufactured items 

throughout the conflict, a number of the 

town’s businesses benefited from the war 

effort. One of these was Sarah Cockrell’s 

ferryboat service, which enjoyed a significant 

increase in business carrying Confederate 

troops and supplies back and forth across 

the Trinity. In one 13-month period alone, 

Cockrell’s business earned more than $1,500 

from this war-related service. The same 

soldiers and military staff being transported 

by Cockrell’s ferry purchased riding gear and 

supplies from local saddleries and tanneries, 

and regularly partook in the spirits served 

up by local saloons. 58 

On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was 

assassinated—only five days after Robert E. 

Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at 

Appomattox Court House. In the ensuing 

weeks, President Andrew Johnson urged 

citizens and towns to cooperate and support 

plans to reconstruct the South. The Dallas 

Herald and most citizens supported the call 

for cooperation. To promote Dallas as a great 

place to establish new beginnings after the 

war, John W. Swindells, editor of the Dallas 

Herald, published lavish descriptions of the 

fertile soil and economic potential the city 

had to offer. 59 

A number of Confederate officers and 

their families who had been stationed in 

Dallas during the war and had experienced 

firsthand the city’s burgeoning commercial 

activity decided to stay in town after the war. 

Other Southerners who had lost fortunes as 

a result of the war viewed Dallas as a place 

where they could start life anew. Even those 

soldiers who left Dallas and returned to their 

homes throughout the South sang the city’s 

praises, which spurred additional visitors 

and settlers to the area. 60 

Dallas also experienced a massive influx 

of farmers from 1865 to 1870, as a large 

number of Southern cotton farmers who 

believed they could no longer grow cotton 

without slave labor moved to the Dallas area 

to grow wheat instead. In addition, the city 

benefited from an insurgence of merchants, 

lawyers, entrepreneurs, and other professionals 

who—having supported these farmers’ 

cotton businesses throughout the South— 

decided to follow them to Dallas. As a result, 

the city’s population grew from 775 in 1860 

to almost 3,000 by 1870, while the county’s 

population expanded during that same time 

from 8,775 to more than 13,000. Settlers 

coming to Dallas throughout the decade 

hailed primarily from Alabama, Arkansas, 

Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, 

and Tennessee. 61 

Following the Civil War, members of the 

white working class in Dallas County, who 

had competed to some extent with slave 

labor before the war, were outraged by the 

emancipation of slaves. And they channeled 

this rage through violent acts against 

freed slaves. 62 Amid this climate of hatred, 

resentment, and exclusion, job opportunities 

for African Americans in Dallas were limited. 

Most could find work only as home servants, 

porters, or sharecroppers. Dallas’ estimated 

300 former slaves began to settle in the 

vicinity of a rural Negro cemetery near 

where Central Expressway and Lemmon 

Avenue intersect today. The cemetery had 

been established in 1861 and was the 

only symbol of African-American identity 

in the city at the time. 63 It was there that 

North Dallas Freedmantown began to take 

shape around Hall, State, Thomas, and 

Washington streets. This neighborhood 

became home to the African-American laborers 

and porters who worked downtown, the 

sharecroppers who worked in the cotton 

fields in East Dallas and North Dallas, and 

the servants who worked for wealthy whites 

in the mansions on Thomas Street. Amid the 

sparse job opportunities and grim living 

conditions that African Americans experienced 

after the war, a few managed to buy their 

own property, develop business skills, and 

elevate their circumstances to some degree. 64 

One such person was “Aunt” Hopie 

Thompson, a freed slave who earned her 

living in Dallas by washing the clothes of 

early Dallasites. In 1868 she found property 

at the corner of Live Oak and Elm streets on 

which she wanted to build her dream home. 

Thompson went to Captain William Henry 

(W. H.) Gaston, one of her customers, to ask 

him for a loan to help buy the $50 property. 

He agreed to loan her the money and said 

she could pay it back by washing clothes. 

Twenty years later, Thompson’s property 

value had increased to $25,000. When she 

originally purchased the property, it had 

been located in a densely wooded area. But 

by 1888, it was in the heart of a burgeoning 

city and was representative of the progress 

Dallas had made since its founding almost 

five decades earlier. 65 But Thompson’s story 

was the exception for freed slaves in Dallas, 

who lived and toiled with little opportunity 

to improve their circumstances. 

The dramatic increase in agricultural and 

other business activities in Dallas following 

the war attracted an influx of investment 

dollars. To meet the growing banking 

demands, W. H. Gaston and Aaron Camp 

opened Dallas’ first bank, Gaston and Camp, 

in January 1868. The bank served a growing 

number of individuals who had begun to 

amass personal wealth during Reconstruction 

as well as the emerging businesses that 

sought to meet the needs of the city’s 

growing population. Gaston later converted 

the bank into City National Bank, which was 

a predecessor to First National Bank. 66 

As much as Dallas’ population and 

commercial activities had grown by 1870, 

the city’s transportation infrastructure 

was still woefully lacking. The stagecoach 

remained the only commercial means by 

which individuals could travel to and 

from Dallas. Under optimal conditions, the 

stagecoach could achieve speeds of five to 

eight miles per hour. Poor weather conditions 

could make some trails unpassable. A 

handful of freighting services using ox-drawn 

wagons, like the one Alexander Cockrell had 

started in the 1850s, were still the only 

mode by which farmers could export their 

crops and store owners could import 

goods. 67 As a result, the city’s merchants and 

farmers continued to operate at a severe 

disadvantage. Without navigable waterways 

or railroads, they lacked the means for the 

mass distribution of goods. For many of the 

area’s farmers, particularly those raising 

cotton, faster and more economical modes of 

transportation were absolutely essential to 

compete with other farmers around the 

country. As fate would have it, a concerted 

effort to attract the railroads, led by a group 

of prominent businessmen, was about to bear 

fruit. Dallas—and its business environment— 

would never be the same again. 


✧ 

Predecessor to the famous Old Red Courthouse, the fifth Dallas County Courthouse stood from 1871 to 1879. A mule-drawn streetcar carried visitors on the mile-long trek from the H&TC 

depot along Main Street to the courthouse square. 


CHAPTER III 

R AILROADS T RANSFORM D ALLAS INTO B ONAFIDE B OOMTOWN O VERNIGHT, 1872-1900 

In his famous work, Business Cycles: A 

Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis 

of the Capitalist Process, economist Joseph 

Schumpeter writes, “A railroad through 

new country, i.e., country not yet served by 

railroads, as soon as it gets into working 

order upsets all conditions of location, all 

cost calculations, all production functions 

within its radius of influence; and hardly 

any ‘ways of doing things’ which have 

been optimal before remain so afterward.” 1 

Schumpeter’s assessment of the profound 

impact a railroad has on a city’s social, 

spatial, and economic spheres aptly 

describes the dramatic transformation 

Dallas underwent following the arrival 

of the Houston & Texas Central Railroad 

(H&TC) and Texas & Pacific Railway 

(T&P) in the early 1870s. The events 

surrounding the arrival of the two railroads 

illustrate well the vital role that Dallas 

businessmen have repeatedly played in 

ensuring the town’s commercial success 

and progress. 

In 1848 the Galveston & Red River 

Railroad had been incorporated with a 

charter to construct a track running north 

from Galveston Bay to the Red River. By the 

1850s, the railroad was a regular topic in the 

local newspaper. On one occasion, the editor 

of the Dallas Herald, Dr. Charles R. Pryor, 

wrote, “While our granaries are teeming with 

the wealth of the finest soil in the Union, 

they remain land-locked and their treasures 

literally rotting from the want of consumers, 

and the proper mode of transportation.” 2 

Comments like this one planted the idea of 

attracting the railroads in the minds of Dallas 

citizens, and their focus on achieving this goal 

steadily increased for the next two decades. 

In 1858 the name of the Galveston & Red 

River Railroad was changed to the Houston 

& Texas Central Railroad (H&TC). Only two 

miles of track had been laid north of 

Galveston by that time. By 1860, the tracks 

had reached the town of Millican, about 

eighty miles north of Houston. But the Civil 

War brought all construction to a halt. By 

the end of the war, the company that owned 

the railroad was in dire financial condition, 

so it sold the franchise and property at a 

sheriff’s auction. 3 

In 1865 the Texas legislature passed a law 

declaring that all railroads in the state would 

receive sixteen sections of land for every 

mile of track completed. Thus the H&TC 

was granted 4,764,160 acres of land. The 

legislature also authorized a loan to railroads 

making them eligible for $6,000 from the 

state general school fund for every mile of 

track completed. The H&TC received a loan 

of $450,000 from this fund. 4 

One year later, John Neely Bryan 

presided over a public meeting in Dallas 

to discuss the idea of attracting the railroads 

to town. Among those business leaders 

in attendance was Captain W. H. Gaston. 

Gaston would later lead the formal effort 

that secured the H&TC, which included 

giving an inducement of $5,000 in cash and 

granting a right of way through one of his 

properties in town. 5 

CHAPTER III ✧ 21

✧ 

The Houston & Texas Central Railroad pulled into Dallas for the first time on July 16, 1872, ushering in an unprecedented 

era of economic expansion and business growth. 


A few dissenters at the meeting expressed 

concern that attracting the railroads would 

destroy stagecoach routes and ox-wagon 

trails, but these were overpowered by 

widespread support for the idea. Many 

Dallasites were already experiencing 

firsthand the transportation revolution 

that was sweeping across the country. 

Increasingly, more and more goods— 

formerly shipped through Jefferson or New 

Orleans via steamboat or flatboat—were 

arriving via train as the H&TC inched 

farther north from Houston. At the same 

time, talk was spreading about a southern 

transcontinental railroad that would make 

its way from East Texas to Southern 

California. The citizens of Dallas knew they 

would have to harness the full resources of 

the city to successfully compete against a 

number of other North Texas towns 

interested in courting the railroads. 6 

In 1870, H&TC officials proposed a route 

through North Texas that would miss 

Dallas by about eight miles. After city 

representatives conferred with railroad 

officials to determine what the city could do 

to attract the railroad, Dallas citizens voted 

by a count of 167 to 11 to empower city 

officials to offer “inducements” to sweeten 

the deal. These inducements included 115 

acres of land for the depot grounds, a free 

right of way through the city (where Central 

Expressway now runs), and $5,000 in cash. 

Gaston gave the land for the H&TC right of 

way to help secure the railroad. 7 

On July 16, 1872, the first wood-burning 

locomotive of the H&TC pulled into the 

new small-frame depot located about a mile 

east of the courthouse square. The train had 

just completed a 15-hour trip from Houston, 

its engine hauling eight freight cars and 

a single passenger car occupied by a variety 

of VIPs. 8 Though the city only had about 

3,000 residents at the time, more than 5,000 

people, many of whom had never seen a 

train, turned out to greet the H&TC at 

the depot. Colonel John Henry Brown— 

pioneer historian, newspaper editor, and 

state legislator—served as the master of 

ceremonies and chief orator. John Neely 

Bryan was seated on the speakers’ platform 

in honor of his efforts to found the town and 

help attract the railroad. 9 

In preparation for the arrival of the 

H&TC, prisoners from a local jail had 

volunteered to work overtime on the previous 

Sunday to ensure the tracks would be 

completed and ready for the first train’s 

arrival, evidence of how the entire population 

was caught up in the historic moment. 10 In 

addition, Dallas had raised over $10,000 

in gold (primarily by sale of stock through 

Gaston’s bank) to build the Dallas City 

Railway Company—a mule-drawn streetcar 

line that carried visitors over the mile-long 

trek from the H&TC depot along Main Street 

to the courthouse square. 11 In the ensuing 

years, fatal accidents on the H&TC track 

were numerous, so much so that it earned 

the infamous moniker of “angel maker,” 

which was used almost through the end of 

the century. The H&TC would eventually 

extend to Denison, where it connected with 

the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, 

giving Dallas rail service to St. Louis and 

other key points to the north and east. 12 

The arrival of the railroads caused 

the prices of certain transportation and 

distribution services to plummet literally 

overnight. Before the H&TC arrived, shipping 

freight from Dallas to Houston by slowmoving 

ox-drawn wagons cost as much as 

$6 per 100 pounds with an average load of 

6,000 pounds requiring five or six yokes of 

oxen. 13 Following the arrival of the H&TC, 

✧ 

E. M. Kahn & Co., one of the city’s earliest clothing retailers founded by terminus merchants, displayed window exhibits like 

this one to entice passers-by. 


✧ 

Huey & Philp Hardware was one of the city’s early 

retail icons. 



the cost of freight was cut by more 

than fifty percent. Meanwhile, the cost of 

passenger travel, which had been offered by 

stagecoaches at ten cents a mile after the 

Civil War, dropped to five cents a mile. 14 

RISE OF RETAIL 

SPURRED BY ARRIVAL OF 

TERMINUS MERCHANTS 

The H&TC brought with it an influx of 

business-minded men known as “terminus 

merchants.” These merchants had followed 

the H&TC up the line from Houston. Every 

time construction of the tracks reached a 

town, the merchants would temporarily set 

up shop there to sell a variety of goods. 

Wielding money and influence enough to 

literally build cities, the terminus merchants 

arrived in droves, propelling the city’s 

population from about 3,000 in January 

1872 to more than 7,000 by September that 

year. 15 When many of these merchants and 

pack-peddlers heard rumors that the westmoving 

T&P was destined to make Dallas a 

crossroads town, they promptly purchased 

seventy lots on Elm Street to set up shop 

permanently. These early retail shops 

included such household names as Sanger 

Brothers (dry goods and department store), 

E. M. Kahn (clothier), Huey & Philp 

(hardware), The Schoellkopf Company 

(hides and leather), and Linz Brothers 

(jewelry), and their owners formed the 

nucleus of the town’s merchant population 

for many years to come. 16 By the mid-1870s, 

these merchants and other prominent 

businessmen formed the Dallas Board of 

Trade with the stated goal of making Dallas 

the pre-eminent city in the Southwest. 17 

As William McDonald notes in Dallas 

Rediscovered: A Photographic Chronicle of 

Urban Expansion 1870-1925, the Sanger 

brothers saw in Dallas an opportunity to 

transition from terminus merchants to 

permanent merchants by setting down roots 

in the burgeoning town. Lehman, Samuel, 

Philip, Isaac, and Alex Sanger had moved 

with their parents from the tiny town of 

Obernbreit in German Bavaria to the United 

States in 1856. The brothers hustled a 

number of different jobs in Connecticut and 

New York until finally settling in retail 

merchandising, one of the few professions in 

the United States open to Jews at that time. 

In 1857, Isaac accepted an offer from Jacob 

Brown to become a partner in a wholesale 

clothing firm in McKinney, Texas. One year 

later, Lehman joined the firm, and they 

moved the business to Weatherford, Texas. 18 

In 1865, Lehman established a store in 

Millican, located about 80 miles northwest 

of Houston, at what was then the northern 

terminus of the H&TC. Philip, Samuel, and 

Alex arrived several months later, and they 

joined the band of terminus merchants who 

followed the railroad construction to open 

shops and sell goods to workers and settlers 

at the farthest points along the tracks. The 

Sanger brothers followed the progress of 

the H&TC northward, establishing stores 

in Bryan, Hearne, Calvert, Bremond, Kasse, 

Groesbeck, Corsicana, Waco, and finally Dallas 

in 1872. 19 

Rather than continuing to chase trains, 

the Sanger brothers began to develop a plan 

for a retail operation that would serve 

and grow with the community. They set up 

shop initially in a two-story brick building 

on Main Street across from the courthouse, 

selling plows, dress goods, notions, and 

groceries. From that humble beginning, 

they dedicated themselves, their ideas, and 

their resources to creating a one-of-a-kind 

store that would help Dallas gain acclaim 

throughout the Southwest. 20 

One of the first steps the Sanger brothers 

took was to departmentalize the store. Isaac 

was the company’s first buyer, procuring 

goods initially from Galveston but later from 

New York City. Lehman and Samuel assumed 

operations for the Waco store. Alex oversaw 

operations at the Dallas store, while Philip 

managed advertising and public relations. 21 

By 1875, Sanger Brothers had established 

a strong reputation throughout the city. 

The city directory that year notes that the 

enterprise “began on nothing, but by fair 

dealings, clear judgments, and patient labors, 

along with great taste and symmetry in 

arrangement and display, attained the very 

summit of ambition and the most liberal 

patronage enjoyed by any house in the city.” 22 

From its initial store on the courthouse 

square, Sanger Brothers would expand into a 

✧ 

By the mid-1890s, Sanger Brothers Dry Goods was generating more than $3 million through its Dallas store on Elm Street. 


✧ 

The Sanger Bros. monthly magazine was one of the 

innovative ways the company advertised products and 

differentiated itself from the competition. 


CHAPTER III ✧ 23

series of buildings occupying an entire 

city block bound by Elm, Austin, Main, 

and Lamar streets. By the mid-1890s, the 

company had become the Southwest’s 

equivalent of Marshall Fields in Chicago, 

known for innovation in retailing 

approaches, merchandising, advertising, 

employee relations, and public service. 23 

The practice of “drumming” was one of 

Sanger Brothers’ earliest innovations. Carrying 

samples of their goods, Sanger Brothers 

salesmen would call on outlying retailers 

rather than wait for customers to come 

into town. These salesmen were called 

“drummers,” as they drummed up business. 

Many of the drummers drove teams of 

mules attached to a spring wagon loaded 

with samples. Two spare mules were often 

hitched to the back of the wagon. When 

both teams of mules became exhausted, the 

drummer returned to headquarters with his 

orders, changed out the mules, and headed 

back out to take more orders. 24 

It wasn’t long before other Dallas retailers 

began emulating Sanger Brothers’ practice of 

drumming up business. By 1880, the city 

directory listed 300 commercial drummers 

working in Dallas. Five years later, there 

were 875 traveling men working out of the 

city, whose wholesale trade had reached 

more than $18 million in annual revenue by 

that time. The city’s wholesale trade would 

reach $54 million in 1900, $85 million in 

1905, and $125 million in 1910. 25 

While all of the Sanger brothers played 

key roles in growing their company and the 

retail and wholesale industries in Dallas, 

Alex exerted the greatest impact on civic 

life in town. In 1872 he helped organize the 

first synagogue in Dallas, and his Hebrew 

Benevolent Association grew to become 

Temple Emanu-El. He played a key role in 

luring the T&P to town, serving as chairman 

✧ 

✧ 

The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad (Katy) was one of several railroads in Dallas that had its own depot in the 1880s. 


of the finance committee that raised funds 

by a bond issue to seal the deal. In addition, 

he served as city alderman from 1873 to 

1874, supported the State Fair of Texas as a 

director from 1886 to 1925 and as president 

in 1894, and was a charter member of the 

Dallas Chamber of Commerce. He and his 

wife, Fannie Fechenbach Sanger, had one 

son, Elihu (Eli), who later became a vice 

president of Sanger Brothers. 26 

DALLAS BECOMES FIRST 

CROSSROADS TOWN 

IN SOUTHWEST 

Even as the town’s residents were 

preparing to celebrate the arrival of the 

H&TC, the city’s business and civic leaders 

were working behind the scenes to secure a 

second railroad coup in one year. While 

many cities would have been content to rest 

on their laurels from the H&TC victory, 

Dallas’ leaders saw that milestone as merely 

the first step in a two-phased knockout punch 

Southland Cotton Oil was one of the many companies that established operations in Dallas along the railroad tracks after 

the H&TC and T&P arrived in the early 1870s. 


that could elevate the city to pre-eminence 

as the first crossroads town in the Southwest. 

The effort to recruit the westbound T&P 

featured a unique combination of cunning 

and cash. And again, the success of the effort 

depended upon business leaders such as 

Alex Sanger and W. H. Gaston, who wielded 

their business acumen and financial clout to 

make it happen. 27 

The T&P represented a merger between 

two railroads: the Vicksburg & El Paso 

Railroad, started in 1852 and often called 

the Texas Western, and the Memphis, El 

Paso & Pacific Railroad, which began in 

1853. On March 3, 1871, Congress granted 

a charter to the Texas Pacific Railway Company 

(later Texas & Pacific Railway Company) 

to construct a southern transcontinental 

railroad from Marshall in East Texas to 

San Diego, California. 28 Originally planned to 

follow the 32nd parallel, the transcontinental 

line would have passed some 50 miles to the 

south of Dallas. A subsequent legislative act 

rerouted it to extend west from Tyler to the 

Brazos River, which still would have missed 

Dallas by about eight miles. But the city’s 

residents and business leaders were intent 

on the T&P passing through their town and 

intersecting with the H&TC. 29 

Gaston, Sanger, and their colleagues 

convinced State Representative John W. Lane 

(mayor of the city for a brief time in 1866 

and co-publisher of the Dallas Herald with 

John W. Swindells) to attach a “silent” rider 

to a bill granting right of way land to the 

T&P. The rider called for the tracks to pass 

within a mile of Browder Springs, which 

was located in Dallas between South Ervay, 

Pocahontas, Gano, and Park Avenue, and was 

the source of the city’s first public water 

supply. When T&P officials realized they 


had been duped, they demanded that the 

city ante up $200,000 in bonds and $5,000 

in cash to finance construction of the 

railroad tracks as well as provide a free right 

of way in exchange for the T&P locating the 

depot within 1,200 feet of the courthouse 

square. Citizens of Dallas immediately voted 

on the T&P’s request, unanimously approving 

the incentives by a count of 192 to 0. 30 

Gaston donated 142 acres for the T&P right 

of way and another 10 acres for the T&P 

depot located near the H&TC depot. Only 

six days before the first H&TC engine pulled 

into town, city officials finalized the deal 

with T&P officials that sealed Dallas’ fate as 

a crossroads town. 31 

On February 22, 1873, almost seven 

months to the day after the H&TC had 

arrived in town, the first T&P locomotive 

pulled into town. In August 1873, as T&P 

railroad workers laid tracks through the 

heart of town along Burleson Avenue, the 

City of Dallas changed the name of the street 

to Pacific Avenue to honor the new railroad. 32 

By 1886, Dallas would have six railroads 

in operation: the H&TC, the T&P, the Dallas 

& Wichita Railroad, the Texas Trunk Railroad, 

the Dallas & Cleburne Railroad, and the 

Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad (Katy). 33 

The railroads would serve as the city’s 

dominant mode of shipping and distribution 

well into the twentieth century. 

ECONOMIC EXPANSION 

AND POPULATION 

GROWTH DEMAND 

SERVICE AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

IMPROVEMENTS 

through town, including Gulf Refining 

Company, Howard Oil Works, and Dallas 

Waste Mills. These companies increased the 

demand for low-cost housing for blue-collar 

workers. To meet this demand, the H&TC 

built cheap shotgun houses along its right of 

way and rented them to African-American 

families. These rows of shotgun houses 

extended along the H&TC tracks through 

Freedmantown and Stringtown to Deep 

Ellum, along Santa Fe through Boggy Bayou, 

and along the Katy line in Frogtown. In the 

ensuing years, Boggy Bayou west of Lamar 

attracted a number of companies, including 

Trinity Cotton Oil Company, Dallas Cotton 

Mills, Dallas Union Stockyards, and Armstrong 

Packing Company (which was sold to Swift 

and Company in 1928). 36 

As with most small towns experiencing 

rapid and unprecedented growth, Dallas’ 

infrastructure quickly became a major 

liability. Streets and sidewalks, which had 

previously been sufficient, were now crowded 

and clogged. In addition, basic municipal 

services could not keep pace with the 

demands of the exploding population. 

Fortunately, the businessmen and civic 

leaders of Dallas recognized the need to 

enhance services, utilities, and infrastructure 

to support the growth of the city and sustain 

it as an attractive place to live and work 

for current citizens as well as potential 

businesses and residents. 

On March 2, 1872, the Dallas Wire 

Suspension Bridge Company, established by 

Sarah Cockrell two years earlier, opened a 

new iron bridge over the Trinity River at a 

cost of $65,000. Prior to this bridge, 

travelers had relied solely on Cockrell’s 

ferryboat service to traverse the river after 

the wooden bridge her husband built in 

1855 was destroyed by a flood in 1858. 37 

Sarah Cockrell’s company built a tollhouse 

on the bridge to recover its investment. In 

1882, Dallas County purchased the bridge 

for $41,600 and opened it up to the public 

free of charge. It served the town well until 

another bridge was built in the 1890s. 38 

In 1874, the Dallas Gas and Fuel 

Company began supplying citizens and 

businesses with methane gas to light and 

heat their homes. Located at the corner 

of Houston and Carondalet, the company 

artificially extracted gas from coal and then 

delivered the gas to businesses and residents 

through underground wooden pipes. Not 

long after Thomas Alva Edison introduced 

the invention of the incandescent lamp 

in 1879, Jules E. Schneider, owner and 

president of the Dallas Gas and Fuel 

Company, recognized the significant potential 

of bringing electricity to Dallas. Schneider 

The arrival of the H&TC and T&P 

railroads gave Dallas an immediate economic 

boom. From July 1872 to September 1873, 

the population of the city increased from 

about 3,000 to more than 7,000. 34 The 

business district grew rapidly northeastward 

and soon filled the gap that had existed 

between the courthouse square and the 

H&TC depot. In the two years following 

the H&TC’s arrival, Dallas claimed 1,660 

new structures—ranging from two- and 

three-story brick buildings for businesses 

to boarding houses for single men who had 

come to the city seeking gainful employment. 

A new two-story limestone courthouse was 

built in 1873 at a cost of $75,000. In addition, 

a new two-story wooden city hall was erected 

on Akard between Main and Commerce. 35 

A number of companies established 

operations right along the H&TC line 

✧ 

This map of Dallas in 1875 shows the crossroads one mile east of the courthouse square where the H&TC and T&P crossed. 

The city, by that time, had expanded primarily to the east of Bryan’s original survey. 


CHAPTER III ✧ 25

and prominent Dallas businessmen Alex 

Sanger and W. C. O’Connor secured a charter 

from the city to begin supplying electricity, 

and by 1883 they had set up shop in 

a modest wooden building on Carondalet 

between Austin and Market streets. The first 

customers of electricity in Dallas were a 

handful of saloons along Main Street as 

well as the Sanger Brothers Dry Goods 

Store. Before long, most of the city’s major 

businesses had gas and electric fixtures. 39 

Dallas also needed a system of roads that 

could support the increased foot, horseback, 

and wagon traffic the city was experiencing 

as a result of its growing population and 

booming economy. The city’s dirt streets 

were uneven and full of ruts. During heavy 

rains, they were transformed into mud 

channels that bogged down ox-drawn 

wagons, horses, and pedestrians alike. In 

1881 a group of Dallas businessmen, led by 

grocer Thomas L. (T. L.) Marsalis, hired City 

Engineer William Johnson to solve the road 

problem. Johnson had served as the engineer 

overseeing construction of the T&P tracks 

several years earlier. He developed an 

approach to paving the city’s roads using 

bois d’arc planks, and by 1884 most of 

the city’s downtown roads were paved. In 

the ensuing years, bois d’arc planks were 

scrapped for Macadam pavement, a mixture 

of rolled and crushed stone and gravel first 

introduced on Ross Avenue in 1885. 40 

By the 1880s the combination of paved 

streets and electricity cast the downtown area 

in an entirely new light. These advancements 

brought an air of sophistication and increased 

safety and civility to the city’s business 

district that had previously been deemed too 

wild and unwieldy for most citizens at night. 

They also ushered in the era of nighttime 

window shopping in Dallas and ultimately 

attracted more merchants, businesses, and 

residents to the city. 41 

To sate the thirsts of the town’s hardworking 

citizenry, the Dallas Brewery 

began operations in the late 1870s. In 1885, 

the Wagenheuser Brewing Association 

built a $200,000 plant with manufacturing 

capacity to produce 100 barrels a day. For its 

grand opening, the new Wagenheuser plant 

donated 400 barrels of beer to the public 

in an event at old Shady View Park. In 

describing the fanfare surrounding the 

event, a local paper wrote that “legions of 

friends paraded proudly and quaffed the 

amber liquid amid martial strains, booming 

cannons and beer-born eloquence.” 42 So by 

the mid-1880s, the town began to take on 

the trappings of a city with the infrastructure, 

utilities, and services necessary to provide 

most citizens with a good quality of life. 

Yet even as Dallas’ economy boomed, 

providing increased business opportunities 

for much of the population, the housing, 

working, and educational conditions for 

African Americans remained bleak. In 1880, 

18.6 percent of the city’s population was 

African American. The city’s constituency of 

freed slaves by that time were congregating 

in two Freedmantowns: one along the 

eastern stretch of Elm Street at Central 

Avenue, and the other in the Hall, State, and 

Thomas streets area. In addition to working 

as sharecroppers, home servants, and porters, 

a number of African Americans opened 

barbershops, accounting for 46 percent of 

Dallas’ barbershops between 1881 and 1890. 43 

✧ 

R. F. Eisenlohr ran the Market Drug Store during the 

1880s. (1885) 

COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND 

ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 

The City of Fort Worth provides a stark 

contrast to the economic boom and population 

growth Dallas achieved in the years 

immediately following the arrival of the 

H&TC and T&P. This contrast underscores 

the positive economic impact of railroads 

that Joseph Schumpeter articulated. It 

also illustrates the prescience, ambition, 

and aggressive promotionalism repeatedly 

demonstrated by Dallas’ business leaders 

as they sought to make their city the 

preeminent town in the Southwest. 44 

As the T&P continued construction of 

its tracks west of Dallas, a financial panic 

originating in Philadelphia swept across the 

country in late 1873, forcing investors to 

withdraw money from the railroad. Westward 

expansion of the T&P stopped just six miles 

west of Dallas at a settlement called Eagle’s 

Ford. The suspension of construction left 

the citizens of Fort Worth so close to the 

railroad they could practically hear its 

whistle, but far enough so that they could 

not benefit from its life-giving, economyspurring 

potential. For three more years, 

the western terminus of the T&P sat dormant 

in Eagle’s Ford. During that time, 75 percent 

of Fort Worth’s population moved to Dallas, 

drawn by the desperate realization that 

progress was literally and figuratively leaving 

the station without them. Those citizens who 

remained in Fort Worth grew increasingly 

agitated by the seeming injustice of the 

situation. Meanwhile, Dallas’ business 

environment exploded. The city’s increased 

access to new people, products, and supplies 

arriving by train fueled economic growth and 

gave local businesses and farmers the ability 

to export large shipments of homegrown 

crops and products. 45 

GROWTH OF 

TANNERY AND 

SADDLERY INDUSTRIES 

In the early 1850s, R.J. West built Dallas 

County’s first tanning yard and tannery. 

At that time, the demand for leather was 

so great that West frequently had to remove 

the cowhides from the large treating vats 

before they had properly cured to sell to 

customers. When he pulled the hides out 

prematurely, the leather dried into a very 

rough, hard form, which came to be known 

as “raw hide.” 46 In 1867, John R. Tenison 

opened a small saddle factory, the first in 

town. With the arrival of the railroads in 

the early 1870s, the tannery and saddlery 

industries in Dallas exploded, elevating the 

city to national prominence. 47 

Throughout the 1870s the railroads 

strengthened Dallas’ connections to the 

cattle industry. Many cattledrovers ended 

drives in the city, where they were able to 

ship their livestock by train to such 

destinations as Denison and St. Louis. One 

of Texas’ greatest cattlemen, Christopher 

Columbus (C. C.) Slaughter made Dallas his 

home from 1874 until his death in 1919. For 

a time, he was the state’s largest taxpayer. 48 

As the city’s ties with the cattledriving 

industry increased, so too did the local 

demand for leather and saddles. 

By the time Dallas became a rail 

terminus, hunting buffalo for their hides had 

evolved from a prairie sport into a lucrative 

business. The slaughter of buffalos on the 

western plains, which had started in 1869, 

reached its peak in the early 1870s. 49 Buffalo 

hunters’ activities were centered around Fort 


✧ 

Wagons containing the fall’s cotton harvest lined up on Elm Street near Poydras, 1900. (Dallas Then & Now) 


Griffin near Albany, about 170 miles west 

of Dallas. After removing the hides from 

the carcasses, hunters shipped the hides 

by ox-drawn wagon convoys to Dallas. 50 In 

Dallas, companies like R. J. West’s treated 

the hides, which were then shipped by train 

to the North and East, where they were 

tanned and made into sleigh robes. 51 By 

1875, Dallas was the largest market in 

the world for buffalo hides. A number of 

Eastern and Northern manufacturers set up 

distribution centers in Dallas during this 

time. As the T&P finally continued its 

westward construction in 1876, the buffalo 

hide trade began to shift to Fort Worth. By 

the end of the decade, the buffalo hide 

market was centered there. 52 

As a young man, G.H. Schoellkopf had 

come to Texas in the mid-1860s to buy 

buffalo hides for a firm of sleigh-robe 

makers based in Buffalo, New York. In 1869, 

Schoellkopf moved permanently to Dallas 

and opened The Shoellkopf Company on the 

courthouse square. Originally established 

to manufacture harnesses, saddles, and 

collars as well as to “job” shoe findings, 

the company soon built a second shop 

on Elm Street near Griffin to keep pace with 

increasing demand. In 1880 the company 

occupied a three-story, native stone building 

on Main Street, just opposite the City 

National Bank Building, and by 1886, 

Schoellkopf employed fifty workmen. 53 

Second- and third-generation Schoellkopf 

family members continued to grow the 

business into a worldwide company that, 

by 1935, manufactured automobile seat 

covers, batteries, and auto replacement 

parts as well as distributed Atwater Kent 

Electric Refrigerators, Lee Tires, and General 

Electric Edison house and mini lamp bulbs. 54 

As Schoellkopf was growing his business 

in the 1870s, Jesse D. Padgitt also established 

a shop for manufacturing saddles, pistol 

holsters, cartridge belts, and other leather 

goods in town. His brother, William, joined 

him one year later. And over the ensuing 

decades, the two men grew Padgitt Brothers 

into a worldwide concern. 55 

✧ 

By 1902, Dallas led the world in the output 

of saddles and continued to be a dominant 

player in the leather manufacturing industry, 

which reached its apex in the city during 

World War I, when a number of Dallas-based 

companies made and sold saddles, kits, packs, 

and belts to the U.S. and U.K. governments. 56 

COTTON BECOMES KING 

Cotton had been planted in Dallas 

County as early as 1846, but it was not 

raised in substantial quantities in the area 

until the end of that decade, when the 

Reverend James A. Smith built the first 

cotton gin with an attached corn mill in 

Farmers Branch. By 1852, William Cochran 

had built the area’s second cotton gin with 

an attached corn mill. 57 That same year, a 

pioneer merchant named J.W. Smith started 

down the Trinity River with a flatbed full of 

twenty-two bales of cotton headed for the 

Gulf port—the first recorded instance of the 

crop being exported via a commercial 

channel. For the next two decades, Dallasgrown 

cotton was shipped to outside 

markets via slow and plodding ox-drawn 

carts and wagons, and only rarely on 

steamers whose chances for success were 

dubious at best. 58 

The arrival of the railroads in the 1870s 

finally unleashed the area’s dormant potential 

to produce cotton. With an accessible and 

In 1872, Sarah Horton Cockrell’s Dallas Wire Suspension Bridge Company opened the city’s first iron bridge across the 

Trinity River. Buffalo traders drove long wagon trains of dried hides over the new iron bridge across the Trinity on their way 

into town, where they sold their hides, purchased supplies, and returned to the plains. 


CHAPTER III ✧ 27

affordable mode of transportation to facilitate 

the crop’s export all over the nation and the 

world, Dallas County farmers immediately 

began to grow more cotton. Increased profits 

from these activities, in turn, allowed local 

farmers to expand operations and grow the 

industry in North Texas. At the same time, 

the new overland rail routes enabled by the 

H&TC and T&P gave U.S. cities in the 

North and East easier access to Texas cotton. 

Before the railroads arrived in Dallas, those 

cities had received loads of Texas cotton via 

water shipments out of Galveston. Long 

overland train shipments from Dallas were 

more economically feasible than the water 

routes to shippers. 59 

In 1874, R.V. Tompkins and J.C. O’Connor 

established the Dallas Compress Company at 

the corner of Lamar and Wood with capital 

of $34,000. At that time, almost half of the 

4 million acres cultivated in Texas to raise 

cotton were located within a 100-mile radius 

of Dallas. The establishment of the Dallas 

Compress Company marked the beginning 

of the city’s role as the cotton capital of 

North Texas. Two years later, Tompkins and 

O’Connor built the Dallas Elevator and 

Compress Company on Houston Street next 

to the T&P tracks. It was a massive cotton 

compress with the state’s first adjoining 

grain elevator. The compress could reduce 

cotton to half its original size, enabling a 

single railroad car to load nearly 25,000 

pounds. Around this time, a businessman 

named Sam Blake was instrumental in 

helping establish cotton mills in South 

Dallas. After struggling in their first years of 

existence, these mills would become the 

center of the city’s economy by the end of 

the century. By 1877, Dallas had invested 

an estimated $3 million in the cotton and 

grain industries, which employed nearly 

4,000 people in Dallas County, whose 

population grew from 13,314 to 33,448 

throughout the decade. 60 

Until 1872 farmers had discarded the 

cotton seed in the process of ginning 

cotton. Around that time, however, it was 

discovered that valuable by-products, such 

as cottonseed oil, could be gleaned from 

this waste. By 1880, a number of cottonseed 

oil production plants had cropped up 

around town. Lower grades of this vegetable 

oil were used to make soap, candles, linoleum, 

and phonograph records. More highly refined 

oil was used in cooking and making 

oleomargarine, shortening compounds, and 

salad dressing. By 1935 the value of all 

products made from cottonseed in Dallas 

would exceed $10 million. 61 

✧ 

Introduced around the time that the railroads arrived in 1872, Dallas’ earliest streetcars were drawn by mules. Even after 

automobiles were introduced in the early 1900s, streetcars continued to play an important role in transporting people 

around town. (1924) 


Cotton shipments from Dallas grew from 

431,463 bales worth more than $23 million 

in 1860 to 3,526,649 bales worth more than 

$177 million by 1900, due in large part to 

the increased railroad mileage out of the city, 

which grew dramatically from 591 miles in 

1872 to 9,867 miles by the end of the 

century. Among the various railroad routes, 

connections to Chicago and St. Louis made 

the city an important distribution center for 

the entire nation. 62 

As local farmers began to exploit the full 

potential of the rich soil in Dallas County, 

cotton buyers rushed to Dallas to establish 

offices. Most cotton was bought and sold on 

what was known as the “hog-round” basis. 

The buyer took all of a grower’s offering at an 

inclusive lot price on the basis of gross 

weight. Quotations out of Liverpool, England, 

(the price basis for the commodity) often did 

not reach Texas for a month or so. So buyers 

frequently negotiated prices with growers on 

uncertain terms and wide margins. 63 

By 1880, lower Elm Street had become a 

curb cotton market. Farmers in their wagons 

lined up for blocks, waiting to unload their 

crops along the curbs between Elm and 

Lamar. In one historic transaction that year, 

Abe Schwartz, a 17-year-old operator, sold 

1,200 bales to Liverpool at twelve cents a 

pound. During a six-month period the 

following year, the city received 50,000 

bales of cotton from local farms, delivered 

by wagons that usually carried no more than 

three bales per load. The tremendous influx 

of cotton wagons and merchants, combined 

with the city’s overall population growth, 

created chaos and congestion on the streets. 

In an effort to eradicate these problems, 

W. H. Gaston erected the Gaston Building at 

Commerce and Lamar streets in 1884. The 

building served as an exchange in which 

cotton traders and merchants could operate. 

In no time, wagon and cotton yards sprang 

up around the Gaston Building, significantly 

reducing the number of logjams that had 

brought city traffic to a standstill at certain 

times of the day. 64 

In the ensuing years brokers and buyers 

began receiving world market quotations by 

Western Union telegraph. With more timely 

quotations, brokers and buyers could 

operate more efficiently and on narrower 

margins. A number of spot buyers began 

hedging by purchasing future delivery 

cotton on the New Orleans and New York 

futures exchanges. In 1894, M. H. Thomas 

& Co. installed the first leased wire, 

which gave the company’s brokers instant 

and direct communications with the world’s 

markets. This application of the latest 

communication technology effectively 

dismantled the city’s first cotton exchange 

until other brokers were able to secure 

leased-wire facilities. 65 

Following the Civil War economic 

conditions for white and African-American 

farmers across the country grew increasingly 


✧ 

The city’s early electric streetcars vied with mule-drawn carts for space on the dusty streets of Dallas. 


harsh even as demand for their products 

increased. As William McDonald notes, a 

crop lien system emerged in which 

furnishing merchants prevented farmers 

from fully realizing the fruits of their labors. 

By essentially confiscating farmers’ entire 

agricultural output, the system kept them in 

bondage to the merchants, creating a cycle 

in which farmers, harnessed by debt, 

struggled to survive from one season to the 

next. According to some estimates, by the 

1880s these furnishing merchants, and the 

businesses and corporations that controlled 

them, owned close to half the farmable land 

in the South. 66 

The Populist Movement in America 

emerged in response to these and other 

oppressive conditions for laborers following 

the Civil War. Spawned by this movement, 

the national Farmers’ Alliance sought to 

empower cotton farmers through a joint 

marketing alliance and reached the height of 

its influence and power in the late 1880s, 

with nearly half a million members. In 1887, 

as Dallas and its surrounding areas were 

beginning to emerge as one of the top 

cotton-producing regions in the nation, the 

Texas Farmers’ Alliance Exchange Building 

opened at the southwest corner of Market 

and Wood streets. The Texas Farmers’ 

Alliance selected Dallas as its headquarters 

because of the city’s strategic location at the 

crossroads of a number of railways by that 

the time. This local exchange gave Dallasarea 

farmers a direct channel to other 

markets throughout the country and allowed 

them to get the best prices for their crops. 

Local farmers also pooled their collective 

purchasing power through the exchange to 

buy farm implements and machinery at 

lower, more competitive prices. By reducing 

the cost of marketing and distribution of 

crops, the Texas Farmers’ Alliance boosted 

local farmers’ profits and helped loosen the 

control of furnishing merchants. 67 

In 1889 the Texas Farmers’ Alliance 

attempted to break the merchants’ hold once 

and for all by launching its largest and most 

aggressive marketing campaign to date. 

After taking on greater debt to implement 

the campaign, the Alliance went bankrupt 

when local banks refused to provide it 

with sufficient financing to cover its 

commitments. Many suspected that the 

bankers had cut off the Alliance to stay in 

good standing with their business clients 

(the merchants), many of whom participated 

in and benefited from the crop lien system. 68 

DEMAND EXPLODES 

FOR AGRICULTURAL 

IMPLEMENTS 

An incipient farm implement industry 

had begun to emerge in town in the 1850s to 

support the early farming activities around 

Dallas. In 1852 the McCormick Harvesting 

Machine Company opened a shop on 

the courthouse square. It was not long 

before other farm implement companies 

established a local presence to support the 

area’s agricultural industry. These companies 

included the Aultman Miller Company of 

Akron, Ohio; the Parlin and Orendorff 

Company of Canton, Illinois; the Mansur 

and Tebbetts Implement Company of St. 

Louis; and the Keating Implement and 

Machinery Company of Dallas. 69 

The arrival of the H&TC and T&P 

railroads dramatically increased the average 

size of farms in and around Dallas, as 

farmers now had the ability to profitably 

market their surplus crops throughout the 

nation and, in some instances, around the 

world. In 1872 the average wheat farm was 

12 acres. Within two years, the average farm 

size had increased dramatically, with one 

farmer in Dallas County harvesting 800 acres 

of wheat in 1874. As farms grew in size and 

farmers produced larger quantities of wheat 

and cotton, they required more advanced 

farm equipment and machinery. In response 

to this increased demand, the city’s agricultural 

implement industry took off. By 1891, 

Dallas surpassed Kansas City as the largest 

distribution center in the nation for farm 

implements. Two years later farm implement 

sales in Dallas reached $10 million. 70 

One farm implement of particular note 

that was manufactured in Dallas was the 

cotton gin. As local farmers expanded their 

cotton operations, the need for cotton gins 

grew significantly. In the early 1880s, Swan 

Brothers opened a cotton gin repair shop at 

Young Street and the Santa Fe railroad tracks, 

and began manufacturing complete gins in 

1884. Robert S. Munger came to Dallas in 

1885 to begin manufacturing cotton gins. 

He quickly became the key figure in an 

industry that would help elevate the city’s 

status on a national scale. 71 

✧ 

The first traction engine, used to assist with agricultural 

activities, was introduced in Dallas in 1886. 


As a young man, Munger had worked on 

his father’s plantation in Mexia, Texas. At the 

time, few people had made improvements to 

CHAPTER III ✧ 29

Eli Whitney’s cotton gin since its invention 

in 1793. But Munger was a quick study who 

made a number of enhancements to his 

father’s ginning machinery, including a 

pneumatic system to convey seed cotton to 

the gin, saw cleaners for ginning machines, 

and a saw-sharpening tool. When several 

manufacturers showed no interest in his 

inventions, he moved to Dallas and 

established his own cotton gin manufacturing 

plant in 1885. Three years later, he formed 

the Munger Improved Cotton Machine 

Company in town. In addition to working 

hard to perfect his enhancements, Munger 

had the business savvy to patent them. His 

patents included a lint flue system and 

battery condenser, double revolving box 

presses, elevator and blower for seed, 

elevator system and belt distributor, and the 

self-tamp system. Thanks in large part to his 

efforts, Dallas became the world’s leading 

manufacturer of cotton gin machinery and 

the largest inland cotton market in the 

United States by the early 1890s. The cotton 

gin industry would continue to thrive in 

Dallas well into the twentieth century. By 

1940 seven Dallas companies were shipping 

gins and related equipment to every country 

in the world where cotton was grown. 72 

DEVELOPERS AND 

STREETCAR OWNERS 

GIVE CITIZENS MORE 

ELBOW ROOM 

In the Introduction to William L. 

McDonald’s Dallas Rediscovered: A Photographic 

Chronicle of Urban Expansion 1870-1925, 

A. C. Greene articulates the vital role that 

land promotion and real estate development 

has played in the success of business in 

Dallas, from the time John Neely Bryan and 

W. S. Peters and Associates began “pitching” 

the Three Forks area to settlers to the 

present day. Greene writes, “And in Texas, 

no city was so conceived and created as a 

real estate promotion, and no city has been 

so controlled in its civic and municipal 

directions by land development, as has 

Dallas…Real estate development, more than 

all physical factors or industrial locations 

combined, has guided the tide of Dallas.” 73 

As Greene intimates, the creation and early 

survival of Dallas depended upon people’s 

ability to promote and sell its land to 

outsiders. Over time, this capability has 

played an integral role in the evolution of 

the city. 

After the H&TC arrived in 1872, Dallas’ 

population and business environment 

exploded, with most of the development 

occurring to the east of Bryan’s original cabin 

and the city’s courthouse square. Amid 

the construction boom, Dallas’ streets and 

sidewalks had become more congested with 

the increased foot, horse, and wagon traffic. 

Many of the town’s civic and business 

leaders viewed streetcars as a viable means 

to facilitate movement throughout the city as 

well as open up outlying areas to commercial 

and residential development. Streetcars were 

one of the most important factors in the 

development of the city’s suburbs. William 

L. McDonald notes that “the traffic patterns 

it [the streetcar] established helped to 

explain why certain areas developed while 

neighboring ones did not.” 74 A number of 

entrepreneurial real estate developers 

acquired land situated near outlying lakes or 

parks. In other instances, they purchased 

farmland and put a park or a lake on it. 

Then, they built a streetcar line out to the 

development. The decisions about where to 

run streetcar lines were almost always made 

by developers who either owned streetcar 

companies or influenced their evolution 

through donations to streetcar companies. 75 

After moving to Dallas from Alabama in 

1868, Captain George M. Swink established 

himself as the city’s pioneer streetcar 

entrepreneur. In 1872 he founded the city’s 

first streetcar company, the Dallas City 

Railway Company, in which a group of 

Dallas businessmen, including W.H. Gaston, 

invested $10,000 of capital. On February 7, 

1873, the company introduced Dallas’ first 

streetcar service, running just over a mile 

from the H&TC depot along Main Street to 

the Crutchfield House, which had been 

rebuilt on the courthouse square after the 

fire of 1860. 76 

The fledgling service comprised two small 

streetcars; each was ten feet long and drawn 

by two mules. Occasionally, the mules would 

become frightened by various goings on 

around them and would run away. One mule 

was killed when the train he was pulling ran 

over him as the car was going down a steep 

hill on Main Street just east of Akard. 77 

✧ 

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a number of 

real estate developers built electric streetcar lines to 

transport people from the city’s central business district 

to outlying neighborhoods they were developing. 


✧ 

Posters offered Dallas citizens instructions about how to get off streetcars safely. 


In 1875, W.J. Keller took over operation 

of this streetcar line and built a second line 

extending two miles along San Jacinto 

Street. In 1876, Dr. C.E. Keller (W.J. Keller’s 

brother) and W.C. O’Connor opened the 

Commerce & Ervay Street Railroad Company, 

which ran one and one-quarter miles east 

and south on Commerce and Ervay streets. 

That same year, John J. Eakins sold to the 

City of Dallas ten acres near Browder Springs 

for its first public park. Eakins asked for 

$1,000, but the city could afford to pay only 


$400 in a credit. Dr. Keller paid the $600 

balance of the asking price. This transaction 

created City Park and was a milestone for 

Dallas’ urban development, representing the 

first partnership between a streetcar owner, 

Keller, and a land speculator, Eakins. The 

establishment of City Park spurred the city’s 

subsequent expansion to the south for more 

than a decade. 78 

By 1884 two additional street railways, 

the San Jacinto and the Dallas Bell Street 

Railway Company (Belt Line) had been 

launched, with the aim to connect downtown 

Dallas with outlying areas under development. 

Owned by J.E. Henderson, Jules Schneider, 

and Colonel J.T. Trezevant, the Belt Line 

streetcar ran up McKinney Avenue to 

Thomas Street. This line and the increased 

access to the north it offered led to the 

development of North Dallas’ first socially 

elite neighborhood, Thomas-Colby District. 

Before that time, the T&P tracks had 

effectively cut off downtown access to North 

Dallas with a series of dangerous track 

crossings. 79 With the additional three and 

three-quarter miles of streetcar lines initially 

established by the Dallas Bell Street Railway 

Company, Dallas had almost eight miles of 

street railway by 1887. That same year, the 

city’s four streetcar lines merged into the 

Dallas Consolidated Street Railway Company. 80 

No sooner had this consolidation taken 

place than three new companies were 

founded: the Dallas & Oak Cliff Railroad 

Company in 1887, the Dallas Rapid Transit 

Railroad Company in 1888, and the North 

Dallas Circuit Railroad Company in 1889. 81 

Following its establishment, the Dallas Rapid 

Transit Railroad Company opened a steamdriven 

excursion line from the courthouse 

down Lamar Street to Forest Avenue, across 

to the fairgrounds and back downtown. 

In response to this competition, the Dallas 

Consolidated Street Railway Company 

extended its lines down Ackard, Ervay and 

Harwood streets and east to the fairgrounds. 82 

That same year, the Dallas Consolidated 

Street Railway Company ran a line out Bryan 

Street to Garrett Park in East Dallas, opening 

up all of East Dallas to development. Over 

the next four years, new additions sprang up 

in East Dallas, including Middleton Brothers’ 

Addition, Livingston Place, and Caruth 

Heights. 83 By 1890, mule-drawn streetcars 

had been replaced by electric streetcars 

traversing more than 20 miles of tracks. 84 

Between 1880 and 1890, as streetcar lines 

began offering transportation to outlying 

areas, real estate developers and promoters 

snatched up and subdivided as many parcels 

✧ 

The Dallas Consolidated Street Car Company transported residents and visitors to and from the Texas State Fair and Dallas 

Exposition in October 1894. 


The opening of Munger Place in 1905 

of land around the periphery of downtown 

Street area. 87 modest beginnings, the fair played a key 

as they could get their hands on. Dallas 

experienced a real estate boom during this 

time, and the streetcar lines were the driving 

force enabling families to move out of the 

increasingly congested downtown area. 85 

In 1887 grocer T.L. Marsalis and his 

business partner, John S. Armstrong, formed 

the Dallas Land and Loan Company, which 

acquired 2,000 acres of land called Oak Cliff, 

located south of Dallas across the Trinity River. 

After paving the streets there at a cost of 

$200,000, the two men began offering large 

lots through an auction in November 1887. 

The Marsalis Addition in Oak Cliff, as it was 

termed, was the first commercially marketed 

suburb in Dallas. It was promoted as a modelplanned 

community connected to Dallas by a 

ten-minute train ride called the “Dummy 

Line.” A newspaper ad in 1887 called Oak 

Cliff the “Beautiful Suburb of Dallas,” using 

such terms as “On the Bluffs,” “Picturesque,” 

“Well-Drained,” and “Healthy” to promote 

the property to Dallas citizens. In the first 

two days of the land auction Marsalis and 

represented the culmination of a real estate 

movement that had been spurred by the 

development of streetcars in the 1870s and 

1880s and sought to provide housing for the 

city’s growing middle and upper classes. 

Established by Robert S. Munger, Munger 

Place was a 300-acre community covering 

approximately fifty city blocks between 

Fitzhugh, Live Oak, Henderson, and Columbia 

streets. In its covenants and contracts, the 

community ensured that residents would be 

grouped by socio-economic status: presidents 

and chairmen of Dallas’ corporations could 

buy lots on Swiss Avenue and Gaston Avenue 

with a minimum investment of $10,000; 

mid-level and junior executives could buy 

lots on flanking side streets; clerks and 

workers were left to choose from bungalow 

subdivisions south of Fitzhugh and east of 

Columbia. While previous developments 

had catered to affluent business leaders, 

Munger Place was the first to state explicit 

restrictions on who could buy where, based 

on income and corporate status. 88 

Armstrong sold over $60,000 worth of lots. 

When Marsalis proposed holding some of STATE FAIR BOLSTERS 

the remaining lots off the market to drive 

DALLAS’ POSITION 

prices higher, Armstrong disagreed with this AS DOMINANT CITY 

strategy. The two men quickly parted ways. 

IN TEXAS 

Marsalis took the real estate operation. 

Armstrong took the grocery operation that 

Marsalis had founded in 1872. By 1890, Oak 

Cliff had more than 2,500 residents. 86 

In 1888 the North Dallas Improvement 

Company was founded by a group of 

investors and developers, including Royal A. 

Ferris, Edwin P. Cowan, Oliver P. Bowser, 

and Frank Cockrell. This loose affiliation of 

investors, speculators, and developers focused 

on promoting the northern limits of the city 

at that time, including Maple Avenue, Oak 

Lawn, and the McKinney Avenue-Thomas 

In Dallas Rediscovered: A Photographic 

Chronicle of Urban Expansion 1870-1925, 

William L. McDonald calls the State Fair of 

Texas the “single most important instrument 

in maintaining its [Dallas’] position as the 

commercial and cultural center of North 

Texas.” 89 The establishment of the State Fair 

of Texas is undoubtedly one of a handful 

of critical moments in the city’s history when 

business leaders seized an opportunity to 

elevate their town and its commercial 

activities to greater prominence. From its 

CHAPTER III ✧ 31

✧ 

After its early financial struggles in the late 1800s, the State Fair of Texas became one of the city’s key economic drivers 

throughout the 1900s. The fair attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, who enjoyed the rides, food, and games 

in the Midway (pictured here) as well as the myriad products and livestock exhibited by local and national companies. 


role in bolstering the Dallas brand and 

spurring the city’s economic growth well 

into the twentieth century. 

Feeling threatened by small fairs that 

had cropped up in Marshall, Sherman, and 

Waxahachie in the late 1850s, Dallas held 

its first fair in 1859. The event was created 

and managed by the Dallas County 

Agricultural and Mechanical Association, led 

by its president, Amos McCommas, an early 

✧ 

Organizers of the 1890 Texas State Fair and Dallas 

Exposition produced ornate posters to promote the event. 


Dallas settler and city benefactor who 

operated a freight business company among 

other business interests. This reportedly 

unremarkable event took place at what 

would become a historic location for the city 

thirteen years later where the H&TC and 

T&P railroads crossed tracks. The inaugural 

fair was a four-day event that attracted some 

2,000 people, many of whom came from 

surrounding towns. Farmers, ranchers, and 

implement manufacturers congregated at 

the event to buy, sell, and negotiate cattle; 

exchange new ideas, techniques, and lessons 

learned in the field; and place orders 

for machinery. 90 

One year later, the fair of 1860 lasted five 

days and attracted some 10,000 people, 

representing a wider array of North Texas 

ranchers and farmers. The Civil War and 

early years of Reconstruction suspended the 

✧ 

The 1890 Texas State Fair and Dallas Exposition 

featured $75,000 in horseracing premiums and purses, 

with five races a day throughout the two-week event. 


Dallas fair until 1868, and after several 

unsuccessful attempts at reigniting the 

event, the fair resumed in 1872 and 1873, 

though with disappointing results. W. H. 

Gaston spearheaded these efforts at a 

new site in East Dallas where the Baptist 

Sanitarium would later be located and near 

where the Baylor Hospital complex is today. 91 

The nationwide Financial Panic of 1873 

caused the fair to be suspended yet again in 

1874 and 1875. In 1876, the T&P finally 

pulled into Fort Worth following its threeyear 

suspension in Eagle’s Ford. Knowing 

firsthand the economic boost Fort Worth 

would receive from the railroads, Dallas 

citizens resumed their fair to draw attention 

away from their neighbor to the west. The 

1876 fair took on a more industrial air, 

reflecting the new businesses and industries 

that had sprung up in town since the arrival 

of the railroads. Following the 1877 fair, 

which was deemed a success, the city did 

not host another fair for nine years, as the 

Dallas economy boomed and local leaders 

decided the event was not necessary. 92 

In 1886, two factions held separate, 

competing fairs in the city. Gaston and 

Dallas businessmen Alex Sanger, John S. 

Armstrong, and T.L. Marsalis led the Dallas 

State Fair and Exposition Association, which 

was chartered in January 1886. Officers of 

this Association acquired an 80-acre site in 

East Dallas where the present fairgrounds are 

located. Gaston purchased the land for 

$16,000 and deeded it to the association in 

return for 140 shares of stock, which he later 

donated to the fair. The Dallas State Fair and 

Exposition opened on October 26 and ran 

through November 6. 93 This inaugural 

endeavor required no small effort or outlay 

of capital. The association constructed 

a number of buildings from scratch, 

transformed a hog wallow prairie into a 

beautiful park, built a horseracing track, 

paved streets and sidewalks, and provided 

ample water supply for exposition workers 

and visitors. One hundred thirty-seven mule 

teams were used to make roads on the 

grounds at a cost of $25,000. Wells were dug 

and windmills were erected. The total cost of 

the 1886 Dallas State Fair and Exposition 

was $177,028. The Association issued stock 

of $27,422, leaving a balance of $149,606, 

which was carried by the city’s banks on 

personal notes of fair directors. Receipts 

from the first fair were $48,205, leaving a 

balance carried by the banks of $101,401. 94 

Meanwhile, C.A. Keating led a group of 

wealthy farm implement dealers who 

protested that the grounds Gaston had 


purchased and deeded were not suitable for 

the display of farm equipment and livestock. 

Keating rallied the support of the Texas 

Farmers’ Alliance and the Knights of Labor 

to establish another fair, the Texas State Fair. 

Located on a section of a farm where North 

Dallas High School would later stand, 

Keating’s event opened on October 25 and 

lasted six days. 95 The livestock list at the first 

Texas State Fair included the city’s only 

registered bull at the time (owned by 

William “Uncle Billy” Miller), along with 

“broncho” ponies, longhorn steer, razorback 

hogs, and common yellow leg chickens. 96 

✧ 

Captain William Henry W. H. Gaston was one of the 

city’s most important early business leaders and civic 

benefactors. Gaston and his business partner, Aaron C. 

Camp, opened the Gaston and Camp Bank in 1868, the 

city’s first permanent bank, which evolved into the 

Exchange Bank and eventually First National Bank of 

Dallas. In addition to playing key roles in attracting the 

railroads and sustaining the State Fair of Texas, Gaston 

actively promoted public education and helped finance 

some of the city’s most important infrastructure projects, 

including its first iron bridge and its streetcar system. 

Only five years after his arrival in town, the Dallas 

Herald declared that Gaston was the one person most 

responsible for the transformation of Dallas into a city. 

(The Book of Dallas) 


As McDonald notes, the two fairs and 

their representatives were emblematic of the 

growing division between Dallas’ older, 

agrarian economy and the new industrial 

economy based on manufacturing, retail, 

banking, and insurance. Both fairs were 

deemed successful, attracting together nearly 

38,000 people a day. 97 

When it came time to start planning the 

1887 state fairs, the two groups struck a 

compromise that united their resources and 

efforts behind one event. This marked the 

first major instance in which local business 

leaders of agriculture and industry reached 

consensus on what was in the city’s best 

interests. They changed the charter to the 

Texas State Fair and Dallas Exposition. The 

same stockholders of the two 1886 fairs 

owned the new charter. The previous 

associations then sold all materials and 

property to the newly formed group for 

$132,513: $47,000 in cash, one note for 

$12,500 due in one year, one note for 

$13,013 due in two years, and one note for 

$60,000 due in five years—at ten-percent 

interest, with the vendor’s lien reserved on 

the entire property, and payable at the City 

National Bank. 98 

As a result the inaugural Texas State Fair 

and Dallas Exposition of 1887 was held 

under heavy pressure of debt at the 80-acre 

site of the original Dallas State Fair and 

Exposition. Recognizing that the fairgrounds 

were no longer big enough to house all the 

necessary facilities and activities, the fair’s 

officers decided to increase the grounds 

by purchasing adjoining lots totaling 

about thirty-six acres from Gaston, Marsalis, 

and Armstrong. 99 

The ensuing years brought a series of 

financial and operational struggles for the 

fair. With debt continuing to mount, business 

leaders such as Jules E. Schneider and Royal 

A. Ferris repeatedly stepped up to shoulder 

greater financial burdens. 100 After posting a 

profit for the first time in 1893, the fair posted 

record profits each year through 1899. 

Following the fair that year, J. B. Wilson, a 

wealthy cattleman, businessman, and real 

estate investor, stepped in and bought all the 

bonds from a creditor demanding payment, 

and a new corporation was chartered in April 

1900 under the name of the Texas State Fair. 101 

In 1902 the fair suffered two more 

setbacks when horse racing was abolished 

by anti-racing legislature and the Exposition 

Building burned. At the close of the 1903 

fair, stockholders received an offer of 

$125,000 for the fairgrounds property. The 

would-be buyers planned to convert the 

land into a suburban addition to Dallas. As 

tempting as the offer was, particularly in the 

aftermath of the anti-racing bill and loss of 

the Exposition Building, stockholders knew 

if they let the state fair slip away from Dallas, 

they would never get it back. 102 

The stockholders refused the offer and 

proposed instead to sell the Texas State Fair 

to the City of Dallas for $125,000 (as 

stockholders legally owned the property up 

until that time). According to the terms of 

the proposal, the city would pay $80,000 in 

cash to liquidate the bonds, for which the 

property was mortgaged. The stockholders 

would donate the remaining $45,000 to the 

city as well as raise an additional $35,000 

to erect a new exposition building. The city 

would then convert the fairgrounds into a 

park and turn it over to the Dallas Park Board. 

The proposal was overwhelmingly approved 

by voters. 103 In 1904 the City of Dallas 

incorporated the fairgrounds and hired 

George Kessler, who would become the 

father of city planning for Dallas, to replan 

and relandscape the park. This transaction, 

after years of trials and tribulations, set the 

fair on the road to stability and even greater 

prominence, culminating in its hosting the 

1936 Texas Centennial Exposition and 

continuing to this day .104 

✧ 

A group of local businessmen and bankers congregated 

for a photo in front of the Bankers and Merchants 

National Bank. (c. 1890) 



In the preface of J. T. Trezevant’s history of 

the fair, Harry L. Seay, one-time president of 

the State Fair of Texas, comments on the 

business benefits the event brought to 

Dallas. “The Citizens of Dallas,” Seay wrote, 

“visualized the great advantage the Fair would 

be to Dallas and this portion of the southwest. 

They knew the large number of people it 

brought to Dallas; they knew the increased 

number of purchasers it would supply to our 

merchants and our industries; and they had 

the vision to see that they were creating something 

that would do more towards building up 

Dallas than all other agencies combined.” 105 

And, indeed, Seay was correct in his 

assessment of the impact. The fair initially 

gave local farmers, ranchers, and businessmen 

a stage on which to promote their products 

and services to thousands of people 

throughout the state. It also allowed them to 

share lessons learned and best practices from 

their respective trades. The fairgrounds and 

CHAPTER III ✧ 33

facilities played a key role in the city’s 

winning bid to secure the Texas Centennial 

Exposition in 1936, which alone drew more 

than six million visitors, significantly boosted 

sales for local businesses, and generated 

millions of dollars in new bank deposits. 

Since its inception, the fair has drawn tens of 

millions of visitors, infused billions of 

dollars into the local economy, and elevated 

the image and reputation of the city in the 

eyes of hundreds of thousands of out-oftown 

tourists and exhibitors. Today, the 

State Fair of Texas is the largest state fair in 

the country, contributing some $360 million 

to the North Texas economy each year 

through ticket and concession sales on the 

fairgrounds as well as food, drink, hotel, 

rental car, and other revenues generated by 

out-of-town visitors. 106 

NEWSPAPERS EXERT 

INFLUENCE ON 

CITY’ S BUSINESSES 

In the first fifty years of Dallas’ existence 

newspapers played a key role in the 

development of business. The city’s first 

newspaper, the Cedar Snag, founded by 

J. W. Lattimer in 1848 and later renamed 

the Dallas Herald, helped establish a sense 

of community and camaraderie among the 

early settlers as they struggled to scratch 

out a meager existence in the primitive 

prairie town. 107 

In 1851, John W. Swindells came to 

Dallas from New York City and purchased an 

interest in the Dallas Herald. Since there 

were so few established companies that 

could afford to advertise in the newspaper at 

that time, the Dallas Herald survived initially 

on subscription revenue. It struggled to stay 

afloat, but persisted through lean times to 

exert a positive influence on the city and its 

residents by promoting increased development 

and commercial activities and commenting 

on the moral character of the town. It 

remained the dominant paper in the city 

until the mid-1880s when Alfred Horatio 

Belo launched the Dallas News. 108 Belo had 

gotten his start in the business in 1865 

working for a Galveston paper, The Daily News, 

the most powerful paper in Texas at that time. 

He later became the majority owner of the 

paper and succeeded Willard Richardson as 

its publisher. 109 

As several cities in North Texas began to 

boom in the wake of the railroads’ arrival, 

Belo recognized the opportunity to establish 

a newspaper in the region that could both 

serve the burgeoning communities and 

benefit from the growth of their commercial 

activities. In 1884 he dispatched George 

Bannerman (G. B.) Dealey to North Texas to 

scout out the most appropriate town for 

launching the offshoot newspaper. Dealey, 

who had started working at the paper ten 

years earlier as an office boy earning $3 a 

week, visited Denton, Fort Worth, Denison, 

Terrell, Paris, McKinney, and others before 

deciding on Dallas, which was being served 

by several railroads by that time. 110 

✧ 

A native of Manchester, England, George Bannerman 

(G.B.) Dealey moved from Galveston to Dallas in 1885 

to found the Dallas News (later The Dallas Morning 

News) for Alfred Horatio Belo. Dealey went on to 

become publisher of the newspaper and president of the 

Belo Corporation. 


The first issue of the Dallas News was 

printed on October 1, 1885. Within two 

months, the Dallas News purchased the 

pioneer Dallas Herald, effectively silencing 

its primary competition. 111 As Darwin Payne 

points out, the Dallas News was, from its 

beginnings, an outspoken crusader for 

causes that would promote Dallas to the 

world and bring about civic improvements, 

such as crop diversification, separation of 

city government and partisan politics, and 

better roads, water supply, and public 

health services. 112 Dealey and subsequent 

publishers took the opportunity on 

numerous occasions to advance business 

and civic causes of the city in an effort to 

educate and compel citizens to take certain 

actions. The paper played a lead role in 

convincing residents of the need for longterm 

planning, an effort that resulted in the 

hiring of George Kessler as city planner in 

1910. Dealey and fellow Dallas News reporters, 

Tom Flinty, Jr., and Mark L. Goodwin, played 

key roles in attracting the Federal Reserve 

Bank in 1914. And the paper was an 

outspoken critic of Ku Klux Klan activities in 

the city during the 1920s. 113 

In 1888 two smaller evening papers, the 

Dallas Daily Times and the Dallas Daily 

Herald, merged to form the Dallas Daily 

Times Herald. The Times Herald could not 

compete with the Dallas News on national 

news, so it focused, instead, on local news. In 

1892, W. E. King founded the Dallas Express, 

the city’s first African-American newspaper. 

Owned by whites for many years, it was 

billed as “the South’s Oldest and Largest 

Negro Newspaper.” In 1938, five prominent 

African-American leaders, including the 

Reverend Maynard H. Jackson and Antonio 

Maceo Smith, purchased the Dallas Express 

and transformed it into a force for change on 

various African-American causes. 114 

Throughout the end of the 19th century 

and into the 20th century, the Times Herald 

changed management many times, but 

always kept its focus on local events. By the 

1980s, competition between The Dallas 

Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald 

had become fierce, and much of the city’s 

population was divided by their loyalty to 

one paper or the other. This rivalry finally 

came to an end in 1991, when the Times 

Herald closed due to a sharp decline in 

advertisers resulting from the recession of 

the late 1980s. Dallas was one of the last large 

U.S. cities to have two major newspapers. 115 

✧ 

Dallas County’s sixth courthouse, called “Old Red,” was 

built from 1890 to 1892 in the heart of downtown 

Dallas. Designed by M. S. Orlopp, the building is 

bounded by Houston Street, Main Street, and Commerce 

Street. In 2007 restoration of the Old Red Courthouse 

was completed at a cost of more than $3.5 million. 

Today, the Old Red Museum of Dallas County History & 

Culture is located in the building, one of the city’s most 

enduring and beloved architectural icons. 



✧ 

At the end of the nineteenth century, Dallas’ business scene comprised primarily small “mom and pop” stores like the F. Pitchford Meat Market. (c. 1900) 


CHAPTER IV 

B USINESS L EADERS O RGANIZE, TAKE C HARGE, 1900-1918 

According to the 1900 U.S. Census, 

Dallas was the third-largest city in Texas, 

behind San Antonio’s 53,211 citizens and 

Houston’s nearly 45,000 residents. By that 

time, Dallas had a population of 42,638, 

comprising 33,575 whites (78.7 percent) 

and 9,035 African Americans (21.2 percent), 

with the remaining portion consisting 

primarily of Hispanics. 1 

In Dallas: An Illustrated History, Darwin 

Payne notes that after the Civil War many 

southern cities had become obsessed with 

growing their populations, industries, and 

commercial activities in a conscious effort to 

turn away from their agrarian roots. This was 

certainly true of Dallas. While local leaders 

recognized the importance of growing the 

city’s cotton and flour markets, they aspired 

to be the largest city in Texas. Most of them 

knew this would require not only expanding 

existing industries but also diversifying the 

local economy .2 

And again the city’s business leaders 

would prove they were up to the challenge. 

In 1900 alone the city experienced a building 

boom in which 291 frame residences were 

built at a cost of $259,071, while forty brick 

and stone structures were constructed at a 

cost of $233,075. In addition, a streetcar 

system extension was built on Harwood and 

Washington streets and two electric urban 

streetcar lines were laid between Dallas and 

Fort Worth. The city also began construction 

of a new public library and paved 12,800 

feet of new streets. In the ensuing decade, 

other major construction projects would 

include financier J. B. Wilson’s eightstory 

Wilson Building, bounded by Main, 

Commerce, and Ervay streets, and the 

14-story Praetorian Building, the city’s first 

steel skyscraper. Erected in 1909 at the 

northeast corner of Main and Stone streets, 

this building was home to the Modern 

Order of Praetorians, a fraternal organization 

chartered to sell life insurance. 3 

But Dallas’ booming business environment 

at the dawn of the twentieth century was not 

simply the result of isolated efforts of 

enterprising individuals. Rather it was a time 

when business leaders joined forces to create 

formal channels through which they could 

dictate the city’s agenda and direct its 

development and progress. These concerted 

efforts produced a number of key business, 

economic, and political milestones in the first 

two decades of the new century, including 

establishing its Chamber of Commerce to 

seed a more favorable business climate in the 

city and thus attract more out-of-town 

businesses and visitors; forming the Citizens 

Association to spearhead the move to the more 

“business-friendly” commission form of 

government; beginning formal efforts to 

develop a master plan for the city’s long-term 

growth; attracting a regional branch of the 

Federal Reserve Bank; laying the groundwork 

for commercial aviation infrastructure and 

resources; and establishing the Dallas Cotton 

Exchange. The city achieved all this while 

sustaining the State Fair of Texas as an annual 

opportunity to showcase its businesses and 

show off its accomplishments. 

CHAPTER IV ✧ 35

CITY’ S FASCINATION 

WITH CARS 

SPURS AUTO- RELATED 

BUSINESSES 

In the early 1900s, Texas, like much of 

America, was being transformed from a rural 

landscape into an urban one. During the first 

decade of the twentieth century, the nation’s 

urban population grew three times more 

than its rural population. At this time, Dallas 

was bound by the Trinity River on the west 

side, Grand Avenue on the south side, 

Fitzhugh Avenue on the east, and Cedar 

Springs to the north (to the point where 

the Warwick Melrose Hotel now stands). 

From the Old Red courthouse just east of 

the Trinity, the city stretched mostly east 

toward the fairgrounds along three main 

arteries, Elm Street, Main Street, and 

Commerce Street. These and other smaller 

streets were traveled by horse-drawn carts, 

electric streetcars, and an increasing number 

of automobiles. 4 

✧ 

The city’s first car arrived in 1899, when Colonel 

E. H. R. (Ned) Green ordered a two-cylinder, two-seat 

car from a manufacturer in St. Louis. Green (left) is 

shown here with a driver in the historic car. 


Amid the building craze that swept 

through Dallas at the turn of the century, the 

city’s fascination with the automobile began 

to take root. As Darwin Payne notes, the 

initial curious interest quickly sprouted into 

a full-fledged obsession that would influence 

much of the city’s development patterns 

throughout the twentieth century. Dallas had 

gotten its first automobile in 1899 when 

Colonel E. H. R. (Ned) Green ordered a twocylinder, 

two-seat car from St. Louis Motor 

Carriage. Green was the son of Henrietta 

“Hetty” Green, renowned for being the first 

American woman to make a substantial 

✧ 

As Dallas was being transformed from an agriculturebased 

town into an industrial center in the early 1900s, 

the demand for electricity exploded. Wagon teams of 

Dallas Electric Light & Power Co. employees were a 

common sight on the city’s streets. 


impact on Wall Street. The automobile was 

shipped by rail to Terrell, Texas, at which 

time the manufacturer’s chief engineer drove 

it thirty miles to Dallas to deliver it to Green. 

The drive from Terrell to Dallas allegedly 

took five hours and ten minutes. 5 

In August 1903, The Dallas Morning News 

reported that Dallas was “rich in gasoline 

machines and steamers and now enjoys the 

distinction of possessing more automobiles 

than any city of its size in the South.” 6 

More than forty automobiles were allegedly 

roaming the streets of Dallas by that time. 

Dallas County residents voted that same 

year to approve a $500,000 bond package 

to expand and improve county roads. Over 

the next five years, the cost of a gallon of 

gas would drop locally from ninety cents to 

ten cents. 7 

During this time the automobile began 

to exert greater influence over business, 

politics, and daily life in Dallas. First and 

foremost, the auto industry provided jobs 

for Dallas residents, generated revenue to 

bolster the local economy, and offered new, 

high-end products in which well-to-do 

citizens could invest. A row of auto dealers’ 

showrooms materialized on Commerce 

Street between Lamar and Ervay, offering 

Cadillacs, Chalmers, Packards, Chevrolets, 

and Oldsmobiles. 8 

In 1907 the city issued its first ordinance 

regulating the operation of automobiles. 

There was a speed limit of eight miles per 

hour, owners had to possess and display 

licenses, and cars had to have bells or horns 

to warn others of their approach. One year 

later, the Dallas Police Department started 

using motorcycles to traverse the city’s roads 

to maintain order. In 1910 the State Fair 

of Texas held its first auto show, an event 

that continues to be one of the most popular 

aspects of the fair. That same year, Dr. 

G. Langley, a veterinarian, acquired a local 

dealership to sell Franklin automobiles. It 

would go on to become one of the nation’s 

leading distributorships. One year later, 

The Dallas Morning News began featuring 

a regular sixteen-page auto section, evidence 

of the growing demand for cars and the 

corresponding advertising revenue the paper 

could realize from this demand. 9 

✧ 

Even as automobiles became more prevalent in Dallas 

during the early 1900s, ox-drawn wagons were still used 

to deliver goods in town. (c. 1911, 1912) 



In 1911, Carl Sewell, Sr., established one 

of the city’s legendary auto dealerships. Still 

uncertain if cars were really going to catch 

on, Sewell’s company functioned not only as 

an auto dealership but also as a hardware 

store and a movie theater. Through his 

philosophy of focusing on customer service, 

Sewell quickly grew his auto dealership and 

was able to shed the hardware and movie 

businesses. The company would continue to 

thrive until the Great Depression, when 

three banks Sewell had invested his money 

in all closed on the same day, forcing him to 

close shop in Dallas and relocate to the small 

town of Crane in the newly discovered West 

Texas oil fields. After returning to Dallas in 

1941, Sewell rebuilt a loyal following. Today, 

Sewell is one of the state’s strongest brands, 

with Cadillac, HUMMER, Infiniti, GMC, 

Lexus, Pontiac, SAAB, and Buick dealerships 

in Dallas, Fort Worth, Grapevine, Plano, and 

San Antonio. 10 

In 1913, Ford Motor Company paid 

$50,000 for a tract of land at Canton and 

Henry streets where it constructed an 

assembly plant, the largest industrial facility 

in the city at the time. 11 The plant opened 

the following year and was soon producing 

5,000 cars a year. This marked the beginning 


of Ford’s presence in the city that would 

expand with construction of another 

assembly plant in 1934. Located on East 

Grand Avenue in East Dallas, this plant 

produced tractors, pickup trucks, and 

automobiles for farms, ranches, and small 

towns throughout the Southwest. 12 By the 

time Dallas hosted the Texas Centennial 

Exposition in 1936, Ford had such a strong 

presence in town that the company invested 

$2.25 million in the Exposition. 13 

As Darwin Payne observes, unlike older 

cities in the Northeast and Midwest that 

had been planned and built long before 

the advent of the automobile, Dallas was 

still relatively young and undeveloped at 

the time the car pervaded the city in the 

early 1900s. The city’s greatest periods of 

population growth occurred when the car— 

not the train or the carriage—was the 

dominant mode of transportation. As a 

result, cars exerted a significant influence on 

the city’s growth patterns as residential and 

commercial developments expanded out 

from the original downtown area. In contrast 

to many of the older and larger U.S. cities, 

Dallas grew out more than up, with more 

geographically dispersed suburbs connected 

by streets and thoroughfares for cars. 14 

RISE OF WHOLESALE, 

RETAIL, AND APPAREL 

MANUFACTURING 

Since their arrival in 1872 the railroads had 

played a major role in the growth of Dallas’ 

wholesale market. In the first half of the 

twentieth century, the city’s wholesale market, 

retail industry, and apparel manufacturing 

industry grew hand in hand, ultimately 

establishing Dallas as a top destination for 

store buyers and consumers alike. 

In the early 1900s, the Dallas Wholesale 

Merchants Trade Extension Excursions were 

inaugurated, with groups of merchants 

✧ 

This bustling scene at the Houston & Texas Central Railroad depot in 1908 illustrates the diverse modes of transportation 

used by citizens in the early 1900s. Even as automobiles became more popular, streetcars, horse-drawn carriages, and muledrawn 

flatbed wagons were still very much a part of the local landscape. 


traveling by train to surrounding towns 

promoting goods to local store owners. By 

1909, these trips touting the city’s markets 

were well established. That year, almost sixty 

Dallas businessmen boarded trains to 

promote the city’s good will and business 

potential to some eighty nearby towns. 15 

By this time, Dallas was also a recognized 

jobbing center, with a robust wholesale 

merchant business buying goods and bulk 

products from importers, wholesalers, or 

manufacturers and then selling them to 

retailers. In 1907 the city’s jobbing houses 

did business of $92.7 million. August Lorch 

moved his family to Dallas that year to 

start a ready-to-wear jobbing house. 

In 1929, Lorch would expand operations 

into the manufacturing field, making 

ruffled housedresses. Two decades later, his 

son, Lester Lorch, was still running the 

company successfully. 16 

✧ 

The 100,000th automobile rolled off the Ford Motor 

Company’s East Grand Avenue assembly plant in 

May 1956. 



✧ 

Wharton Motors at 704 Main Street was one of the early 

dealerships established in town to meet the growing 

demand for automobiles. 


✧ 

Oil and automobiles played key roles in the growth of 

business in Dallas and the overall transformation of the 

city from an agricultural center into an industrial 

economy. By the early 1900s downtown scenes like this 

one, where a Texaco truck sits in traffic in front of the 

Hilton Hotel and a Skillern’s drugstore, illustrated the 

city’s bustling business environment. 


In 1909, the Spring Merchants Meeting 

had 400 registered buyers, and one 

manufacturer of clothing exceeded $1 

million in sales. That same year, the newly 

established Dallas Chamber of Commerce 

had a contest for the best city slogan with a 

grand prize of $10. The winning slogan was: 

“Dallas, the business center of the Southwest.” 

Already, the city had adjusted its sights from 

CHAPTER IV ✧ 37

✧ 

Horse-drawn wagons lined up to unload a large shipment for the wholesale department at the Sanger Brothers store on Elm 

Street. (c. 1915) 


the North Texas prairie to the entire 

southwestern region of the United States. 17 

In 1914, Higginbotham-Bailey-Logan 

(later just Higginbotham-Bailey) was founded 

in Dallas as a wholesale business. Five years 

later, the company expanded operations into 

manufacturing with its “Paymaster” men’s 

work clothes line. In 1921, Higginbotham- 

Bailey would introduce “Virginia Hart” 

dresses, one of the city’s first steps in 

glamour fashion. 18 

One of the many retail businesses 

popping up along Elm Street during this 

period of dramatic growth was Neiman 

Marcus, located at Elm and Murphy. A 

modest store at the time, it would grow to 

become one of the city’s most widely 

recognized homegrown retail brands. The 

company was founded in 1907 by Abraham 

Lincoln “Al” Neiman, his wife, Carrie 

Marcus Neiman, and her older brother, 

Herbert Marcus. Herbert Marcus had been a 

buyer for Sanger Brothers and Carrie Marcus 

✧ 

Neiman had been an assistant blouse buyer 

and top salesperson for A. Harris and 

Company. Al Neiman had also been in 

department store sales and had met Carrie at 

the A. Harris store. 19 

With the country in the midst of an 

economic recession called the Panic of 1907, 

the three entrepreneurial retailers were 

deliberating how to invest $25,000 from a 

successful sales-promotion firm they had 

built in Atlanta, Georgia. One option was to 

acquire a franchise for a fledgling sugary 

soda pop business called Coca-Cola. They 

opted instead to launch a specialty store 

offering ready-to-wear women’s apparel 

and millinery of the highest quality. 

Many years later, CEO Stanley Marcus 

(Herbert’s oldest son) was quoted as saying, 

in jest, that the company was founded on 

bad business judgment. 20 

After a fire in 1913, Neiman Marcus 

moved to the corner of Main and Ervay 

streets in downtown Dallas. In the 1920s, 

As automobiles became more popular, “fine vehicle houses” such as Fife & Miller that sold horse-drawn buggies began to fade 

from the business landscape. The inset photo (upper left) shows an ostrich-drawn Fife & Miller buggy, which raced and beat 

a horse-drawn buggy at the 1903 State Fair of Texas. (c. 1903) 


Stanley Marcus joined the business, and 

Al Neiman sold his interest in the firm 

for $250,000. While the store’s wealthier 

clientele initially represented mainly the 

cotton aristocracy of East Texas and North 

Central Texas, the store later gained a loyal 

following from many of the East Texas and 

West Texas mushroom millionaires created 

by the oil boom in the 1930s and 1940s. 21 

Over the years, Neiman Marcus earned a 

reputation as an innovative force in the highend 

retail industry. In 1938 the company 

introduced its annual fashion award, which 

not only honored outstanding designers but 

also promoted the store itself. In 1951 

Neiman Marcus opened its first branch store 

at Preston Center in Dallas (though this store 

would later move to NorthPark Center), 

followed by a Houston branch in 1955. The 

first of the annual Fortnights—two-week 

sales events featuring merchandise and 

cultural exhibits from other nations—was 

held in 1957. These events embodied the 

company’s successful blending of “the 

cultural with the commercial” and attracted 

international attention. Neiman Marcus was 

also the first retail store in Texas to mount a 

major national advertising campaign. More 

recently, the company’s December holiday 

catalog has become a widely publicized and 

greatly anticipated event. Since its humble 

beginnings in 1907, the company’s success 

in selling the store and its mystique, rather 

than just the products in the store, has 

enabled it to become a Texas institution of 

international renown. 22 

AFRICAN- AMERICAN 

BUSINESSES, 

PROFESSIONALS 

MAKE PROGRESS 

In the early 1900s the living conditions, 

business environment, and professional 

opportunities for African Americans had not 

improved much since the early days of 

Reconstruction following the Civil War. 

Most still worked in menial positions, such 

as sharecroppers, downtown porters, or 

house servants. But several businesses were 

established by African Americans after the 

turn of the century that would prove to be 

milestones in the city’s history. 

In the early 1900s the Penny Savings 

Bank of Dallas was established at 595 Elm 

Street. It was the first African-Americanowned 

bank in the city. One of the bank’s 

investors was Dr. Benjamin R. Bluitt, who in 

1906 established Bluitt’s Sanitarium, the 

city’s first hospital facility for African 


Americans. Many of the city’s top African- 

American physicians practiced medicine at 

the sanitarium until 1914, when Bluitt 

closed the facility and moved his medical 

office to 2411 ½ Main Street in Deep Ellum. 23 

Born in Mexia, Texas, in 1864, Bluitt 

received his early education from a 

combination of home schooling and 

instruction at a rural schoolhouse. After he 

expressed the desire to attend college, his 

stepfather, Albert Conner, sold a portion of 

his farmland to pay for tuition at Wiley College 

in Marshall, Texas. (Established by the 

Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist 

Episcopal Church in 1873 and later chartered 

in 1882, Wiley College was the second college 

established for African Americans in Texas.) 

Following graduation from Wiley, Bluitt 

attended Meharry Medical Department of 

Central Tennessee Methodist Episcopal 

College in Nashville, the same college where 

many of Dallas’ early African-American 

doctors received their medical degrees. 24 

After performing clinical work in 

Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City, 

Bluitt moved to Dallas in 1888 and started 

his medical practice that year. He was the 

first African-American surgeon in Texas. 

While continuing to practice medicine, he 

began investing in real estate in 1890, 

acquiring a residential lot for $850 in the 

M. H. Hughes Addition (which later became 

the Hall & Thomas neighborhood). He 

acquired a number of residential and 

commercial properties in the years ahead, 

and he owned and raced horses. 25 

But it was his establishment of Bluitt’s 

Sanitarium in 1906 that earned him the 

greatest notoriety. The sanitarium was 

located at 504 Commerce Street in the Bluitt 

Building, which also housed Dr. Marcellus 

Cooper (the first African-American dentist in 

Dallas) and Daniel Mason (the first African- 

American attorney in Dallas). Bluitt continued 

to practice medicine in Dallas until 1920, 

when he moved to Chicago to achieve the 

financial security of working in a large 

hospital, which was not possible for African- 

American physicians in Dallas until 1954. 26 

FOUNDING OF DALLAS 

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 

In 1893, Dallas’ business leaders took a 

historic step in formalizing their commitment 

to growing the city’s commercial activities 

when they established the Commercial Club, 

forerunner to the Chamber of Commerce. 

For years, leaders such as Alex Sanger, 

W. H. Gaston, J. S. Armstrong, T. L. Marsalis, 

and J. T. Trezevant had invested countless 

hours and thousands of dollars to help 

the city attract railroads, start state fairs, 

build bridges across the Trinity River, lay 

streetcar tracks through town, and develop 

neighborhoods for the city’s growing 

population. But the formation of the Dallas 

Commercial Club marked the first time they 

had come together as a group, agreed on a 

common mission, and forged a collective 

vision for the future of business in their city. 

The Club’s mission was to actively promote 

Dallas to other major cities throughout the 

Southwest with the goal of attracting new 

businesses, customers, and residents. 27 

Eight years later, in 1901, Commercial 

Club members G. H. Schoellkopf, Alex 

Sanger, E. O. Tenison, and Robert Munger 

led a group of fifty of Dallas’ most prominent 

business and civic leaders on a promotional 

trip to Oklahoma. The group toured a 

number of cities and towns throughout their 

neighboring state. They modeled their 

activities and promotional materials after 

those used by a similar group of businessmen 

from St. Louis who had paid a trade visit to 

Dallas earlier in the year. This trip was 

significant because it was the first time 

Dallas had “taken its show on the road.” In 

the past, business and civic leaders had 

dressed up their town to attract visitors, but 

this inaugural trip demonstrated a more 

aggressive attitude and proactive approach 

to promoting all that their city had to offer 

to outsiders. 28 

✧ 

Established in 1907, J. Schepps Bakery & Confectionery, 

located at 2225 South Ervay in South Dallas, quickly 

became a thriving business. 

COURTESY OF THE DALLAS JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

✧ 

In 1911, Neiman Marcus was located at the corner of Elm and Murphy. 


Following this initial trip, the Commercial 

Club embarked upon annual promotional 

trips in which groups of its members boarded 

trains for West Texas, East Texas, New Mexico, 

the Panhandle, and Austin. The objectives of 

these trips were twofold: to observe and 

“borrow” best practices that other cities were 

using to grow business, and to promote 

Dallas as a great pace to live, do business, 

and collaborate with as a trading partner. 29 

CHAPTER IV ✧ 39

✧ 

African-American laborers cleared soil to prepare the foundation of a storage building for August A. Busch & Co. in Dallas 

in 1904. The vast majority of jobs for African Americans at that time were menial. 


On the Commercial Club trip in 1907, 

more than 50 members traveled by train to 

Austin. Among the group were bankers, 

jewelers, telephone and telegraph reps, and 

cotton reps. A group of reporters from several 

Dallas newspapers joined the businessmen 

along with a fifty-piece band to entertain the 

traveling troop and citizens of Austin. 30 

The city’s wholesale market benefited 

greatly from these promotional trips. With 

$54 million of wholesale business in 1900, 

the city had set a goal of reaching $100 

million by 1910. Thanks to the Commercial 

Club’s promotional efforts throughout the 

decade, the city’s wholesale business reached 

$125 million by 1910. These Commercial 

Club trips also helped establish the city as a 

convention destination for industry and 

trade associations as well as political parties. 31 

The 150,000 Club (sometimes written as 

the Hundred and Fifty-Thousand Club) was 

another group of local presidents and CEOs 

that worked in concert with the Commercial 

Club to promote the city. Formed in 1905 

with the goal to propel Dallas’ population 

beyond the 150,000 mark as soon as 

possible, the club sought to establish Dallas 

as not only the largest but also the preeminent 

city in the Southwest. By 1910, the 

city had grown to more than 92,000 

residents, an increase of 116 percent since 

1900. But Dallas was still third in the state 

behind San Antonio and Houston. 32 The city 

finally eclipsed the 150,000 mark in the 1920 

census, with a count of 158,976 residents. 33 

On the evening of December 3, 1908, 

members of the Commercial Club, the 

150,000 Club, the Freight Bureau, and the 

Trade League met in the Commercial 

Auditorium on the second floor of the 

Cotton Belt Building at Commerce and 

Lamar streets to discuss the formation of a 

strong, centralized Chamber of Commerce. 

Though the holiday shopping season was 

already in full swing, retail icons like Alex 

Sanger took time out of their busy schedules 

to attend the meeting. Banker J. Howard 

Ardrey, who had served as president of 

the Commercial Club, led the discussion 

about the transition to the new Chamber 

of Commerce structure. Ardrey commented 

on the plans in a subsequent newspaper 

interview, saying, “The combination (of the 

four organizations) will make a good strong 

club. The intention is to finance it so that it 

will be able to take care of the biggest 

proposition that may come along. The idea 

is to put the most influential men in the city 

on the directory.” 34 

By December 15, 1908, the Chamber’s 

board of directors had been elected, including 

J. B. Wilson, Alex Sanger, J. T. Trezevant, 

and G. B. Dealey. The group decided to put 

off the remaining organizational steps 

until after the new year. In the opening days 

of 1909, the board of directors chose 

L. O. Daniel, one of the leaders of the 

city’s burgeoning wholesale market, as the 

Chamber’s first president. Daniel had arrived 

in Dallas around 1900 and established 

the city’s first wholesale millinery business, 

an industry that would become more 

prominent in the 1920s and 1930s. On 

January 21, 1909, John R. Babcock was 

chosen as the Chamber’s first secretary. 35 

From 1910 to 1916 the Dallas Chamber 

of Commerce produced the kind of results 

its founders had hoped for. During that time, 

it helped establish or relocate to Dallas 

more than ninety manufacturing factories, 130 

wholesale houses, and another 850 companies 

employing thousands of people in a variety 

of industries. In addition, it organized more 

than ten trade trips during that time and 

conducted an advertising campaign promoting 

Dallas as the educational center of Texas. 36 

The Chamber also helped secure more 

than 140 conventions in the city during 

this time, including a national tractor 

demonstration that attracted more than 

90,000 people from all over the Southwest. 37 

In 1912, the Chamber collaborated with 

the Dallas Advertising League, which had 

been founded in 1908, to host the Eighth 

Annual Convention of the Associated 

Advertising Clubs of America for advertising 

professionals around the nation. At the end 

of the formal convention, which was titled 

“A Thousand Mile Ride Through the Heart 

of Texas,” attendees boarded the Katy train 

for the Circle Tour, traveling to Waco, San 

Antonio, Galveston, and Houston before 

returning to Dallas. Following the conference, 

Julius Schneider, advertising counsel at The 

Chicago Tribune, wrote a letter to Richard 

Haughton, Dallas Advertising League secretary, 

congratulating him on the conference and 

thanking him for his efforts. (Haughton 

would go on to become chairman of the 

Texas Advertising Association and eventually 

president of the Salesmanship Club of 

Dallas, in addition to working as vice 

president and general manager of Motor 

Freight Lines, Inc.) In the letter to Haughton, 

Schneider wrote, “Certainly it will be a long 

time before advertising men, the country 

over, will cease talking about Dallas, Texas, 

and the remarkable manner in which its 

advertising men handled the big proposition 

and made it a valuable advertisement for the 

City and the Commonwealth.” This sentiment, 

voiced repeatedly by various conventioneers 

traveling to Dallas during this time period, 

described the important role such conventions 

played in elevating the city’s image and 

earning the respect of businessmen around 

the country. At a meeting later in 1912, 

members of the Associated Ad Clubs of the 

State of Texas estimated that the national 

advertising convention and subsequent train 

tour had elicited $1.25 million worth of free 

publicity for the state. 38 

Among its most important goals early on, 

the Dallas Chamber of Commerce sought 

to establish a major university in the city. 

In 1910 an influential group of Texas 

Methodists began considering the advantages 

of relocating Southwestern University in 

Georgetown, Texas, to Dallas. The Chamber 

formed a committee to support bidding for 

relocation. Officials of the Texas Methodist 

Church eventually voted 21 to 13 to keep 

Southwestern in Georgetown. 39 After this 

failed attempt, the Methodist governing 

bodies in the state decided to create a new 

university in North Texas. Several Dallas 

Chamber of Commerce committees helped 

organize the city’s offer to give $300,000 and 


666.5 acres in support of this effort. Most of 

this land was donated by William W. Caruth, 

with the remaining portion given by the 

widow of John S. Armstrong. Following a 

series of meetings held in Austin in January 

1911, Dallas was chosen as the location of 

the new university on February 1. Formally 

established later that year, Southern Methodist 

University would eventually open its doors 

on September 23, 1915, with a freshman 

class of 456 students. 40 Five years later, the 

Department of Commerce at SMU was 

founded at the request of the Dallas business 

community. In 1921 the department was 

renamed the School of Commerce, which 

would become the Edwin L. Cox School 

of Business in 1978, named in honor of 

Dallas businessman and school benefactor, 

Edwin L. Cox. Since their founding, SMU 

and the Cox School of Business have played 

prominent roles in meeting the educational 

needs of DFW’s working professionals and 

employers alike, while building strong, 

mutually beneficial connections with the 

local business community through executive 

lecture series, mentoring programs, 

internships, and recruitment. 41 

BUSINESS LEADERS 

FORM CITIZENS 

ASSOCIATION TO EXERT 

GREATER CONTROL 

OVER MUNICIPAL 

GOVERNMENT 

At about the same time that discussions 

were being held to form the Dallas Chamber 

of Commerce, the city’s top business leaders 

were also hatching a plan to exert greater 

control over local politics. As with most 

growing U.S. cities at that time, Dallas’ 

impulse toward growth and progress— 

spurred by businessmen and entrepreneurs— 

had outpaced its government’s ability to 

build or upgrade infrastructure and provide 

supporting services. The city’s existing 

alderman system had not been able to 

satisfactorily address the challenges of 

providing adequate streets and sidewalks, 

sanitation and sewage, police and fire 

protection, public education, regulation of 

public utilities, and clean water. In 1906 the 

city’s treasury was deep in the red with no 

viable plan to fix the fiscal crisis. Citizens 

were putting up with deplorable public 

services and deteriorating infrastructure. 

Poorly maintained streets were crumbling, 

raw sewage was being dumped into 

the Trinity River, and the city’s water supply 

was uncertain. 42 

✧ 

Built in the 1893 by St. Louis investors Adolph Busch and Otto Herald, the Oriental Hotel (domed structure on right side of 

street) on Main Street was the city’s most elegant hotel until Busch erected the Adolphus Hotel in 1914. 


To remedy the situation, a group of the 

city’s top business leaders organized a push 

for a new form of government. They called 

for replacing the alderman system with the 

commission system, in which citizens elect a 

mayor and four commissioners who divide 

responsibilities for various functions such as 

water, streets, finance, fire, and police. 43 On 

April 3, 1906, Dallas’ citizens voted to install 

the commission form of government by a 

vote of 2,183 to 401. Mayor Curtis Smith 

amiably accepted the new system at the 

time. Recognizing that the new form of 

government, in and of itself, could not solve 

the city’s problems, Henry D. Lindsley, 

founder of Southwestern Life Insurance 

Company, called a meeting of prominent 

businessmen on March 4, 1907. Attendees 

included J. B. Wilson, Alex Sanger, E. M. 

Kahn, George H. Schoellkopf, and Royal 

Ferris. At the meeting, the businessmen 

formed the Citizens Association, whose 

immediate goal was to make governmental 

and regulatory changes that would bring 

about a more favorable business climate in 

the city. Within a week of forming the 

Citizens Association, Lindsley reported 1,300 

members, representing a significant block of 

the city’s estimated 7,800 eligible voters. 44 

Darwin Payne notes that the formation of 

this group represented a crucial moment in 

the history of business in Dallas, similar to 

the establishment of the Commercial Club 

just over a decade earlier, yet different in 

fundamental ways. Rather than proactively 

promoting Dallas as a great place to do 

business, as the Commercial Club had done, 

the Citizens Association wielded the full 

force of its membership to harness the new 

form of government to promote a 

pro-business agenda. It was the first instance 

in which Dallas businessmen formed an 

instrument through which they could 

control local politics. 45 

Under Lindsley’s leadership, the Citizens 

Association proposed a slate of non-partisan 

business-minded candidates for the mayor 

and commissioner positions in the 1907 

elections. When the votes were counted, the 

Citizens Association candidates had won 

by a three-to-two margin. Stephen J. Hay, 

secretary-treasurer of the Texas Paper 

Company and a director of Lindsley’s 

Southwestern Life, was elected mayor. The 

four commissioners were real estate 

professional and former Dallas County 

assistant treasurer, Charles B. Gillespie, who 

managed revenues and taxation; attorney 

Henry L. Seay, who ran the fire and police 

commission; founder of the city’s first 

parking company, William Doran, who 

oversaw public works; and former city water 

superintendent and police commissioner, 

Dan Sullivan, who ran the city’s waterworks. 46 

From its founding the Citizens Association 

proposed and pushed through a slate of 

business-friendly candidates for mayor and 

commissioner every election year. But it is 

arguable whether those candidates took 

into consideration the most basic needs of 

Dallas’ working-class citizens. According to 

historian Patricia Gower, “At-large elections 

of commissioners watered down the voice 

of individual neighborhoods and enabled 

commissioners to prioritize services to 

downtown and upper- and middle-class 

neighborhoods.” 47 Meanwhile, poor and 

working-class white neighborhoods as well as 

African-American and Hispanic communities 

continued to lack basic services such as 

CHAPTER IV ✧ 41

modern plumbing, electricity, and trash 

collection for many decades. 48 

As Michael Phillips observes, following 

the move to the commission form of 

government, the city’s “commercial elites” 

controlled Dallas to a degree not achieved by 

peers in most other growing southern cities. 

With the city’s top business leaders in 

control of Dallas, neighborhoods became 

increasingly segregated by race and class. 

African Americans lived along the city’s 

floodplain, while Dallas’ more prosperous 

residents retreated to insulated enclaves on 

Ross Avenue and The Cedars, an affluent 

neighborhood south of downtown surrounded 

by a natural thicket of cedar trees. 49 

The potent combination of the commission 

form of government and the Citizens 

Association marked the beginning of a trend 

that has continued in Dallas to this day 

with few exceptions. Since that time, the 

city’s business leaders, working through 

governmental channels, have established a 

long track record of pro-business policies 

that, while not always representing the 

interests of its entire population, have 

nonetheless helped make the city a powerful 

force in global business. 

FLOOD OF 1908 

SPURS MASTER- 

PLANNING EFFORTS 

On Sunday morning, May 24, 1908, a 

torrential downpour hit Dallas. By the end 

of the day, fifteen inches had fallen. This 

staggering amount of rain was compounded 

by the fact that during the preceding three 

days, heavy rains had fallen upriver and the 

watershed around Dallas was still saturated 

from a major flood one month earlier. 50 The 

Trinity River rose steadily over the next 

twenty-four hours and on Tuesday, May 26, 

the river peaked at 52.6 feet, drowning five 

people and forcing some 4,000 people to 

flee their houses. The floodwaters did an 

estimated $2.5 million in property damages 

to the city. By the time the floodwaters 

receded, the “Flood of 1908” had become 

the most devastating in the city’s history, 

surpassing the damage of major floods in 

1844, 1866, 1871, and 1890. 51 

In his memoir about growing up in Dallas 

called Diaper Days of Dallas, Ted Dealey, son 

of G. B. Dealey, recounts the flood damage. 

“I can remember standing on the courthouse 

lawn when the big flood of 1908 came and 

looking across two or three miles of water 

toward Oak Cliff,” Dealey writes. “The 

workers in Dallas who lived in Oak Cliff 

could not come to their jobs for more than a 

week unless they were ‘big shots’ in their 

organizations. Then they crossed from Oak 

Cliff to Dallas on a little steamer [called the] 

Nellie Maurine.” 52 The cost of crossing on the 

steamer was fifty cents. According to Dealey, 

the water flooded the heart of downtown 

Dallas, “spreading death and destruction 

over a large area, including the west end of 

the business district.” 53 

Mayor Stephen J. Hay called a meeting of 

the Commercial Club to spearhead a relief 

fund to finance rebuilding efforts. Again, 

the city’s business leaders stepped to the 

forefront. Thousand-dollar contributors 

included Royal A. Ferris, president of the 

American Exchange Bank; Christopher 

Columbus Slaughter, one of the nation’s most 

prominent cattlemen; C. A. Keating, a farm 

implement manufacturer; Ascher Silberstein 

of Dallas Oil & Refining Company; and the 

Sanger Brothers company. By June, the relief 

fund eclipsed $49,000. 54 

✧ 

Dallas residents gathered on the east side of the Trinity 

River to observe flood waters sweeping under the 

Commerce Street Viaduct in 1908. 



If there was a silver lining to the tragedy 

of the Flood of 1908, it was difficult to see at 

the time. But Dallas Chamber of Commerce 

historian Andy Deshong notes that the flood 

made Dallas residents aware of some of the 

city’s shortcomings, including the dire need 

for more strategic long-range planning. 

Among the specific needs identified in the 

aftermath of the flood were some means 

of controlling the river during torrential 

downpours, a bridge across the Trinity 

above the record flood crest, and a single 

union station rather than five separate 

railroad depots. 55 

Amplifying the need for long-range civic 

planning was the city’s booming population. 

From 1900 to 1910, Dallas’ population grew 

116 percent, from 42,639 to 92,104. The 

increased number of people, cars, wagons, 

and businesses were putting tremendous 

strain on the city’s infrastructure and 

creating untenable traffic conditions on the 

city’s roads, ranging from dangerous railroad 

crossings for pedestrians on Pacific Avenue 

to wagon lines backed up for blocks from 

the H&TC depot. 

G.B. Dealey, publisher of The Dallas 

Morning News, led the effort to rebuild a 

concrete structure where the bridge had 

been, proposing a causeway he had seen in 

Kansas City as the model to emulate. Dealey 

also spearheaded the larger, long-range city 

planning effort. Over the course of four 

months in 1909, The Dallas Morning News 

ran a series of editorials and articles 

suggesting improvements to be made. The 

series totaled almost 900 columns of 

material and included some 400 photos 

illustrating the results of successful longrange 

planning in other cities. 56 

The much-discussed topic of long-range 

city planning came to a head at a Chamber 

of Commerce board of directors meeting on 

January 28, 1910. The Chamber board 

endorsed the need for better planning and 

formed a committee comprising Rhodes S. 

Baker, Alex Sanger, J.B. Wilson, Henry D. 

Lindsley, and Dealey. After much study and 

deliberation, the committee recommended 

the creation of the Dallas City Plan and 

Improvement League, with Lindsley as 

chairman. 57 The Chamber and newly formed 

Dallas City Plan and Improvement League 

subsequently persuaded the City Commission 

and Park Board to hire George E. Kessler 

to develop a master plan for the city 

for $10,000. 58 

Kessler had moved with his widowed 

mother to Dallas from Frankenhausen, 

Germany, in 1865 at the age of three. As a 

young man, he had worked as a cashboy at 

the Sanger Harris Dry Goods store before 

moving back to Europe, where he studied 

civic design in Germany, France, and Russia. 

Upon returning to the United States, Kessler 

had earned considerable acclaim as a civic 

planner and designer in St. Louis, where he 

designed a railroad-owned amusement park 

and drew up a plan for the development of 

the city’s park-boulevard system. In 1904 he 

had designed and landscaped the grounds 

for the St. Louis World’s Fair. That same 

year, he redesigned the grounds of Fair Park 

in Dallas. 59 

As William McDonald observes, Kessler 

knew that Dallas was a typical frontier 

railroad town. It had evolved and taken 

shape largely according to the short-sighted 

whims of developers and land speculators 


who did not consider how people, wagons, 

and other forms of transit would move 

into, out of, and through the city via 

thoroughfares. Early civic leaders also had 

neglected to properly space houses and 

buildings to allow for future expansion. 60 

Kessler presented his plan to city officials 

in 1911. He recommended nine areas for 

improvement, including rerouting the Trinity 

River by digging a new channel between 

Dallas and Oak Cliff with levees built 

alongside it for flood protection; constructing 

a belt railroad that looped around the city to 

eliminate rail congestion in town and several 

dangerous railroad crossings for pedestrians 

and automobiles; and creating a central 

Union Depot, thus eliminating five different 

stations in town. Kessler also recommended 

straightening and widening downtown 

streets to ease congestion caused by 

automobile, wagon, and foot traffic and 

developing a system of parks linked by a 

series of parkways and boulevards. 61 

Bold in its vision for the future of the city 

and comprehensive in its scope, Kessler’s 

plan initially met with resistance, particularly 

the suggestion to tear out the railroad tracks 

on Pacific Avenue and replace them with a 

broad boulevard. Later that year, the city 

voted to approve a $650,000 bond package 

to fund some of Kessler’s recommendations. 

Over the next decade, various elements of 

his plan were implemented. But it was not 

until 1928 that the most significant of 

Kessler’s recommendations were acted upon. 62 

That year Dallas finally embarked upon 

an effort to control the Trinity River, funded 

by a $23.9 million city bond issue and another 

$6.5 million approved by county voters. The 

project, which would run into the 1930s, 

sought to mitigate the risk of future flooding 

and convert the former floodplain into land 

for industrial development. The board of 

supervisors of the City and County Dallas 

Levee Improvement District managed the 

project, in which fifteen dragline machines 

moved twenty-one million cubic yards of 

earth over the course of three and one-half 

years—roughly one-twelfth the amount of 

earth moved during the Panama Canal 

project that took place over the span of more 

than a decade in the early 1900s. 63 When 

compared to Dallas’ more recent Victory 

Park development begun in the late 1990s, 

which moved 750,000 cubic yards of dirt, 

the enormity of the Trinity rerouting project 

becomes evident. 64 

This monumental effort also involved 

rebuilding and rerouting storm sewers, 

moving railroad lines, relaying utility lines, 

✧ 

Funded by a $1.5 million gift from Mary Nored Fincher, 

the widow of Joseph Wylie Fincher, one of the four 

original stockholders of Humble Oil, the Joseph Wylie 

Fincher Memorial Building was dedicated on November 

4, 1954. It was the first building of the Cox School of 

Business, established at Southern Methodist University in 

1920. Since that time, the Cox School has played a 

prominent role in meeting the educational needs of 

working professionals and businesses throughout Dallas 

and around the world. (October, 1974) 

COURTESY OF THE DEGOLYER LIBRARY AT SOUTHERN METHODIST 

UNIVERSITY—SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHS 

AND PUBLICATIONS. 

creating a new confluence of the river’s east 

and west forks, digging a new channel for 

the new riverbed, constructing twenty-five 

miles of thirty-foot high levees, and building 

four new bridges across the river. In 

addition, Industrial Boulevard, which still 

exists today, was created during this project 

to connect the four viaducts on the east side 

of the east levee. The value of the reclaimed 

bottom land increased from $3.2 million to 

$47 million as a result of this project. 65 

From a broader historical perspective this 

effort gave an ironic twist to one of the most 

perplexing chapters in the city’s history. 

Ever since John Neely Bryan had built his 

cabin, opened his modest trading post, and 

begun promoting his city as the headway of 

the Trinity River, many of the city’s most 

prominent civic and business leaders had 

clung to the hope that the river would 

someday be transformed into a navigable 

waterway for importing and exporting 

people and products. By finally taming the 

river in a fashion that would effectively keep 

it out of the way of the city’s day-to-day 

business, Dallas’ leaders acknowledged—at 

least implicitly—that the Trinity would not 

serve as a viable transportation channel. 

As Darwin Payne notes, in addition to 

providing a more secure environment in 

which businesses could operate and citizens 

could live over the long term, the land 

reclamation project of 1928 had an 

immediate positive impact on the local 

economy by providing a source of jobs 

for some 1,000 people. Of even greater 

significance, it represented the city’s first 

effort that required collaboration and 

coordination of municipal, county, state, and 

federal agencies along with utility companies, 

railroads, and private firms—all managed 

by the City and County Dallas Levee 

Improvement District’s board of supervisors. 66 

The project also reclaimed approximately 

10,000 acres near downtown for industrial 

development. Leslie A. Stemmons and his 

sons, John and Storey, led the Trinity 

Industrial Project, which sought to develop 

the flat land for industrial use. While the 

10,000 acres would not be fully developed 

until after World War II, the effort cleared 

the way—literally and figuratively—for 

Trammell Crow’s massive development 

projects in the 1950s and 1960s that would 

result in the Dallas Market Center, the World 

Trade Center, and the Apparel Mart, among 

other structures. 67 

BUSINESS LEADERS LURE 

THE FEDERAL RESERVE 

BANK TO TOWN 

In 1913, Dallas was named by the U.S. 

Census Bureau as an “emerging” metropolis, 

one of twenty-five American cities with 

populations between 100,000 and 200,000. 

Most of the other cities on this list were 

considerably older than Dallas and east of 

the Mississippi River. 68 

1913 also marked the city’s best year for 

property sales up to that time, with some 

$45 million changing hands in property 

transfers. Two notable 99-year leases were 

also signed that year. Karl Hoblitzelle leased 

property on the north side of Elm Street to 

establish movie and vaudeville houses; and 

Herbert Marcus leased a site for the new 

Neiman Marcus store at Main and Ervay 

streets. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Company 

paid $50,000 for a tract of land at Canton 

and Henry where it would construct an 

assembly plant, the largest industrial facility 

in the city at the time. Munger Place, Winnetka 

Heights, and Highland Park residential 

developments were open by this time, 

providing exclusive housing for the city’s 

burgeoning affluent and upper-middle class. 69 

By almost every measure, business in 

Dallas was humming along nicely. So much 

so that the city’s business leaders might well 

have been tempted to cruise along 

comfortably at their current rate of progress. 

Instead, a group of business leaders 

mounted another concerted effort to attract 

a branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, 

CHAPTER IV ✧ 43

ecognizing the stimulus that such a 

resource would provide to the city’s banking 

industry and overall business environment. 

Shortly after Woodrow Wilson was 

elected president in 1912, he decided that 

the nation’s financial system and general 

business climate needed to be stabilized. 

After implementing a reduction in tariffs, 

President Wilson set his sights on the 

banking and monetary system. Bankers, 

political leaders, and members of the 

business community agreed that the national 

banking system, which had been established 

during the Civil War, was flawed. Wilson 

designed a system that combined the best of 

a regional system with the oversight of a 

central board. His work culminated in the 

Federal Reserve Act of 1913, signed into law 

on December 23, 1913. 70 

This act stipulated the creation of twelve 

Federal Reserve Bank district branches. A 

number of established and up-and-coming 

cities throughout the country immediately 

jumped into the competition to become 

one of the regional Federal Reserve Bank 

headquarters. Just as Dallas’ business leaders 

helped secure the railroads in the early 1870s 

and sustain the State Fair of Texas through 

great trials and tribulations toward the end of 

the nineteenth century, they resolved to beat 

Houston, Fort Worth, and New Orleans in the 

competition for the Eleventh District branch. 71 

Representatives of the city’s banks, the 

Chamber of Commerce, the Dallas Cotton 

Exchange, and The Dallas Morning News joined 

forces to prepare Dallas’ bid, led by publisher 

G. B. Dealey and Dallas Clearinghouse 

representative and banker J. Howard Ardrey. 72 

Ardrey, one of the Chamber’s founders, was 

chairman of the committee that developed 

and implemented the campaign to secure 

Dallas as the site of the Eleventh District 

Branch. Chamber President C.W. Hobson 

and Secretary John R. Babcock served as 

Ardrey’s lieutenants. 73 

The Dallas contingent initially sent 

several representatives to Washington, D.C., 

to state the case for Dallas, but the trip was 

deemed a failure. Ardrey and his committee 

members subsequently regrouped to bolster 

their proposal. As part of this effort, they 

created a fact booklet about Dallas’ economic 

capabilities and business milestones. 74 

Dealey, Ardrey, and two reporters from 

The Dallas Morning News, Tom Flinty, Jr., and 

Mark L. Goodwin, continued to communicate 

with two influential Texans on President 

Wilson’s team of officials charged with 

site inspections and selection, addressing 

telegrams to “Mercury” (Postmaster General 

44 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D 

Albert S. Burleson) and “Tacitus” (presidential 

adviser E. M. House). 75 

Finally an opportunity presented itself 

when the Dallas contingent learned that 

Burleson planned to travel by train from St. 

Louis to Texas to further assess the potential 

sites in the state. Ardrey and Flinty managed 

to board the same train from St. Louis that 

Burleson was on in hopes of making their 

case for Dallas face to face with the 

Postmaster General. The two delegates 

intercepted Burleson as he was entering his 

modest Pullman lower berth and invited him 

to join them in the more spacious drawing 

room they had reserved. 76 

During the meeting, which lasted into the 

early hours of the morning as the train 

traversed the countryside, the two men 

presented the merits of Dallas to their 

captive audience of one. According to 

Ardrey, the train ride gave the Dallas duo a 

“long and uninterrupted interview with him 

[Burleson], in which we succeeded not only 

in convincing him that Dallas should be the 

choice, but also in arousing his enthusiastic 

interest.” Burleson and House subsequently 

presented Dallas’ case to Treasury Secretary 

William G. McAdoo and President Wilson. 77 

On April 13, 1914, The Dallas Morning 

News ran the front page headline, “Dallas 

Selected for One of the Twelve Regional 

Reserve Bank Cities,” announcing that the 

city had been chosen as the headquarters for 

the Eleventh Federal Reserve District. At the 

time, the Eleventh District covered all of Texas, 

most of Louisiana, southern Oklahoma, 

southern New Mexico, and five counties in 

Arizona. (The Arizona counties transferred 

to the Twelfth District in 1977, and the 

Oklahoma counties transferred to the Tenth 

District in 1984.) 78 

While Houston and Fort Worth were 

disappointed by the decision, New Orleans 

was the loudest in voicing its disapproval. 

Though Dallas and New Orleans had 

comparably sized banking operations at 

the time, the selection committee noted 

that Dallas’ banking business had more 

than doubled in the past decade and so was 

growing, whereas New Orleans’ was stagnant. 79 

Like the other eleven Federal Reserve Bank 

district branches selected by President 

Wilson’s committee, the Eleventh District 

branch in Dallas opened its doors for 

business on November 16, 1914. Temporarily 

located in rented space on the first floor of 

the Guaranty State Bank and Trust Company 

at 1305 Main Street, the bank’s twenty-seven 

employees set about the task of making 

loans available to member banks and 

deploying a more effective system for 

collecting and clearing checks. 80 

The impact of the Dallas Fed on local 

business was dramatic and swift. The Federal 

Reserve branch immediately brought $6.5 

million in capitalization compared to the 

combined $5 million in capital of local 

banks. 81 As Darwin Payne points out, this 

allowed Dallas to expand its influence 

beyond Texas throughout the Southwest 

overnight. By 1914, Texas had $21 million 

more in national banking capital and surplus 

than Missouri. While banking was still very 

much a local business at the time, Dallas 

businesses suddenly had ready access to 

national capital infused at the local level 

through the Federal Reserve branch. With 

greater access to more capital, the city’s 

business leaders were able to expand 

existing operations, initiate new projects, 

and even launch new companies. The 

availability of capital also garnered the 

attention of outside firms that were 

considering relocating their operations. It 

proved to be particularly helpful to the city 

in attracting independent oil operators and 

oil services firms throughout the 1920s and 

1930s, as the oil industry helped buffer the 

local economy from the full effects of the 

Great Depression. 82 

COTTON INDUSTRY 

MATURES WITH 

ESTABLISHMENT OF 

DALLAS COTTON 

EXCHANGE 

At the turn of the century, cotton was 

the undisputed king of Dallas, which had 

become the world’s largest inland cotton 

market. By that time, one-sixth of the world’s 

cotton crop was grown within a 150-mile 

radius of Dallas. 83 In addition, thanks to the 

innovations and efforts of men like Robert S. 

Munger, the city was the largest producer of 

✧ 

African-American laborers harvested cotton on farms 

throughout Dallas County. 


ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.

cotton gin machinery, saddlery, and harnesses 

in the world and was one of the largest 

manufacturers of agricultural implements. 84 

In the early 1900s, cotton merchants 

from around the world were moving to 

Dallas so they could buy crops in large 

quantities. By 1907, speculative operations 

in cotton futures had become so widespread 

that the Texas legislature enacted a drastic 

law against so-called “bucket shops.” The 

law prohibited telegraph companies from 

transmitting futures quotations into or 

out of the state. 85 In response to this law, 

twenty leading cotton merchants in town 

immediately joined forces to protect their 

futures-trading abilities, establishing the 

Dallas Cotton Exchange the day after the law 

was passed. F. T. Webster served as president 

of the Exchange, located in the Scollard 

Building on Main Street until 1912. 86 

✧ 

Mytinger Milling and Grain Co. was one of a number of 

facilities that sprouted along the railroads to help the city 

exploit its agricultural capabilities. 


By that time, having outgrown its original 

headquarters, the Dallas Cotton Exchange 

moved into a new building at Wood and 

Akard streets built exclusively for the cotton 

merchants. Two years later, when Dallas was 

selected as the headquarters for the Federal 

Reserve Bank’s Eleventh District, the city was 

reeling from a cotton panic. With the price 

of cotton dipping to four cents a pound, the 

Dallas Cotton Exchange, the Chamber of 

Commerce, and a group of Dallas businessmen 

led a frantic effort to stem the price decline 

and, in so doing, save the local cotton 

farmers along with the merchants, bankers, 

and others who supported the industry. “Buy 

a Bale” (at eight cents per pound instead of 

four cents per pound) became a rallying cry 

not only in the Cotton Exchange Building 

but on the streets of Dallas. The market 

survived the panic and quickly resumed its 

upward trajectory. 87 

On December 8, 1916, Robert L. Knight, 

president of the State Fair of Texas, delivered 

an address to the American Association of 

Fairs and Expositions in the parlor of the 

Auditorium Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. In his 

remarks, entitled “An Attorney’s First Year’s 

Experience as President of a State Fair,” 

Knight described the thriving business of 

cotton farming in Dallas and its surrounding 

counties at that time. 

Following a lucrative law practice of 

nearly twenty-five years, Knight had become 

an “agriculturalist,” leasing several pieces of 

land to cotton farmers. One of Knight’s 

farmer lessees planted a farm of 600 acres 

entirely in cotton. He paid Knight $4 an acre 

as rent. After visiting the Dallas County farm 

in October 1916, Knight remarked that “the 

rows were five feet apart, the stalks eight feet 

high, with limbs over-lapping each other 

across the middles, and the lower ones were 

of sufficient size and strength to actually 

support my weight. In order to pick the top 

bolls, either a step-ladder was necessary, or a 

contrivance for pulling the stalks over, such 

as you people up here use in pruning your 

apple trees.” 88 

Knight went on to explain the economics 

of this particular farm. The 600-acre field of 

cotton produced a bale and a half to the acre. 

The farmer lessee sold the cotton at twenty 

cents a pound and the seed at $50 a ton. “In 

short,” Knight said, “on that 600 acres of 

land he [the farmer] made an independent 

fortune. After paying the rent and all cost of 

seeding, cultivating, gathering, and ginning, 

he [the farmer] had left, in clear profit, 

exceeding $60,000. Can the valley of Nile 

beat it!” 89 

Knight closed his remarks to the assemblage 

of fair and exposition representatives with 

a flourish: 

“It has been my good fortune to have 

seen three continents of the earth; I have 

visited every state represented by the stars 

in Old Glory...; I have seen the rich valleys 

and orange groves of California, the 

smokestacks and incomparable enterprise 

and thrift of New England; the Everglades 

of Florida, and the limitless plateau 

encircling your Great Lakes aglow with 

their golden grain, but nowhere that my 

weary feet have led me, have I seen the 

stars as bright, or the skies as cerulean…; 

nowhere have I found a place where 

wealth and luxury come so easy; nowhere, 

nowhere, have I seen a land so fair and 

fertile, so potential in possibilities along 

every line of human endeavor and so 

aglow with beckoning hope as in that 

Empire from which I hail, whose synonym 

and emblem is the Lone Star…” 90 

While clearly laden with hyperbole and 

grandiose language, Knight’s remarks 

illustrate the optimistic sentiments felt by 

not only Dallas County “agriculturalists” of 

the time but also the city’s businessmen 

in general. He also displays the promotional 

spirit that imbued many of the city’s 

business leaders of the time, as they spared 

no expense and employed considerable 

poetic license in touting their fair city’s 

prospects to outside investors, entrepreneurs, 

and businesses. 

PROHIBITION GIVES 

RISE TO RESTAURANT 

INDUSTRY, BIRTH OF 

TEX- MEX CUISINE 

In 1917, Dallas outlawed the sale of 

alcohol, three years before the Eighteenth 

Amendment was passed imposing a 

nationwide ban. At the time, the city’s many 

watering holes were thriving. As a result of 

Prohibition, Dallas’ more than 200 saloons 

and beer parlors, twelve wholesale liquor 

houses, two branch brewing plants, and 

one brewery were shuttered. 91 But while 

Prohibition decimated one sector of the city’s 

economy, it gave a boost to the local 

restaurant business, which had begun to 

establish itself in the early 1900s. 

✧ 

Federal officers confiscated illegal liquor stockpiles in 

town during Prohibition. 



In the history journal, Legacies, Jackie 

McElhaney notes that restaurants in Dallas, 

unlike saloons and hotel dining rooms, are 

largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. So 

CHAPTER IV ✧ 45

prolific was the growth of the city’s 

restaurants throughout the 1900s that by the 

year 2000, Dallas boasted more restaurants 

than almost any other major city in the 

country. 92 But the quality and variety of the 

city’s restaurant scene have always been as 

impressive as the sheer volume of options. 

Among its culinary claims to fame, Dallas 

was home to the nation’s first drive-in 

restaurant, and perhaps most importantly, 

Tex-Mex fare was born in Big D. The history 

of the restaurant business in Dallas 

encompasses a legacy of eclectic eateries 

owned by individuals and families—from 

the Martinez and Cuellar families to Norman 

E. Brinker and Phil Romano—whose work 

ethic and culinary creations captivated the 

loyalty of generations of residents. 

✧ 

William J. Lemp built the Dallas headquarters for his 

St. Louis beer at the corner of Crowdus and the T&P 

railroad tracks. The local license for the company would 

later become the Falstaff Brewing Company, a beloved 

local brand that went out of business as a result 

of Prohibition. 


As McElhaney points out, Dallas had 

three times as many saloons as restaurants 

before 1900. Many of these saloons operated 

under seemingly innocent names, including 

the Post Office, the Board of Trade, and the 

Senate. In addition to frequenting such 

establishments, men regularly dined at 

various lunch stands, lunch counters, and 

chop houses located throughout the 

downtown business district. When women 

dined out, they usually went to dining 

rooms of hotels or tea rooms in department 

stores. But as Dallas’ population grew to 

exceed 150,000 people by 1920, the city’s 

restaurant ranks also expanded, totaling 

214 by that time, of which twenty-five were 

listed as “colored.” The restaurant industry 

in town benefited from three factors: 

Prohibition, which forbade the sale of liquor 

and eliminated all listings for saloons in the 

1920 City Directory; the proliferation of 

automobiles in town, which mobilized the 

population; and the influx of immigrants, 

many of whom opened ethnic restaurants 

serving dishes from their native countries. 93 

One of the most notable ethnic restaurants 

established by that time was El Fenix, initially 

a tamale factory on McKinney Avenue 

founded by Miguel and Faustina Martinez in 

1918. Twenty-one-year-old Miguel Martinez 

had come to Dallas from Mexico in 1911, 

one year after the Mexican Revolution broke 

out. He initially found work as a laborer for 

the Dallas Railway and Terminal Company, 

then as a dishwasher at the Oriental Hotel. He 

subsequently met and married Faustina 

Porras, another Mexican immigrant, and the 

couple opened the Martinez Café in Dallas’ 

Mexican barrio in 1918. In 1922 the 

restaurant was enlarged and renamed El 

Fenix. As Cheryl Hall noted in a 1996 story 

in The Dallas Morning News, “If the railroad had 

laid off Mike Martinez, Sr., in Denver instead 

of this end of the line, the now ubiquitous 

Lone Star cuisine might have been known as 

Colo-Mex.” But as fate would have it, Miguel 

de-boarded the train in Dallas, sealing the 

city’s fate as the birthplace of Tex-Mex. 94 

Reuben Martinez, son of Miguel and 

Faustina and former president of El Fenix 

who died in 2008, recalled that when his 

father started the business, he made his own 

corn-tortilla machine. “It was like an old 

car. He’d have to go in the back and fix this 

or that and give it a little kick.” 95 

Since its founding more than ninety years 

ago, El Fenix has dished up enchiladas, 

tamales, rice, and beans to generations of 

Dallasites and tourists. In 2008 the oldest 

family-owned Tex-Mex food chain in the 

country was sold to Firebird Restaurant 

Group, owned by Dallas real estate mogul 

Mike Karns and made up of several local 

restaurant executives. 

Three years after the Martinezes founded 

El Fenix, Dallas entrepreneur Jesse G. Kirby 

and his business partner, Dr. Reuben W. 

Jackson, established the first restaurant in 

the nation that took orders from cars that 

pulled up to the curb. Located at the corner 

of Chalk Hill Road and the Dallas-Fort 

Worth Turnpike in Oak Cliff, the Pig Stand 

quickly earned a loyal following because of 

its barbecued pork sandwich. Situated 

between two streets, the first Pig Stand was 

suited for curb service. Waiters would hop 

up on the running boards of customers’ cars, 

take the orders, head for the kitchen, and 

eventually return to deliver the food to the 

cars. Thus the term “car hop” was born. By 

1924 there were Pig Stands in Dallas, 

Beaumont, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, 

San Antonio, and Waco as well as in Denver, 

Kansas City, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, San 

Diego, and Tulsa. Every week, the drive-up 

restaurants served some 10,000 pounds of 

pork along with more than 14,000 bottles of 

Coca-Cola and 3,600 bottles of Budweiser. 

Today, there are dozens of Pig Stand 

restaurants across the country, with the 

heaviest concentration still in Texas. 96 

Lucas B&B was another of Dallas’ famous 

eating establishments founded by an 

immigrant family. Established in 1911 by a 

group of partners, Lucas B&B began as a café 

in the Old Imperial Hotel at 105 South 

Akard, next to the Adolphus Hotel. One of 

the partners was Faithon Lucas, a Greek 

immigrant who had arrived in America in 

1906 with seventy-five cents in his pocket 

and subsequently moved to Dallas in 1910. 

In 1923, Lucas bought the cafe outright and 

renamed it Lucas B&B. Open twenty-four 

hours a day, seven days a week, the eatery 

gained a loyal following from hardworking 

downtown businessmen, who affectionately 

referred to its patriarch as “Papa Lucas.” 

Mayor Woodall Rodgers would later call 

Lucas the “Mayor of Akard Street.” One of 

the unique aspects of the restaurant was its 

direct connection to the city’s agricultural 

heritage, as most of the food served there 

throughout the 1930s and 1940s was grown 

on Lucas Farms just east of Mesquite. The 

farm produced all the eggs, vegetables, fruit, 

milk, ice cream, chicken, beef, and pork 

served in the restaurant. After World War II, 

Lucas moved his establishment to 3520 Oak 

Lawn, where his children continued to 

operate the store after his death until 1989, 

when it closed. 97 

El Fenix, the Pig Stand, and Lucas B&B 

are only three early examples in the city’s 

rich restaurant legacy that continued to 

flourish throughout the twentieth century 

and gave birth to such nationally renowned 

brands as Steak and Ale, Romano’s Macaroni 

Grill, and Chili’s Grill & Bar. 

✧ 

Lobello’s was one of the city’s early drive-in restaurants. 



✧ 

The new headquarters building for the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank opened at 400 South Akard in 1920 (on right). The Adolphus Hotel can be seen at the end of the street. 


CHAPTER V 

D ALLAS E CONOMY D IVERSIFIES F OLLOWING W ORLD W AR I, 1918-1930 

As business continued to boom in Dallas 

thanks to the guidance of the Chamber of 

Commerce and the Citizens Association, the 

city’s population grew substantially after 

World War I. Dallas experienced a 72.6 

percent population increase from 1910 to 

1920, during which the city eclipsed the 

coveted 150,000 mark. The city’s population 

was also becoming increasingly diverse. The 

number of Dallas residents with foreign 

parentage expanded 51 percent from 1910 

to 1920. In 1900 fewer than 16 percent 

of immigrants living in Dallas came from 

Eastern and Southern Europe, Latin America, 

and Asia. By 1920, 54.4 percent of immigrants 

came from these regions, with the largest 

group coming from Mexico. Dallas was 

ranked 42nd in population among U.S. 

cities according to the 1920 U.S. Census. 1 

Dallas’ population would grow another 

63.8 percent during the 1920s, hitting 

260,475 by 1930. The decade was 

highlighted by the growth of the city’s 

aviation infrastructure and the birth of 

commercial aviation, continued expansion 

of the manufacturing sector, and a steady 

increase in oil companies. As local companies 

were founded or national firms relocated 

to the area, clusters of factories began 

blossoming across the city’s landscape. 

Unfortunately, as the city’s population 

became more diverse, the Ku Klux Klan 

(KKK) became a force in local business 

and politics following World War I, with an 

estimated Dallas chapter membership of 

13,000 in 1920. Even as Klan candidates 

dominated Dallas County political races in 

the early part of the decade, with a fair 

number of leading businessmen either 

supporting the KKK or showing ambivalence 

toward its movement, a group led by twentyfive 

Dallas businessmen and The Dallas 

Morning News joined forces to oppose the 

Klan and ultimately render it ineffectual. 2 

At the same time, the city’s African-American 

business community began to organize itself 

under the leadership of such men as W. E. 

Clark, culminating in the establishment of 

the Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce 

in 1926. 

INDUSTRY GROWS WITH 

ARRIVAL OF NEW FIRMS 

From 1904 to 1919, the value of goods 

produced in Dallas rose from $15 million to 

a state-leading $93.6 million. The 1920 U.S. 

Census showed Dallas had 457 factories, 

which also led the state, creating products 

valued at more than $100 million annually. 

By this time, Dallas was manufacturing 

approximately 10 percent of all goods 

produced in the state. Thanks to the efforts 

of men such as Robert S. Munger, cotton 

gins made in Dallas were being shipped to 

exotic locales including Egypt, Peru, Chile, 

the Argentine Republic, and Asiatic Russia. 

Dallas also led the world in the manufacture 

of saddlery, harnesses, and leather goods. And 

the city was the top flour manufacturing 

center in the state, having grown significantly 

from its early days of small wheat and corn 

CHAPTER V ✧ 47

✧ 

By the 1920s, the Dallas Telephone Company offered reliable service to businesses and residences. The company maintained 

a girls’ dormitory as well as an operators’ home for the women who worked there. (c. 1920) 


mills. Of the eleven million barrels of flour 

that Texas produced in 1921, Dallas produced 

800,000 barrels. Dallas was also the largest 

manufacturer of bakery products in the 

Southwest, and had the largest cracker 

factory in the South. 3 

✧ 

In the 1920s, business on Elm Street was alive and well, 

with cigar shops, smokehouses, laundries, barber shops, 

and hotels. 

company’s selection of Dallas as its 

headquarters illustrates how businesses at 

that time evaluated cities for potential 

operations. Representatives of the Berger Co. 

had visited Dallas in October 1920. The 

company’s officials subsequently submitted 

a questionnaire to Dallas and several other 

major cities in the Southwest to help them 

determine the best site for relocating 

their operations. The questionnaire asked 

for detailed information about such things 

as inbound freight rates, rates to various 

locations throughout the trade territory, 

labor conditions, population of the city, 

population within the surrounding 100-mile 

radius, rated business concerns within 100 

miles, agricultural trade production within 

100 miles, postal receipts, bank clearings, 

annual volume of wholesale business, 

and tax rate. The Chamber of Commerce 

submitted the city’s response and was 

notified in January 1921 that Dallas had 

been selected. 5 

Berger Co.’s new plant in Dallas 

manufactured steel ceilings, metal shingles, 

metal tile, corrugated tanks, plain tanks, and 

metal culverts. The 180-foot by 220-foot 

factory distributed its products throughout 

Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, 

and Mexico. 6 

To keep pace with the influx of residents 

and businesses, the city broke all its previous 

building records in 1921, highlighted by the 

opening of the twenty-nine-story Magnolia 

Petroleum Building, which became the city’s 

tallest building and the tallest in the South. 

Dallas led the Southwest as a skyscraper 

center at this time, with sixty-four buildings 

between six and twenty-nine stories tall. 7 

Dallas also led the state in building permits 

and in per capita valuation in 1921 with 

4,453 permits valued at more than $15 

million, ranking the city second among all 

U.S. cities behind only Los Angeles. Houston 

had 6,874 permits valued at $10.4 million. 8 

That same year, Dallas hosted 64 conventions 

attended by some 30,000 people pumping 

almost $1 million into the city’s trade 

channels. 9 Dallas County led the state in 

auto registrations in 1921 with 33,267, an 

increase of 5,283 cars from the preceding 

year. Harris County was second in the state, 

with 27,948 auto registrations, an increase of 

4,610 from the preceding year. 10 

On January 29, 1922, the Dallas 

wholesale market kicked off its spring 


In addition to becoming one of the 

leading producers of raw materials in the 

Southwest, Dallas offered individuals and 

companies a number of attractive resources 

and attributes. These included access to vast 

supplies of coal, oil, and gas; transportation 

systems that made it possible to reach ten 

million people by mail within twenty-four 

hours; large reserves of skilled and unskilled 

labor; and a good quality of life characterized 

by a relatively mild climate along with good 

living and working conditions. 4 

One of most important manufacturing 

facilities established in Dallas in the 1920s 

was the Berger Co. Manufacturing Plant 

at Corinth and South Pearl streets. The 

✧ 

By the 1920s, “skyscrapers” began to dot the downtown Dallas landscape, as a number of thriving businesses erected new 

high-rise office buildings. (c. 1925) 



uying season. A special train commissioned 

by the Chamber’s Wholesale Merchants 

Department brought more than 100 merchants 

from Arkansas and Louisiana for the market, 

elevating hotel, restaurants, and retail sales. 

By that time, Dallas was the 15th most 

important wholesaler market in the country. 11 

In the January 1922 issue of the Chamber’s 

DALLAS Magazine, L.O. Daniel, chairman of 

Wholesale Merchants Department, reported 

that total sales volume of the city’s wholesale 

market had risen from $250 million in 1918, 

to $415 million in 1919, to $600 million 


✧ 

The Majestic Vaudeville Theater, located at Commerce 

and St. Paul, was one of the city’s early vaudeville 

theaters, many of which gained reputations as tawdry 

establishments associated with drinking and gambling. 

Karl Hoblitzelle would later establish the better-known 

Majestic Theater on Elm Street in 1921. (1905) 



February 1922 proved to be a banner 

month for business in Dallas. Twenty 

conventions took place in town that month 

alone, attended by some 4,000 people who 

spent approximately $80,000. 13 In addition, 

an average of two new business concerns 

relocated headquarters to Dallas or set up 

new operations there each day throughout 

the month. These companies spanned a 

number of industries and included Goelitz 

Confectionary Co., Vitrolite Construction 

Company, Trinity Paper Mills Co., Silver 

Refinishing Plant, Daniels’ Chemical Proof 

Ink Co., Caruther-Stuart Sign Co., Lacy 

Lumber Co., Automobile Underwriters of 

America, Emerson Shoe Co., and Piggly 

Wiggly Stores. 14 

In March 1922, the Chamber announced 

that construction would begin on a $1 million 

cotton mill called the Dallas Textile Mills 

Company. Meanwhile, Chevrolet announced 

it would move its Fort Worth plant into a 

four-story building at Commerce Street and 

College Avenue. 15 Later that year, Procter & 

Gamble opened a $3 million plant in town 

devoted to making Crisco, Selex, and other 

cooking compounds. 16 

As the city’s wholesale market and 

manufacturing industries grew throughout 

the 1920s, an increasing number of oil 

companies began to set up operations in 

Dallas. In January 1922, Colonel A. E. 

Humphreys announced that his business 

interests would continue to maintain offices 

in Dallas. Humphreys spent much of his 

time in Dallas, directing the activities of his 

oil fields located in Mexia and throughout 

the Southwest. Humphreys’ announcement 

caused other larger oil companies to 

investigate facilities in Dallas as possible 

sites for executive headquarters. In February 

1922 alone, Hil-Tex Oil Co., Pearl Petroleum, 

Redpath Oil Co., Southern Petroleum Co., 

and Reiter Oil Corporation established 

offices in town. 17 In addition to these oil 

companies, an increasing number of oilfield 

wildcatters began to set up shop in Dallas to 

support their operations in the Mid-Continent 

field (a broad area across Arkansas, Kansas, 

Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas 

containing hundreds of fields in various 

geological strata). Companies such as Mason 

Refining Co. and Wichita Falls-Burkburnett 

Oil Co. regularly placed ads in The Dallas 

Morning News seeking to raise venture capital 

for future activities. 18 

Convenience was the primary reason oil 

companies were moving to Dallas, as the city 

was located within a day’s drive of the major 

oil fields in the Texas Gulf Coast, Oklahoma, 

Arkansas, and Louisiana. Dallas also offered 

reliable railway, telegraph, telephone, and 

mail services; attractive living conditions 

for executives and employees; adequate 

facilities for extensive offices; and top-notch 

banking accommodations. 19 

By the early 1920s, Dallas had also 

become the South’s leading commercial 

printing center for book and job printing 

plants (not including the newspaper and 

periodical industry), both in the number of 

plants and the value of products, according 

to the U.S. Census of Manufacturers. In 

1922, Dallas had 64 printing plants whose 

754 employees generated $4,298,316 worth 

of business. Etheridge Printing Company 

and Padgett Printing Company were two of 

the city’s earliest printers and are still in 

business today. 20 

Founded in 1898, Etheridge Printing 

Company is the city’s oldest printing 

company still operating under the ownership 

of the founding family. Four generations of 

Etheridges have guided the company’s 

success and growth over the years. Patrick 

Etheridge, a former newspaper typesetter, 

founded the company in a small basement 

shop in downtown Dallas. He specialized in 

producing forms for the city’s fledgling 

insurance industry. Over time the company 

expanded its operation to print school 

textbooks, business forms, and high-quality 

advertising materials. Today, the business is 

run by the founder’s great-great-nephew, 

Howard Etheridge. 21 Five years after 

Etheridge opened for business, Padgett 

Printing was founded by Cyrus R. Padgett in 

1903. Since that time, a number of family 

members have been involved in the company, 

including Jay D. Padgett, Hal W. Padgett, H. 

Winfield Padgett, and Donald F. Padgett. 22 

The city would continue to build its 

printing infrastructure and expertise over 

the next decade. By 1932 statistics from the 

✧ 

By the 1950s, establishments on “Theater Row” 

illuminated Elm Street at night. (c. 1950) 


✧ 

The Washington Theater was another theater that 

emerged along Elm Street as citizens’ interest in 

vaudeville shifted to motion pictures. 


CHAPTER V ✧ 49

✧ 

Located in the industrial area just west of the Trinity River, Trinity Cotton Oil Co. was one of many local companies that 

successfully exploited the byproducts of cotton. 


U.S. Chamber of Commerce placed Dallas at 

the forefront of larger cities in the country 

in the number of well-equipped printing 

and engraving establishments. By that time, 

the city was far ahead of many much larger 

Eastern cities in the quality and modernity 

of equipment for producing books, booklets, 

magazines, and color work. Advertising 

and printing circles throughout the nation 

regularly recognized the work being produced 

in Dallas for its quality. 23 

One of Dallas’ most widely recognized 

brands was born in 1927, when Claude S. 

Dawley established the Southland Ice 

Company with sixteen ice-dock outlets 

throughout the city. (Before the days of air 

conditioning in Dallas, citizens managed to 

survive the heat and keep their perishables 

cold by using iceboxes in their homes.) 

When customers asked John “Uncle Johnny” 

Jefferson, an employee of Southland Ice, for 

more convenient shopping on Sundays and 

other evenings when most grocery stores 

were closed, he started selling milk, eggs, 

bread, cigarettes, and a few canned goods out 

of an improvised storefront at the company’s 

manufacturing plant. The innovative 

approach produced increased sales, which 

Jefferson reported to Joe C. Thompson, Jr., 

one of the company’s young executives. 

Thus convenience retailing was born. 24 

The company’s first convenience outlets 

were known as “Tote ’m” stores since 

customers “toted” away their purchases. 

Some of the stores even sported genuine 

Alaskan totem poles in front. In 1946, 

Southland Ice changed the name of its 

Tote ’m stores to “7-Eleven” to reflect their 

new, extended hours from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., 

seven days a week. The company’s corporate 

name was changed from The Southland 

Corporation to 7-Eleven, Inc., in 1999. Today, 

7-Eleven is a leader in convenience retailing 

with more than 30,000 stores operating 

in the United States and 18 other countries. 

With total sales of more than $43 billion 

annually, 7-Eleven serves approximately 

6 million customers each day .25 

The entertainment industry in town also 

got a boost during the 1920s as motion 

pictures became a popular recreational and 

social activity for the city’s residents. After 

the first Vitascope showing at the Dallas 

Opera House in 1897, Dallasites had started 

to become more interested in motion 

pictures than live theater. At that time, 

vaudeville was immensely popular in the 

East but still somewhat of a novelty to local 

residents. In addition, a number of theaters 

in town were associated with saloons and 

gambling, causing many of the town’s “proper” 

citizens to forego their performances. 

Located on Elm Street, the Lyric was the 

city’s first motion picture theater built for 

the express purpose of showing movies in 

the early 1900s. A thriving “Theater Row” 

subsequently blossomed on Elm Street, 

stretching from Harwood to Akard. 26 

In 1921, Karl Hoblitzelle opened the 

$2 million Majestic Theater on Elm Street; 

the theater would become one of the city’s 

most beloved and enduring downtown 

icons. Hoblitzelle had come to Dallas in the 

early 1900s after working as an assistant to 

the architect of the 1907 St. Louis World’s Fair. 

With an investment of $2,500, he founded 

the Interstate Amusement Company in 

1905 with the goal of bringing popular 

entertainment to the Southwest. After 

opening the Majestic Theater in Dallas, he 

established theaters in Fort Worth, San 

Antonio, and Waco. During the 1920s, 

motion pictures replaced vaudeville acts on 

the Interstate Circuit. Hoblitzelle’s company 

grew significantly during the peak of 

America’s movie-going craze following 

World War II to include more than 170 

theaters throughout Texas and New Mexico. 27 

Even as he expanded his business interests 

to include banking, real estate, and insurance, 

Hoblitzelle established himself as one of the 

city’s great benefactors. In 1942 he and his 

wife—Esther Thomas, a former Broadway 

starlet who performed under the name of 

Esther Walker—established the Hoblitzelle 

Foundation, which since that time has 

given more than $150 million to Texas 

social service, cultural, educational, medical, 

and civic organizations, primarily in Dallas. 

In 1943, Hoblitzelle co-founded the 

Southwestern Medical Foundation, which 

funded Southwestern Medical College that 

became UT Southwestern Medical Center 

of Dallas. 28 

✧ 

The seventeen-story Dallas Cotton Exchange building 

opened at the corner of St. Paul and San Jacinto streets 

in 1926 to accommodate the organization’s continued 

growth. (1951) 



Throughout the 1920s, despite the 

ascendance of manufacturing, banking, 

aviation, and oil, cotton was still one of the 

most important industries in Dallas. In 

1924, 39 counties within a 100-mile radius 

of Dallas produced 31 percent of all Texas 

cotton. And Texas produced more than onethird 

of all cotton grown in the United States. 29 


By 1926 the Dallas Cotton Exchange had 

grown too large to be housed in its sevenstory 

building at Wood and Akard streets, 

where it had moved in 1912, so the Exchange 

built a new seventeen-story building at 

the corner of North St. Paul and San Jacinto 

streets. 30 The new building was the largest 

structure built for this purpose in the world. 31 

Amid all the construction, establishment 

of new businesses, relocation of prominent 

national companies, and population growth, 

local leaders recognized the need to start 

documenting the city’s history. G. B. Dealey 

led the effort to found the Dallas Historical 

Society in 1922. As general manager of The 

Dallas Morning News, which he had launched 

on behalf of A. H. Belo & Co. in 1885, 

Dealey had ensured that his newspaper not 

only chronicled the daily goings-on in the 

city but also published special editions filled 

with historical data any time the city 

celebrated major events. He was deeply 

committed to documenting the city’s history 

in a disciplined and systematic manner. On 

March 31, 1922, an organizational meeting 

was held in the Oriental Hotel on Commerce 

Street to formally establish the Dallas 

Historical Society. At this ceremony, attended 

by more than 100 prominent citizens, former 

SMU history professor John Wynne Barton 

declared, “The nation that is not proud of its 

history is not worthy of the name nation, 

and the city that is not proud of its history 

is not worthy of the name city.” Rhodes S. 

Baker served as the Dallas Historical 

Society’s first president. Over the years, the 

Dallas Historical Society has played a key 

role in not only recording the city’s history 

but also supporting many of its most 

important civic efforts. 32 

FOUNDATION FOR 

AVIATION INDUSTRY 

IS LAID 

In the early part of the twentieth century, 

the automobile played a key role in 

dictating Dallas’ commercial and residential 

development as the city expanded from its 

downtown core. But even as more and more 

cars traversed the city’s expanding street 

grid, a few prescient businessmen had begun 

to focus on the advantages the city’s central 

location offered in the larger context of the 

nation. They recognized the vital role a recent 

winged invention would play in helping the 

city exploit this geographic advantage. 

Like much of the country, Dallas became 

enamored with aviation after the Wright 

brothers’ famous flight at Kitty Hawk in 

1903. In the years following this historic 

flight, several key business leaders and 

citizens took steps to ensure that Dallas 

developed the expertise and infrastructure 

necessary to capitalize on the business 

advantages air travel offered. Frank McCarroll 

was one such pioneer. 33 

A resident of Oak Cliff, McCarroll had 

actually begun exploring the possibilities of 

building a flying machine in the 1890s. 34 His 

study of aeronautics intensified after the 

Wright brothers’ flight, and in 1904 he built 

the city’s first airplane behind his Oak Cliff 

house. He went on to invent and patent a 

number of enhancements to early airplanes 

and flying techniques, including an early 

version of retractable landing gear. McCarroll 

led several of the city’s efforts to embrace 

aviation over the ensuing years. 35 

✧ 

In the wake of the Wright brothers’ historic 1903 flight, 

Dallas hosted a series of aviation exhibitions. In 1910 

citizens flocked to the State Fair race track to watch a 

race between a biplane and an automobile. 


In 1908 the city witnessed its first 

passenger-carrying flying machine when 

a carnival company brought the Aerial 

Queen to Oak Cliff. The dirigible thrilled 

spectators throughout the two-week carnival, 

transporting passengers in its undercarriage 

back and forth across the carnival grounds. 

Later that year, Colonel E. H. R. Green 

purchased a Wright Brothers airplane, which 

was delivered in February 1909. At the 

request of State Fair of Texas representatives, 

Green displayed his plane at the fair that 

year. That same fall, Frank Goodale flew 

his Stroebel dirigible around the tallest 

buildings in downtown Dallas and gave 

exhibitions at the State Fair. 36 

In 1910 the Dallas Chamber of Commerce 

and Louis Paulhan, a French aviator, organized 

an aviation show from February 25 to 

February 27. 37 Held at an oval race track on 

the State Fair grounds, the event featured 

a race between a car and a biplane flown 

by Otto Brodie, a twenty-three-year-old pilot 

from Chicago. Brodie and his assistants 

reportedly arrived in town with a disassembled 

Curtiss biplane and pieced it together the 

night before the big event. The biplane was 

twenty-six feet long, weighed 400 pounds, 

was made primarily of bamboo and balloon 

cloth, and was powered by a four-cylinder 

gas engine—all mounted on three bicycle 

wheels. The event, which featured the city’s 

first flight of a heavier-than-air machine, 

was ultimately deemed unsuccessful. But it 

marked the first in a series of meets at which 

aviators entertained Dallas citizens. 38 

✧ 

In 1926, National Air Transport offered the city’s first 

airmail service when Herbert L. Kindred flew from Love 

Field to Chicago in a Curtiss-Wright Carrier Pigeon (an 

open cockpit biplane) loaded with letters and packages. 



✧ 

Braniff Airways was one of the earliest commercial 

airlines to operate out of Love Field Airport. Here, 

customers interact with clerks at the Love Field 

Braniff counter. 


While local interest in flight had been 

mounting in Dallas since the early 1900s, 

World War I gave a significant boost to the 

city’s aviation infrastructure and activities. In 

1917 the Chamber of Commerce negotiated 

with the U.S. War Department to establish 

an aviation school on 160 acres of sprawling 

farmland near Bachman Lake. 39 The War 

Department constructed a $1.5 million 

training facility on the land to serve as one of 

the U.S. Army Air Corps’ two advanced 

flying fields. 40 Pilots received final advanced 

CHAPTER V ✧ 51

training there before shipping off to fly 

sorties in Europe. The facility was named 

Love Field in honor of Lieutenant Moss Lee 

Love, a converted cavalry officer who had 

taken up flying with the Army’s new flying 

corps and had died several years earlier in a 

crash in California. 41 In addition to Love 

Field, Camp Dick was another local U.S. 

Army base established in 1918. Located at 

Fair Park, it operated a pre-flight training 

camp for aspiring pilots. 42 

Since the early 1870s, Dallas’ economic 

and commercial activities had benefited 

greatly from the railroads. By the end of 

World War I, still lacking a navigable 

waterway, local business and civic leaders 

knew the city needed to embrace the next 

transportation wave—airplanes—to continue 

attracting people and businesses. And they 

recognized that Love Field was a valuable 

resource that could be exploited toward 

those ends. Shortly after the war, the Love 

Field Industrial District, a group organized 

by the Chamber of Commerce, purchased a 

large plot of land near Bachman Lake that 

included the improved facilities at Love 

Field with the exception of a few buildings 

reserved by the U.S. government. By 1922, 

Chamber trustees had begun working on 

plans to develop the site as a model 

industrial district that would capitalize on its 

convenient location to downtown and rail 

service supported by the Missouri, Kansas & 

Texas Railway. The 617-acre plot of land 

featured a complete waterworks system, 

a sewage system and disposal plant, 

connections to electric light lines and hightension 

power lines, and a natural gas 

pipeline running through the field. In 

addition, there was a gas system and 

connections in all buildings and a crude oil 

pipeline through the field that could be 

tapped for fuel. 43 

Several years after this industrial 

development effort had begun, the city 

purchased a majority of the Love Field 

airport acreage from the Chamber of 

Commerce. In 1927, Dallas began operating 

the site as a municipal airport modeled after 

the airports in Kansas City, Chicago, 

Philadelphia, Detroit, and Boston. 44 Dallas 

was one of the first cities in the nation to 

operate its own municipal airport. Charles 

Lindbergh piloted his Spirit of St. Louis 

airplane to Love Field to participate in 

the airport’s dedication ceremony that year. 

In his speech to the assembled crowd, 

broadcast on KRLD Radio, Lindbergh said, 

“Keep your airport—it will place you among 

the commercial leaders of the world.” 45 These 

prophetic words, taken to heart by the city’s 

business and civic leaders, foreshadowed by 

nearly half a century one of the greatest 

milestones in the history of business in 

Dallas—the opening of the Dallas-Fort 

Worth Regional Airport in 1974. 

National Air Transport had actually 

started offering airmail service from Dallas to 

Chicago in 1926 when Herbert L. Kindred 

took off in a Curtiss-Wright Carrier Pigeon 

(an open cockpit biplane) loaded with letters 

and packages. 46 Locally operated, National 

Air Transport, which would later merge with 

several airlines to become United Airlines, 

began offering the first passenger flight out 

of Love Field in 1927. The twelve-hour $99 

flight from Dallas to Chicago featured seven 

stops along the way. Air service to Houston 

began in 1928. By 1930 the Chamber of 

Commerce reported that Love Field was the 

third-busiest airport in the nation in terms 

of passenger traffic, with seven passenger 

airlines operating there, two of which also 

specialized in delivering airmail. Texas Air 

Transport was another local fledgling airline 

operating out of Love Field in the airport’s 

early years of existence. It would eventually 

become American Airlines. Braniff, which 

also served the Dallas market in the 1930s, 

would move its headquarters to Dallas in 

1942. 47 Several other commercial airline 

companies operated out of Love Field in the 

1930s, including Southwest Air Fast Express 

(Halliburton Lines), Crowell Airlines, Western 

Air Express, and Wedell-Williams. Flights 

during this time were available to San Antonio, 

Brownsville, Amarillo, Houston, Galveston, 

Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, and New 

York via Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. 48 

Since 1927, commercial aviation has been 

a vital part of the city’s economy and one of 

its most important industries, enabling the 

✧ 

growth of Dallas’ international wholesale 

markets and convention and tourism 

industries. The city’s aviation infrastructure 

and expertise also played a key role in the 

birth of the local defense industry, as a 

number of defense firms moved to Dallas 

during World War II to capitalize on the 

city’s airfields and labor markets. Today, 

DFW’s commercial, industrial, and private 

airports along with its distribution 

capabilities are often cited among the top 

reasons why corporations relocate to the area. 


BUSINESS COMMUNITY 

STARTS TO ORGANIZE 

AMID REVIVAL OF 

KU KLUX KLAN 

By 1920, Jim Crow laws had effectively 

institutionalized racism throughout the South. 

Dallas, like most Southern cities at the time, 

offered African Americans few business or 

professional opportunities to improve their 

economic situations. But thanks to the 

efforts of leaders such as W. E. Clark, George 

F. Foster, and Ammon S. Wells, African- 

American businesses began to organize 

around common interests and goals during the 

1920s, even as the Ku Klux Klan played an 

integral role in local business and politics. 49 

Following World War I, the Klan’s membership 

in Dallas grew significantly. Organized 

by Bertram G. Christie, the local chapter, 

called Klan No. 66, increased to about 13,000 

members by the mid-1920s. Among Klan No. 

66’s membership were the mayor, prominent 

business and civic leaders, as well as the 

sheriff, police chief, police commissioner, 

and numerous police officers. A number of 

churches and pastors also made statements 

during this time in support of the Klan. 50 

Amid grim housing conditions, sparse business opportunities, and the resurgence of the KKK in the 1920s, a few African 

Americans ran their own restaurants in Dallas. 



As Michael Phillips points out in White 

Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in 

Dallas, 1841-2001, the Klan was able to gain 

popularity in Dallas by lobbying as a 

defender of white workers’ privileges at a 

time when an increasing number of 

immigrants were coming to the city. By 

1920, the city was well on it ways to 

transforming itself from an agriculture-based 

economy to an urban center populated 

primarily by wage earners. The city had 

158,970 residents in 1920, with fewer than 

1 percent working in agriculture. About 75 

percent of the local workforce (which 

included children aged ten years or older) 

did not own their own businesses or farms 

and were not artisans or independent 

professionals like accountants or doctors. 

The Klan found in this wage-earning class, 

which included policemen and firefighters, a 

receptive audience to its messages expressing 

working-class fears of African Americans, 

Jews, Catholics, and foreigners. 51 

On March 30, 1923, the Dallas Klan 

newspaper, the Texas 100 Per Cent American, 

published a petition signed by “representative 

members of the various crafts of Organized 

Labor in the City of Dallas.” In the petition, 

Klansmen called for an end to the immigration 

✧ 

The Ku Klux Klan had a history in Dallas dating back to 

the 1860s. By the early 1920s, Klan membership in 

Dallas had increased dramatically and included many 

prominent civic and business leaders. 


of Mexican laborers and their employment 

in the city’s streets and bridge department. 

The petition also claimed that the growing 

immigrant population adversely affected the 

city’s low wage scale, which was not enough 

for white American laboring men to support 

their families. By 1920, 54.4 percent of 

immigrants in Dallas came from Southern 

Europe, Latin America, and Asia, with the 

largest group coming from Mexico. 52 

In an effort to stem the growing tide of 

racism, The Dallas Morning News and the 

Times Herald printed a statement against 

the Klan on April 4, 1922. The statement 

featured the signatures of more than 400 

prominent citizens who opposed the Klan, 

including G.B. Dealey, Alex Sanger, Herbert 

Marcus, and Leon Harris. 53 

In response to this, the Klan boycotted 

The Dallas Morning News, reducing its 

circulation by some 3,000 people and 

depleting its $200,000 surplus. In 1923, 

Klan candidates swept the local elections. 

This marked the first time the Citizens 

Association candidates had all been defeated 

since its founding in 1907. That same year, 

an estimated 75,000 Klansmen attended 

Klan Day at the State Fair of Texas, rumored 

to be the largest assembly of Klansmen ever 

up to that time. 54 

Several factors spurred the Klan’s 

precipitous decline in town just as its 

popularity had reached its apex. In the 1924 

Democratic gubernatorial primary, Miriam 

“Ma” Ferguson, wife of previously impeached 

governor James Ferguson, scored a victory 

over pro-Klan candidate Felix D. Robertson. 

Robertson won Dallas County by a vote of 

two to one, but he lost the statewide runoff. 

After Robertson’s defeat, a number of 

prominent men left the Klan, significantly 

diminishing its power and influence. 55 

In 1925, the Klan suffered irreparable 

damage when one of its national leaders, 

David Stephenson, was convicted of seconddegree 

murder and sentenced to life for 

the abduction and sexual assault of a 

secretary who later committed suicide. Klan 

membership in Texas subsequently declined 

from 97,000 to 18,000 in 1926. Dallas 

membership dropped that same year from 

13,000 to 1,200. 56 

Amid this overtly racist landscape, a 

few African-American professionals and 

entrepreneurs managed to elevate themselves 

in society. William Sydney Pittman, the first 

practicing African-American architect in the 

city, was among the most prominent of 

these. Pittman had graduated from Booker T. 

Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in 1897 and 

then completed a graduate program in 

architecture at Drexel Institute of Technology. 

After running his own architecture practice 

in Washington, D.C., from 1903 to 1907, 

Pittman and his wife Portia, who was Booker T. 

Washington’s daughter, moved to Dallas in 

1913. There he ran a successful architecture 

practice for sixteen years while his wife gave 

private piano lessons and later taught music at 

Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas. 57 

In 1918 two African Americans, school 

teacher George F. Foster and lawyer Ammon 

S. Wells, established a local chapter of the 

National Association for the Advancement of 

Colored People (NAACP) in Dallas. At that 

time, the Dallas Police Department moved 

quickly to stifle this effort, insisting that one 

of its officers attend all chapter meetings. This 

imposition rendered the local organization 

largely ineffectual. 58 

In the 1920s local African Americans 

established a Dallas chapter of Booker T. 

Washington’s National Negro Business 

League (NNBL), which had grown out of 

Washington’s efforts in the late 1800s to 

stimulate “Negro enterprise.” The NNBL 

held its first formal convention in August 

1900 in Boston with over 400 African- 

American businessmen in attendance. 59 

Since its inception, the Dallas chapter of 

the NNBL had focused on four objectives: 

creating jobs for African Americans, 

protecting African-American consumers, 

fostering an interest in civic welfare, and 

creating a sense of racial pride. But a rift 

formed within the ranks of this local 

organization in the early 1920s when 

members disagreed about the best 

approaches for stimulating economic 

progress in their community. A small group 

of members believed that only a new 

organization would be able to solve the 

problems of Dallas’ African-American 

businessmen. The growing rift culminated in 

the establishment of the Dallas Negro 

Chamber of Commerce (DNCC) in 1926, 

which was determined to represent more 

actively the interests of local African 

Americans. In November of that year, the 

DNCC, under the direction of W.E. Clark, 

opened an office at 2315 Hall Street, 

reporting membership of 100 people. 60 

For the remainder of the 1920s, the 

DNCC’s membership fluctuated. Lack of 

strong leadership, meager finances, and the 

economic effects of the mounting recession 

and prejudice greatly hindered the 

effectiveness of the organization. The DNCC 

would languish until A. Maceo Smith led a 

reorganization effort in 1932. 61 

CHAPTER V ✧ 53

✧ 

By the early 1930s, downtown Dallas was dotted by a number of skyscrapers, offering evidence of the city’s thriving business environment despite the adverse effects of the Great Depression. 

By this time, the city’s cotton and wholesale markets were strong, its retail and manufacturing industries were flourishing, and its aviation and banking industries were on the rise. (1933) 


CHAPTER VI 

E AST T EXAS O IL S TRIKE B UFFERS D ALLAS FROM D EPTHS OF D EPRESSION, 1930-1940 

From 1920 to 1930, Dallas experienced 

another population boom, growing more 

than 63 percent from 158,976 to 260,475 

residents. This remarkable growth vaulted 

Dallas from the 42nd largest city in 

the United States to the 29th largest. By 

1930 approximately 75 percent of Dallas’ 

residents were white, 20 percent were 

African American, and 5 percent were 

Hispanic. The city’s population growth was 

spurred largely by its flourishing business 

environment and the job opportunities it 

offered. Dallas’ cotton and wholesale markets 

were strong, its retail and manufacturing 

industries were thriving, and its aviation 

industry was on the rise. Some 800 new 

firms moved to Dallas in 1929 alone, even as 

the country edged closer to the brink of 

economic collapse. 1 

Throughout the 1930s several events 

helped the city survive the Great Depression 

and, in the process, completed the 

transformation of Dallas from an agrarian 

economy into an industrial powerhouse: 

the discovery of oil in East Texas and 

the development of Dallas as a strategic 

headquarters for oil producers and oil 

services firms; the corresponding rise of 

banking to meet the financing needs of the 

booming oil industry; and the city’s winning 

bid to host the Texas Centennial Celebration. 

LOCAL BUSINESSES STAY 

AFLOAT AS DEPRESSION 

SWEEPS ACROSS 

THE COUNTRY 

In the summer of 1929 the national 

economy was still booming even as business 

had begun to slow somewhat in the Federal 

Reserve’s Eleventh District. Most of the nation 

was caught up in the financial fervor 

sweeping across the land. President Herbert 

Hoover expressed the country’s optimism 

when he declared, “We shall soon with the 

help of God be in sight of the day when 

poverty will be banished from the nation.” 2 

But not everyone was blind to the irrational 

exuberance. Sensing that the economic boom 

was out of control in the stock market, 

the Federal Reserve considered imposing 

restrictive monetary measures in the early 

autumn to slow the growth and bring 

investment activities under control. But by 

that time it was too late. Within a matter of 

weeks in October, the Standard & Poor’s 

composite index of ninety common stocks 

dropped from 245 to 162, erasing one-third 

of the index’s value. 3 

While Dallas felt the adverse effects of the 

nationwide depression, local residents and 

businesses fared well compared with most of 

the country. The Chamber of Commerce did 

an admirable job of bolstering local morale 

by conveying the city’s relative success in its 

DALLAS Magazine. In 1930 only ten states 

exceeded Dallas in the value of their exports. 

By that time, the city was handling 3 million 

bales of cotton each year. Dallas had nine 

trunk line railroads and six interurban lines, 

130 hotels (with capacity for 20,000 guests) 

representing investment of $30 million, 39 

theaters, 675 manufacturing factories within 

a six-mile radius, 3,621 retail establishments 

employing 22,000 people with an annual 

payroll of $32 million, and 500 wholesale 

houses employing 5,000 salesmen. One 

hundred sixty-two Dallas firms were doing 

business in foreign countries. In addition 

the city remained first nationally in the 

distribution of cotton gins, cottonseed 

products, and saddlery and harnesses; third 

in the distribution of farm implements; and 

fifth in the distribution of dry goods. 4 

From 1925 through 1931, 4,687 new 

businesses were established in Dallas. During 

that time, an additional 923 national or 

regional companies opened local branches 

in town. This growth was largely attributable 

to a national advertising campaign called 

Industrial Dallas, Inc., launched by the 

Chamber of Commerce in 1928. In 1931 

alone, the Chamber’s Industrial Department 

reported that Dallas added a total of 1,039 


usinesses, including 78 in manufacturing, 

222 in wholesale and distributing, 275 in 

retail, 177 in oil and oilfield supplies, and 287 

miscellaneous firms (including companies 

offering insurance, financial services, and 

loans). The fact that 225 regional or national 

concerns established branches in Dallas in 

1931 despite the bleak economic conditions 

around the country was a testament to the 

city’s strength as a strategic location and key 

business center in the Southwest. 5 

But even amid this relative success, all 

was not well on the city’s business landscape. 

Of the nation’s 2,300 bank failures during 

1931, 93 were in the Eleventh District. 6 By 

this time, Dallas citizens were also feeling 

the effects of the Depression. Some 18,500 

adults were unemployed among the city’s 

total population of 260,475. 7 That same year 

the newly formed and elected city council 

created a “Work for Food” program, which 

allocated money to give food as payment to 

unemployed heads of families to perform 

odd jobs. 8 

✧ 

In 1930 the U.S. Department of Commerce cited Dallas 

as a leading distribution center for jewelry, finding that 

the city sold twenty percent of all the jewelry sold in 

Texas. By that time, Linz Brothers Jewelry was a fixture 

on the Dallas retail scene. 


Following his presidential inauguration 

on March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt 

acted quickly, proclaiming on March 6 that 

all banks should close for that week. The 

Dallas Federal Reserve had decided one day 

earlier (on March 5) to close along with 

its branches. In the ensuing days, the 12 

District Federal Reserve Banks evaluated 

the conditions of all banks in their regions 

and made recommendations about their 

continued operations. By March 15 only 26 

of Texas’ 1,023 banks failed to reopen. 9 The 

banking moratorium of 1933 did not affect 

Dallas as much as many other major U.S. 

cities, as most of the city’s businesses, from 

department stores to groceries, continued 

to operate as usual and accepted checks 

from regular customers. 10 

✧ 

Founded by brothers Joseph and Elias Linz in Denison, 

Texas, in October 1877, the Linz Brothers Jewelry 

company moved to Dallas in 1891, setting up shop first 

in the old Thomas Building on Main Street, then in the 

Cockrell Building in 1895, and later in the seven-story 

Linz Building (shown here) in 1899. There, brothers 

Simon, Ben, and Albert joined the company, which 

continued to grow throughout the early 1900s and fared 

well during the Great Depression. 


In 1933 welfare rolls in Dallas were 

estimated at 11,000. They would later climb 

as high as an estimated 19,000 at the nadir 

of the Depression. 11 From January to July 

1933, the Dallas Fed implemented the “Share 

the Work” program, in which it shortened 

work hours of its employees and reduced 

salaries by 5 percent to be able to hire more 

people out of the ranks of the unemployed. 

As the Depression worsened, married women 

were increasingly forced out of the job market 

to make jobs for unemployed men and 

women who did not have families to support 

them. Still, the Eleventh District fared much 

better than other regions primarily because 

of its growing oil-related businesses. 12 

EAST TEXAS GUSHER 

USHERS IN NEW 

ECONOMIC ERA 

The Dallas economy survived the Great 

Depression of the 1930s and actually thrived 

during the decade thanks to a research paper 

written by a Yale University professor some 

seventy-five years earlier. On April 16, 1855, 

a thirty-nine-year-old chemistry professor 

at Yale named Benjamin Silliman, Jr., issued 

what would amount to the birth certificate 

of the oil industry in the form of a twentypage 

pamphlet entitled “Report on Rock 

Oil, or Petroleum, from Venango County, 

Pennsylvania.” In the paper, Silliman 

concluded that petroleum was a raw material 

containing very valuable products. He 

prepared the report for the same group of 

New Haven, Connecticut-based investors 

who would provide the financial backing for 

Colonel Edwin L. Drake’s first well-drilling 

mission four years later. 13 

Drake was an unlikely figure to literally 

give birth to the trillion-dollar oil industry. 

An ailing forty-year-old ex-railroad conductor 

with no previous knowledge of petroleum, 

he drilled the world’s first commercial oil well 

along Oil Creek in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 

August 1859. When he reached a depth of 

69 and ½ feet, he tapped a pool of rock oil. 14 

The first major oil discovery in Texas was 

on January 10, 1901, with the Spindletop 

strike in the Beaumont-Gulf section of Texas. 

This historic strike resulted from the old 

unscientific “hit-or-miss” approach to oil 

prospecting and revealed that previous 

estimates of American reserves were 

probably extremely low. It also ushered in 

the era of quantity production in the state, as 

a region once dedicated to rice, cattle, and 

lumber was rapidly transformed into an oil 

mecca, producing as many as 100,000 

barrels of oil a day. 15 

By 1925 the country had some twenty 

million automobiles. A series of new 

discoveries in the ensuing years enabled 

the oil industry to meet the burgeoning 

consumer demand. 16 In 1928, Texas produced 

more oil than any other state in the nation. 

One year later the value of the state’s annual 

petroleum output surpassed the value of the 

state’s cotton crop. By that time, Dallas was 

already home to a number of oil-related 

enterprises, from oilfield services companies 

to independent operators and wildcatters. 

The city’s proximity to the early Texas oil fields 

offered convenience and cost efficiencies in 

terms of travel and distribution that an 

increasing number of oil companies and oil 

men could not resist. 17 

One such oil man was Columbus Marion 

“Dad” Joiner. Born in Alabama in 1860, Joiner 

had moved to Dallas in 1925 to set up and 

operate a one-man, one-desk office in the 

Praetorian Building. In the fall of 1930 the 

seventy-year-old wildcatter purchased oil 

leases on several thousand acres in and around 

Rusk County in East Texas. On October 3, 

1930, Joiner was drilling on a farm property 

CHAPTER VI ✧ 55

named the Daisy Bradford No. 3, formerly 

owned by a widow named Daisy Bradford, 

when he made a remarkable discovery. 18 

Drilling at a depth of 3,400 feet, Joiner 

struck the greatest pool of oil ever 

discovered anywhere on earth at that time. It 

proved to be the largest, best-producing oil 

field in the world for the next two decades. 

Shortly after striking oil, Joiner was called 

to court to face creditors. He immediately 

appealed to the judge to delay his court 

proceedings until he could develop the new 

oil property and begin reaping profits from 

it, and the judge honored his request. 19 

Haroldson Lafayette (H. L.) Hunt was 

among the spectators in the courtroom at 

Joiner’s proceedings. A native of Fayette 

County, Illinois, Hunt had run a cotton 

plantation in Arkansas for a time before 

joining the oil boom in El Dorado, Arkansas, 

in 1921. By 1925, claiming to have made a 

fortune of $600,000, he bought a whole 

block in El Dorado and built a three-story 

house for his family. But by the time he 

became interested in the East Texas oil fields 

in 1930 he had reportedly lost most, if not 

all, of his money. 20 

That year, Hunt heard reports of a wildcat 

well being drilled in East Texas, a region 

that was not considered to be a prospective 

oil area. He traveled to Rusk County, Texas, 

where he met Joiner, who was then drilling 

the Daisy Bradford No. 3. Hunt was allegedly 

at Joiner’s side when the old wildcatter 

struck oil on October 3. 21 

In November, following Joiner’s court 

appearance, Hunt called a meeting with 

Joiner at the Baker Hotel in Dallas. A 

thirty-six-hour meeting reportedly transpired 

in which the two men negotiated the sale 

of Joiner’s oil leases. During the meeting, 

Hunt periodically received updates from a 

correspondent regarding the latest results 

from the Daisy Bradford No. 3 field. 

According to the terms of the deal that was 

struck on November 26, 1930, Hunt 

purchased the well along with leases on 

more than 5,000 acres in Rusk County from 

Joiner for just over $1.3 million, including 

$30,000 in cash. 22 Hunt had to raise funds to 

seal this deal, using $30,000 that belonged 

to P. G. Lake, a clothier from El Dorado, to 

make the down payment with the plan to 

make subsequent payments to Joiner from 

revenue generated by the wells. 23 With the 

knowledge that Joiner had oversold interests 

in the well and was under pressure from 

creditors, Hunt was willing to take on the 

risk and was opportunistic enough to string 

together a deal with his own creditors to 

make a strategic purchase with enormous 

long-term potential. 24 By December 1930, 

Hunt’s Panola Pipe Line was running oil 

from the East Texas field. Two years later, the 

Hunt Production Company was operating 

900 wells in East Texas. 25 

Within a month of Joiner’s initial strike 

on the Daisy Bradford No. 3 on October 3, 

1930, the Deep-Rock Oil Company brought 

in a 10,000-barrel gusher only a short distance 

away, and the boom was on. A mad stampede 

to the East Texas oil fields ensued, and many 

of those individuals and companies passed 

through or set up shop in Dallas. 26 

✧ 

H. L. Hunt (second from left) joined East Texas civic 

leaders for the dedication of the Texas State Historical 

Marker at the site of the Joiner Daisy Bradford No. 3 oil 

well. In April 1948, Fortune magazine proclaimed Hunt 

the richest man in the United States. He was reported to 

have $263 million worth of oil properties by that time 

and wells that produced 65,000 barrels of crude oil 

a day. 


ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC. 

✧ 

Doc Lloyd and Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner shook hands following Joiner’s discovery of oil at the Daisy Bradford No. 3 in 

the fall of 1930. 

COURTESY OF THE HAMILTON’S HISTORIC DALLAS/BRAD HAMILTON. 

As a result of the 1930 East Texas oilfield 

find, 28 companies directly allied with the 

oil industry moved to Dallas during the 

first two months of 1931 alone, including 

Burford Oil Company of Tulsa, East Texas 

Refining Company of Henderson, Superior 

Oil Company of California, Halliburton 

Oil Well Cementing Co. of Oklahoma (the 

East Texas operation of Halliburton), Gould 

Pumps, Inc. of Seneca Falls, New York, and 

Oswalt Machine Works of Kansas. 27 

In the first six months of 1931, 1,100 

wells were drilled in East Texas, with another 

2,296 drilled in the second half of the year. 

In September 1931 daily production was 

400,000 barrels a day, with total output for 

the year reaching more than 107 million 

barrels of crude. That year 18 refineries, 2 

gasoline plants, and 51 loading racks were 

built to handle the East Texas output. In 

1932, 11 more refineries were built, and in 

1933, 27 more were constructed. 28 


✧ 

The Dallas Bakery at 1831 South Harwood was one of 

the locally owned “mom and pop” businesses that 

survived the Great Depression. 

✧ 

Julius Golman posed in front of one of his Golman Baking Company trucks. 



borrowers of money from local banks were 

the result of the oil boom. 36 

As it had in the past, Dallas’ strategic 

location once again paid huge dividends 

for the local business community, as the 

city provided a convenient home base for a 

whole range of oil-related companies, from 

independent producers, operators, and 

wildcatters to large oil companies, promoters, 

investors, pipeline operators, oil-well scouts, 

lease hounds, and drilling contractors. It 

was not long before the rising tide of oil 

began buoying a number of supporting 

industries and professions. Dallas bankers, 

lawyers, entrepreneurs, and investors 

responded to the opportunity presented by 

the East Texas oilfield strike, providing myriad 

services that supported the exploration and 

production of oil. 29 

In April 1932, Dallas became the new 

home of the oil and gas industry’s leading 

engineering magazine, The Petroleum Engineer, 

a monthly publication published by The 

Petroleum Engineer Publishing Company. The 

publication moved its entire advertising, 

editorial, and circulation departments from 

Tulsa to the fourth floor of Tower Petroleum 

Building in Dallas on April 3. 30 In August, 

the Chamber of Commerce reported that 

Dallas had 787 companies dedicated to the oil 

business—ten times as many as had been in 

the city just two years earlier. The Chamber 

also proclaimed that Dallas was the most 

important oil city in the world. 31 

While some disputed this claim, the 

American Petroleum Institute (API) held its 

annual convention in Dallas in 1934, paying 

homage to the vital role the city played 

in the nation’s oil industry. The Magnolia 

Petroleum Company placed the iconic 

Pegasus statue atop the twenty-nine-story 

Magnolia Building in preparation for the 

1934 API convention during which 

thousands of visitors came to Dallas from 

around the nation. 32 The Pegasus statue 

became one of Dallas’ most enduring and 

beloved architectural icons. 

Over the next few years, oil displaced 

cotton as king in Dallas, and it would go 

on to serve as the economic foundation of 

the city for decades. By 1935, annual oil 

revenues in town doubled revenues from 

cotton. 33 By the end of the decade, Dallas 

would find itself situated in roughly the 

center of five major oil-producing fields: 

East Texas, the Permian Basin of West Texas, 

the Texas Panhandle, the Gulf Coast, and 

Oklahoma. The average distance by highway 

from Dallas to 150 of the most important 

field points was 261 miles, compared 

with 364 miles from Houston and 418 

from Tulsa, representing significant savings 

related to travel and freight as well as 

communications costs between headquarters 

and field operations. 34 With the further 

development of the oil industry in Texas, 

Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Louisiana 

in the 1930s, Dallas became the strategic 

financial and equipment center of the Mid- 

Continent area. 35 

By the time the United States entered 

World War II, approximately 20 percent 

of the population in greater Dallas was 

dependent upon the oil industry for its 

livelihood and income. In 1941 one vice 

president at Mercantile National Bank 

calculated that one out of every eight 

buildings or houses and one of every three 

BANKING INDUSTRY 

COMES OF AGE 

In the estimation of many Dallas 

historians, the most important service the 

city offered to the oil industry throughout 

the 1930s and 1940s was capital, in the 

form of loans to fund oilfield development 

projects. At that time, banks in certain 

regions of the country would not fund such 

projects, believing that oilfield drilling 

was a highly risky venture because of its 

speculative nature. But Dallas banks combined 

capital resources with a willingness to accept 

risk that was required to provide such loans. 

As a result, while banks around the country 

were suffering, a number of Dallas banks 

flourished during the 1930s. 37 

Some of the city’s largest banks, including 

Republic National Bank, First National Bank, 

and Mercantile National Bank, established 

oil departments comprising geologists and 

more traditional bankers whose mission was 

to carefully evaluate the risks and rewards 

associated with various oil fields and drilling 

ventures. 38 Dallas bankers such as Nathan 

Adams of 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. As a 

result, Dallas soon became a center for 

petroleum financing. In 1931, First National 

Bank became one of the top 100 banks in 

the country, with more than $100 million in 

assets. By 1949, Dallas banks were handling 

more oil production paper than any other 

city’s banks in the oil belt. Dallas’ financial 

institutions had in excess of $100 million of 

CHAPTER VI ✧ 57

oil loans outstanding for themselves and 

participating institutions. Dallas also became 

the nation’s capital for independent oil 

financing during this time period. 39 

While Dallas banks benefited greatly 

from funding oil-related ventures in the 

1930s, they also reaped huge profits from 

financing the hundreds of other businesses 

coming to town or being established there to 

support the city’s business and population 

growth. In 1931 several new skyscrapers 

popped up in town, including the Dallas 

Power & Light Building, the Dallas Gas Co. 

(Lone Star Gas) Building, the Republic 

National Bank annex, a new downtown 

YMCA, and the Tower Petroleum Building. 40 

✧ 

The Magnolia Petroleum Company created postcards like 

this one to promote its twenty-nine-story Magnolia 

Building, flanked on the left by the Adolphus Hotel and 

on the right by the Baker Hotel. 


In 1932 the demand for capital to fund 

new business development and infrastructure 

projects accelerated. United Airlines built a 

$75,000 hangar-depot at Love Field. The 

railroads were spending $7 million annually 

in Dallas. Highway construction proceeded 

with major improvements to U.S. Routes 67, 

77, and 80. And printing was a $10 milliona-year 

business. In 1934, Braniff Airways 

moved its headquarters from Oklahoma City 

to Love Field. Geophysical Service, Inc. (GSI), 

which would later spawn Texas Instruments, 

moved its research and development 

laboratory from Newark, New Jersey, to 

Dallas that same year. In 1937 manufacturers, 

distributors, and utility companies invested 

$8.2 million in new and expanded Dallas 

facilities. Coca-Cola began construction 

on a new plant on Mockingbird Lane. 

Southwestern Bell built a $400,000 annex in 

East Dallas. And Dallas Power & Light began 

construction on a $2.5 million generating 

plant on nearby Mountain Creek Lake. 41 

✧ 

The Magnolia Petroleum Company placed the iconic 

Pegasus statue atop its building in preparation for the 

1934 American Petroleum Institute convention. 



The local insurance industry, meanwhile, 

experienced significant growth throughout 

the decade. New buildings were constructed 

in town by United Fidelity Life, Gulf 

States Security Life, Southwestern Life, and 

Southland Life, while the Praetorians 

✧ 

Run for many years by Dallas business icon Nathan 

Adams, First National Bank was one of the nation’s 

largest banks by the 1930s. The bank’s lobby featured 

ornate marble columns and woodwork. 


remodeled their skyscraper. By the end of 

the 1930s, 13 of Texas’ 33 legal reserve life 

insurance companies were headquartered in 

Dallas. Assets of locally based insurance 

companies totaled $106 million by 1939, as 

the city established itself as one of most 

important insurance cities in nation. All 

these business ventures—from the 

establishment of new companies to the 

construction of new buildings—depended 

heavily upon the city’s banks for financing. 

And local banks responded to meet the 

needs of the local business community. 42 

CITY WINS BID FOR 

TEXAS CENTENNIAL 

EXPOSITION 

Along with the Great Depression and 

discovery of the East Texas oil field in 1930, 

the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936 was 

another significant event impacting business 

in Dallas during the decade. It was 

yet another example in which local 

executives—this time led by banking 

presidents—seized an opportunity to 

showcase the city to businesses and 

individuals throughout the state, region, and 

nation. The event enabled local businesses 

to gain broader notoriety while attracting a 

few iconic national brands, including Ford 

Motor Company, AT&T, and General 

Electric, to invest in exhibit space. Though 

the city’s investment in the Texas Centennial 

Exposition was not immediately recouped 

through revenue generated by the event, the 

long-term returns far exceeded the up-front 

capital outlay. These benefits included a 

significant boost to the city’s convention and 

tourist industry and a notable increase in 

banking deposits. In addition, the collective 

efforts of previous business leaders to 

sustain the State Fair of Texas proved 

invaluable yet again, as the existing 

fairgrounds were among the most critical 

ingredients in the city’s winning bid to host 

the event. The Texas Centennial Exposition 

also pointed out the city’s lingering racial 

problems, however, as African Americans, 

led by A. Maceo Smith, struggled to gain 

state funding for a Hall of Negro Life, and 

ultimately had to secure funding from the 

federal government. 

The idea of holding a centennial 

celebration for the state was first proposed at 

an Advertising Clubs of Texas convention 

held in Corsicana in November 1923. After 

several years in which a number of entities 

deliberated the pros and cons of staging 

such an event, the Texas Legislature finally 


voted for a joint resolution in 1931, signed 

by Governor Ross S. Sterling. The resolution 

submitted to the people of Texas a proposal 

for a constitutional amendment to authorize 

a centennial celebration. After this amendment 

was approved, the state requested proposals 

from cities that wanted to host the event. 43 

✧ 

Led by George L. Dahl, a team of architects drew up the 

plans for the massive construction and renovation 

projects at the fairgrounds in preparation for the 1936 

Texas Centennial Exposition. Here, the architects took 

time out from their work to pose for a photograph in 

front of their drafting tables. 


Not surprising given the city’s prevailing 

pro-business mindset, Dallas created a 

corporation to manage the business affairs of 

its bid to host the centennial celebration. 

Called the Texas Centennial Central Exposition, 

the corporation was led by three prominent 

bankers. Nathan Adams, president of First 

National Bank, served as chairman. Fred 

Florence, president of Republic National Bank, 

served as president. Robert L. Thornton, 

president of Mercantile National Bank, served 

as chairman of the corporation’s executive, 

supervision, and direction committees. 44 

Thornton emerged as the primary driving 

force behind the effort. His love affair with 

the State Fair of Texas had begun at the age 

of nine when he first attended the fair after 

his father promised him he could if he 

picked cotton hard all fall. 45 As a young man, 

he had attended the 1904 World’s Fair in 

St. Louis, where he recognized the positive 

benefits a city could derive from hosting 

such an event. In the early stages of the city’s 

bid effort, Thornton enlisted the support of 

the Chamber of Commerce and Mayor 

Charles E. Turner, and secured endorsements 

from Adams and Florence. He then called a 

meeting for supporters of the exposition effort, 

and some 500 business leaders attended. At 

that meeting, he urged the city to hold a 

bond election to raise as much as $3 million 

to support the centennial bid effort. 46 

✧ 

Created for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, the Esplanade of State stretched 300 feet wide and 1,500 feet long, with 

a 200-foot by 700-foot reflecting pool embowered in luxuriant Texas trees, shrubs, and flowers. 


On September 1, 1934, the Texas 

Centennial Commission received bids from 

cities seeking to host the celebration. Eight 

days later, the commission announced that 

Dallas would host the 1936 Texas Centennial 

Exposition. Dallas beat out San Antonio, 

Houston, and a handful of other cities 

because its bid included more up-front 

money, more land, and more civic support 

for the celebration. 47 In the grip of a 

nationwide depression, the city and its 

business and civic leaders pledged $10 

million in cash and property as well as the 

site of the State Fair of Texas and promised 

to construct several new facilities, including 

a fine arts museum, a natural history museum, 

an aquarium, a horticulture building, and an 

amphitheater. 48 Dallas’ winning bid reflected 

the remarkable leadership abilities of men 

like Thornton, Adams, and Florence, who 

sparked the collective imagination of the city 

while harnessing the considerable financial 

resources and facilities necessary to win the 

bid—even as much of the country was still 

paralyzed by the Great Depression. 

As part of its overall effort to prepare for 

and promote the exposition, the city launched 

a $500,000 publicity and advertising 

campaign. The campaign featured national 

radio spots, newspaper ads in and out of 

state, folders, posters, and various other 

collateral and specialty items. One of the 

most unique elements of this campaign was 

a group of 25 Texas Centennial Rangerettes. 

Donning red, white, and blue outfits, 

they traveled around the country promoting 

the event. In addition to issuing direct 

invitations to President Roosevelt, Vice 

President John Nance Garner, and 

Congressman Sam Rayburn, they “lassoed” 

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in his office in 

an attempt to bring him to the event. 49 

The city also hired George L. Dahl as the 

architect to oversee the new construction 

and renovations at the fairgrounds. Among 

the many landscape elements created for the 

event was the Esplanade of State, including 

a long reflecting pool drawing visitors to 

the $1.25 million Texas Hall of State. Other 

primary buildings either created or 

renovated for the event and their attendant 

costs included halls of transportation and 

petroleum ($410,000), two livestock buildings 

($390,000), the Museum of Fine Arts 

($550,000), and the Museum of Natural 

History ($300,000). 50 

In addition to the city’s concerted effort, 

in December 1935 the State of Texas 

put 40,000 men to work on a $41 million 

road-building program to be completed by 

June 6, 1936, the opening day of the Texas 

Centennial Exposition. The objective of this 

effort was to improve every major road 

leading into and out of Dallas to ensure that 

visitors from all over the state and around 

the country could easily travel to the event. 51 

The Texas Centennial Exposition opened 

on June 6, 1936, and ran through November 

29, 1936. The six-month celebration attracted 

more than 6 million visitors from all 48 

states and many nations around the globe. 

Some 250,000 spectators witnessed the 

opening-day parade, and the noon ceremony 

was broadcast to the nation over two 

radio networks. President Roosevelt visited 

the fairgrounds six days later, addressing a 

CHAPTER VI ✧ 59

crowd of more than 50,000 people in the 

Cotton Bowl, which had opened in 1932. 

Overall, the centennial celebration cost Dallas 

some $25 million to produce, supplemented 

by $3 million in appropriations from state 

and federal agencies. 52 

✧ 

In preparation for the Texas Centennial Exposition of 

1936, the city undertook a massive construction effort at 

the fairgrounds. Two livestock buildings were constructed 

for ranchers and farmers to display their livestock. 

Livestock Building #2 is shown here. 


✧ 

The $1.25 million Hall of State was constructed to serve as a shrine to Texas history for the 1936 Texas Centennial 

Exposition. Standing at the east end of the Esplanade’s reflecting pool, the Hall of State today is home to the Dallas 

Historical Society and numerous special events throughout the year. Designed by Donald Bartheleme, the building’s 

columned façade, massive front doors featuring symbols of industry and agriculture, Hall of Heroes with statues of Texas 

heroes, and Great Hall murals painted by Eugene Savage of New York make it one of the city’s most beloved and historically 

significant structures. 

As the approximate geographic center of 

Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, 

which together produced 65 percent of the 

nation’s oil, the city of Dallas had no trouble 

attracting oil company exhibitors, including 

Gulf Refining Company, Humble Oil & 

Refining Company, Marathon Oil Company, 

Phillips Petroleum Company, and Shell 

Petroleum Company. At that time, Texas was 

the greatest oil-producing region in the 

world, with 57,000 producing wells. 53 

The Hall of Varied Industries included 

exhibits by national companies such as 

AT&T, General Electric, and Westinghouse. 

But the most notable among these were the 

Ford Motor Company and DuPont exhibits. 

The Ford Motor Company entered the 

Texas Centennial Exposition with a building 

and exhibit investment of $2.25 million, 

including a $1.2 million Ford Building 

designed by New York City architect Albert 

Kahn, along with a $1.05 million investment 

in exhibits, roads, layout, and programs. The 

company’s exhibit displayed a wide array of 

the raw materials used to make cars, including 

cotton, mohair, wool, hides, soybeans, resin, 

and rice. Ford’s “Roads of the Southwest” 

exhibit featured replicas of historic roads 

and trails, including the Camino Real, Santa 

Fe Trail, and Old San Antonio Road. 54 

E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company’s 

exhibition at the Texas Centennial Exposition 

marked the first time the company had 

entered a national exposition in its more 

than 100-year history. The Wilmington, 


Delaware-based corporation purchased 

5,340 square feet of exhibition space at a 

cost of $16,000. The DuPont exhibit, which 

cost an additional $10,000, showcased 

“modern marvels of chemistry,” including 

demonstrations on the manufacture of 

synthetic rubber, camphor, musk, cleansing 

agents, and various cotton products. 55 

A. Maceo Smith, the Reverend Maynard 

Jackson, and the Dallas Negro Chamber 

of Commerce saw the Texas Centennial 

Exposition as an opportunity to showcase the 

progress African Americans had made in the 

state. After developing a concept for a Hall of 

Negro Life exhibition, Smith went to Austin to 

ask for $100,000 in state funding to support 

the exhibit, taking with him a collection of 

historical Negro photographs to support his 

pitch. The Texas Legislature agreed to provide 

the money on the condition that Smith and 

Jackson withdraw their African-American 

candidate, Ammon S. Wells, who was running 

for the legislative seat vacated by Sarah 

Hughes, who had been appointed to preside 

over the Fourteenth District Court. Unwilling 

to agree to such conditions, Smith and 

Jackson appealed to the federal government 

for the funding. Vice President John Nance 

Garner guaranteed $100,000 to support the 

effort, but the funds were not granted until 

ninety days before the June opening of the 

Texas Centennial Exposition. Not about to be 

discouraged, Smith, Jackson, and their 

supporters worked day and night to create an 

exhibit that faithfully depicted the strides 

African Americans had made in the spheres of 

business, politics, and the arts despite the 

poor housing conditions, institutional racism, 

and limited professional opportunities that 

most faced. Some 400,000 people visited the 

Hall of Negro Life during the six-month 

exposition, more than 60 percent of whom 

were white. But the fruits of so many people’s 

efforts were short-lived, as the Hall was torn 

down before the 1937 Greater Texas and Pan 

American Exposition the following year. It was 

the only facility from the Texas Centennial 

Exposition to suffer this fate. 56 

✧ 

Designed in the Spanish Baroque style with Moorish 

architectural influences, the Music Hall at Fair Park 

opened in 1925. It was for many years the city’s main 

venue for large theatrical and musical performances. 

Today, it is used for business meetings and private parties 

and is home to the Dallas Summer Musicals, The Dallas 

Opera, and the Forth Worth-Dallas Ballet. 



As Darwin Payne notes in Big D: Triumphs 

and Troubles of an American Supercity in the 

20th Century, the city did not immediately 

recoup its $25 million investment in the 

Texas Centennial Exposition in terms of 

revenue generated by visitors and exhibitors. 

But the short- and long-term benefits to 

Dallas were immense. The economic impact 

was significant, as hotel business increased 

35 percent during the six-month event, 

restaurant sales jumped 50 percent, and 

wholesale sales grew by 40 percent. One 

month after the exposition opened, bank 

deposits throughout the city had increased 

$30 million. Among the myriad business 

benefits Dallas realized from hosting the 

Texas Centennial Exposition was the positive 

impact on the city’s tourism and convention 

business, which increased by 50 percent in 

✧ 

A number of Dallas business and civic leaders headlined 

the opening-day ceremony for the Texas Centennial 

Exposition, including Fred Florence (third from left), 

president of Republic National Bank and president of the 

Exposition, and R. L. Thornton (far right), president of 

Mercantile Bank, chairman of the Exposition’s executive, 

supervision, and direction committees, and mayor from 

1953 to 1961. 


✧ 

Among the many businesses that exhibited products at 

the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, Ford Motor 

Company made the largest investment. The company’s 

$2.25 million investment included a “Roads of the 

Southwest” exhibit in the $1.2 million 55,000-square-foot 

Ford Building, designed by New York City architect 

Albert Kahn. 


the years immediately following the event. 

In 1935, 85,400 conventioneers had come 

to Dallas. That number would grow to more 

than 120,000 by 1939. 57 When viewed in the 

broad sweep of the city’s history, the Texas 

Centennial Exposition is arguably Dallas’ 

greatest promotional accomplishment 

surrounding a single event. The centennial 

celebration itself put thousands of people to 

work at a time of significant economic strife. 

It offered a venue where hundreds of local 

businesses were able to display their goods 

and services for a national audience. Many of 

these same enterprises established important 

business ties with visitors and companies 

from around the country that would allow 

them to expand their operations in the 

coming years. The event also forced the city’s 

diverse political, social, and business 

interests to set aside their differences—at 

least for a while—to put the city’s best face 

forward in a national spotlight. 

✧ 

More than 50,000 people packed the Cotton Bowl on the 

grounds of the State Fair of Texas during the 1936 Texas 

Centennial Exposition, eagerly awaiting the arrival of 

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 



DALLAS NEGRO 

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 

EXPERIENCES REVIVAL 

As evidenced by the struggle to procure 

funding for the Hall of Negro Life at the 

Texas Centennial Exposition, African 

Americans in Dallas continued to fight 

discrimination during the 1930s. But the 

actions of a few people helped African- 

American businessmen make positive strides 

throughout the decade. Antonio (A.) Maceo 

Smith was one such person. 

Born and raised in Texarkana, Texas, 

Smith earned undergraduate and graduate 

degrees at Fisk University and New York 

University, respectively, before returning to 

his hometown to apply his newly acquired 

knowledge and skills to improve the lives of 

his fellow African Americans. He played 

key roles in organizing the Texarkana Negro 

Business League and revitalizing the Oklahoma 

City Negro Business League. E. J. Crawford, 

an African-American undertaker in Dallas, 

recruited Smith in 1932 to help organize 

and manage a new insurance company and 

manage a burial association. Smith quickly 

made his presence felt across the city’s business 

landscape. He taught business administration 

to high schoolers in the Dallas Independent 

School District and served as publisher of 

the African-American weekly newspaper, the 

Dallas Express. Not long after arriving in 

town, Smith was also asked to lead the 

reorganization and revitalization of the 

Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce (DNCC). 

He served as the Chamber’s executive 

secretary from 1933 to 1939. 58 

Smith’s first step in reorganizing the 

DNCC was to stabilize its financial standing 

and establish a full-time paid executive 

staff. He and his staff then developed a 

program of activities designed to increase 

African Americans’ political activity and 

improve their economic conditions. As part 

of this effort, the DNCC became more 

involved with helping the people who were 

running small “mom and pop” business 

operations, which included grocery stores, 

taverns, barber shops, beauty shops, 

restaurants, gasoline service stations, small 

retail shops, and funeral homes. Lacking 

sufficient capital, most of these businesses 

employed few people other than their 

immediate owners and survived less than 

ten years. Smith and his staff provided advice 

and assistance to these small business 

owners while launching a series of campaigns 

designed to make people aware of the 

importance of patronizing African-Americanowned 

establishments. By encouraging 

people to spend money within their own 

communities, the DNCC helped businesses 

grow and, in so doing, created more employment 

opportunities for African Americans. 59 

Toward the end of the 1930s the Dallas 

Express (the city’s only African-American 

newspaper) published numerous commentaries 

advancing a variety of causes, 

including more and better housing. In 1938, 

Smith, the Reverend Maynard H. Jackson, 

and three other prominent African American 

leaders—Dr. E. E. Ward, called by his 

supporters “the Bronze Mayor of Dallas;” 

Henry Strickland, president of Excelsior 

Life Insurance; and C. F. Starkes, president of 

Peoples Undertaking Company—purchased 

the newspaper from its white owners. They 

subsequently used the paper to intensify 

CHAPTER VI ✧ 61

criticism of the deplorable housing conditions 

that existed for African Americans in 

the wake of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937. 60 

In 1940 the Dallas City Council voted in 

favor of a $3 million appropriation for lowcost 

African-American housing proposed by 

the Dallas Housing Authority, a small but 

significant victory for Smith, Jackson, and 

countless others who had toiled throughout 

the decade for change. 61 

✧ 

At the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, the Hall of Negro Life depicted the strides African Americans had made in the 

spheres of business, politics, and the arts. 


✧ 

Antonio Maceo Smith was one of the most influential 

African-American businessmen and civic leaders in the 

city’s history. Through his involvement in the Dallas 

Negro Chamber of Commerce, the Progressive Voters 

League, and the Texas Centennial Exposition, Smith 

worked tirelessly to give African Americans more 

professional opportunities, improved housing conditions, 

and a stronger voice in local civic and political 

activities. (1972) 



Under Smith’s leadership the DNCC also 

worked to establish and advance the causes 

of more specialized African-American 

interest groups, such as the Negro Plumbers 

Association, the Negro Movie Operators 

Union, and the Negro Golf Association. The 

development of the Negro Plumbers 

Association illustrates how the DNCC 

functioned in this capacity. Before 1945 

there were a number of African-American 

men working in the plumbing trade in 

Dallas, but only one was a licensed plumber. 

Many of these men had worked in the 

plumbing trade for a number of years and 

possessed considerable practical skills, but 

could not pass the licensing exam. With an 

African-American population of more than 

60,000 in Dallas by the mid-1940s, the 

DNCC saw an opportunity to increase 

professional opportunities in this line of 

work. So, in 1945, it helped organize the 

Negro Plumbers Association, whose primary 

purpose was to provide instruction to those 

plumbers who wanted to earn their license. 62 

CITY’ S IMAGE ELEVATED 

ON A NATIONAL SCALE 

The East Texas oil strike in 1930 and the 

Texas Centennial Exposition six years 

later attracted millions of people to Dallas, 

giving them firsthand exposure to the 

myriad business and civic activities in the 

burgeoning city. As these people returned to 

their hometowns, many spread the word of 

the exciting happenings in Dallas. A number 

of them would eventually settle in or around 

Dallas or relocate their businesses there, 

as it offered a better business climate and 

more job prospects than the places they had 

been living. 

In addition to this informal wordof-mouth 

publicity the city enjoyed from 

the Texas Centennial Exposition, Dallas 

had spent $500,000 on a public relations 

campaign in preparation for the event. This 

campaign included national radio spots as 

well as print ads in newspapers inside and 

outside of Texas. It also spurred numerous 

articles about the city and exposition in 

national publications from July 1935 

through 1939. During a span in the 1930s 

when much of the nation was suffering 

from high unemployment and low morale, 

Dallas’ image emerged as a symbol of 

prosperity and opportunity. 63 

Dallas emerged from the 1930s with a 

more diverse economy and multi-faceted 

business environment as a result of good 

luck, an appetite for risk, and a unique 

combination of prescience and self-promotion. 

Oil had given the city another arrow in its 

economic quiver. By accepting the inherent 

risk in financing East Texas oil operations, 

local banks bolstered the city’s position 

as the financial center of the Southwest. 

Meanwhile, Dallas business leaders recognized 

the long-term benefits of hosting the Texas 

Centennial Exposition and then took 

the necessary steps to fully exploit the 

opportunity. As a result, by 1940 the city 

commanded a much bigger piece of the 

national spotlight than it had ten years 

earlier—even as families and individuals 

around the country were still reeling from 

the effects of the Great Depression and 

looking for a better way of life. 


✧ 

After coming to Texas from Nuevo León, Mexico, and selling homemade chili and tamales at the Kaufman County Fair in the 1920s, Adelaida “Mama” Cuellar worked with her husband, 

Macario Cuellar, and their sons to found El Chico in 1940. 


CHAPTER VII 

D ALLAS B ECOMES “WAR C APITAL OF S OUTHWEST,” 1940-1944 

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on 

December 7, 1941, an event President 

Roosevelt called “a day that will live in 

infamy,” America officially entered World 

War II. By that time, Dallas’ population was 

just under 300,000 people. Led by Mayor 

Woodall Rodgers, who had been elected in 

1939 and would serve four terms through 

1947, citizens embraced the responsibilities 

of supporting the nation’s war and civil 

defense efforts. 

Approximately 52,000 residents of Dallas 

served in the armed forces during World War 

II. Meanwhile, 55,000 citizens worked in 

industry to support the cause by producing 

war-related goods, and another 10,000 people 

helped coordinate defense-related activities 

in the city. In addition, Dallas citizens made 

other sacrifices that supported the Allied 

Forces’ efforts. The city rationed basic items 

such as food, gas, tires, and shoes during the 

war, as was the case in other American cities. 1 

As local companies adapted their 

operations to meet the needs of the nation’s 

military industrial complex, the city’s 

manufacturing and defense sectors grew 

significantly through expansion of existing 

facilities and several major corporate 

relocations. In five years the city underwent 

a stunning metamorphosis, evolving from 

the “King of Cotton” to the “War Capital of 

the Southwest,” according to Craig Hanley, 

who claimed that World War II transformed 

Dallas like no other city in the nation. 2 As the 

number of local jobs increased, particularly 

in manufacturing and defense, so did Dallas’ 

population, which would grow more than 

47 percent during the decade, from 294,734 

in 1940 to 434,462 by 1950. 3 

As the city’s manufacturing and defense 

industries grew to support the war effort, 

cotton remained a pillar of the local economy. 

Meanwhile, competition heated up between 

Dallas and Fort Worth to become the aviation 

center of the Southwest. And local Hispanic 

CHAPTER VII ✧ 63

usinesses began to assert themselves by 

organizing the city’s Mexican Chamber of 

Commerce. Dallas’ business environment 

would benefit significantly from the war effort 

just as it had benefited from the Civil War. 

DEFENSE INDUSTRY 

EMERGES, 

MANUFACTURING 

CONTINUES TO GROW 

Four years after Charles Lindbergh had 

encouraged Dallas’ aviation industry at the 

opening of Love Field Airport in 1927, 

Chamber of Commerce Manager M. J. Norrell 

heralded the city’s burgeoning mode of 

transportation in a speech to the Dallas 

Rotary Club in 1931. “As an inland city,” 

Norrell said, “let the air be our ocean and let 

the influence of this city enlarge itself, 

carried upon throngs of planes that already 

write across our skies the story of a new era 

of transportation.” 4 As if inspired by Norrell’s 

bold proclamation, the city acquired 

additional land around Love Field later that 

year to expand the airport’s total acreage. 5 

Two years earlier, Dallas had acquired Hensley 

Field in Grand Prairie and leased it to the 

U.S. government for military flights. 6 Hensley 

Field would later become a U.S. Naval Air 

Station and ultimately prove to be a key 

acquisition for the area’s business landscape. 7 

Throughout the 1930s, as the East Texas 

oil boom buffered Dallas’ economy from the 

worst effects of the Great Depression, the city 

continued to build upon its commitment to 

the air transportation industry. Through 

ongoing operations and enhancements at 

Love Field, several key infrastructure 

acquisitions, and a growing body of 

employees skilled in aviation manufacturing, 

operations, and maintenance, Dallas had 

become one of the nation’s centers of 

aviation expertise and facilities by the end of 

the decade. The foresight demonstrated by 

local civic and business leaders positioned 

the city as a strategic location for the defense 

industry at the outset of World War II. 

In 1940, North American Aviation (NAA) 

moved from Inglewood, California, to the 

Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area after acquiring 

a large piece of land in Grand Prairie at the 

edge of Mountain Creek Lake, near Hensley 

Field. According to Ben Critz of the Dallas 

Chamber of Commerce, NAA chose the DFW 

area because it “had climate…and an abundant 

supply of lean, intelligent American labor.” NAA 

also coveted DFW’s central location in the 

continent, which protected the company from 

the kind of enemy surprise attacks to which 

the East and West coasts were vulnerable. 8 

On December 9, 1940, NAA broke ground 

on a $7 million airplane manufacturing plant, 

which was completed, incredibly, in 141 

days. The main factory building covered 67 

acres and featured the largest industrial room 

in the world. Its walls were thick enough to 

withstand incendiary bombs. The facility had 

no windows so that it could not be detected by 

enemy planes at night, and it was disguisable 

as a golf course during the day. 9 The plant 

produced 24,000 B-24 bombers, P-51 

Mustangs, and AT-6 Texas Trainers—more 

planes than were produced anywhere else in 

the nation during the war. 10 

The size of NAA’s plant and its impact on 

the local economy were staggering. Originally 

scheduled to employ some 12,000 people, 

the plant’s employee base would grow to 

nearly 40,000 before the war ended. 11 In 1940, 

Dallas County had 16,000 residents earning 

a combined $15 million annually from manufacturing. 

At NAA’s peak employment, the 

payroll for its 39,960 employees averaged 

$10 million every month. The plant’s manufacturing 

capacity was no less remarkable. In 

1940 all manufactured products in Dallas 

County were valued at $155 million. NAA 

workers produced $473 million worth of 

aircraft in the first eight months of 1944. 12 

The NAA plant spurred a period of 

remarkable growth in the city’s manufacturing 

infrastructure and labor force. By 1944 the 

city had more than 75,000 manufacturing 

jobs, many of which were in the burgeoning 

defense industry. This figure would grow 

steadily by approximately 7,000 jobs per 

year until 1970. 13 

In the first fifteen days after the war 

ended, 17,000 NAA workers were laid off. 

But as the Dallas economy had grown 

significantly during the war, most of these 

employees were absorbed into the city’s 

personal service trade industry, construction 

industry, and metal working industry, as well 

as by utility companies that had beefed up 

their industrial development departments 

during the war. 14 

In the Federal Reserve’s Eleventh District, 

239 loans amounting to $82 million were 

approved over the course of the war for 

businesses supplying military equipment, 

supplies, and food to the armed services. 15 

Among the Dallas-based companies that 

benefited directly from the war effort were 

Gifford Hill Company, which supplied sand, 

gravel, ready-mix concrete, and asphalt, as 

well as construction firms like C. Wallace 

Plumbers. These and other companies could 

barely keep up with the demand for airfields, 

air schools, and ordnance plants and depots 

all over Texas. Continental Gin adapted its 

operations from making cotton-cleaning 

equipment to bombs. Texas Pre-fabricated 

Housing Company produced a pre-fab unit 

called the Dallas hut, which was used as a 

temporary classroom as well as housing for 

soldiers. In addition, to meet the demands of 

the war effort, the city’s companies became 

massive consumers of electricity. In 1940, 

Dallas industry consumed 44 million kilowatt 

hours of electricity compared to 193 million 

kilowatt hours in 1944. 16 

As the city’s defense and manufacturing 

sectors grew, a number of other industries 

experienced booms. Indicative of the general 

growth experienced by the city’s banks, 

Republic National Bank’s reserves increased 

from $64 million in 1935 to $235 million in 

1945. The city’s wholesale trade rose from 

$640 million to $901 million during that 

same time. Meanwhile, the purchasing power 

of Dallas’ population rose from $340 million 

to $670 million. 17 

Dallas’ automobile and homebuilding 

industries also grew significantly. In 1941 

the Ford Motor Company invested $450,000 

to expand space and increase the production 

capacity of the assembly plant it had built on 

East Grand Avenue in 1934. 18 The plant was 

expanded to accommodate more workers in 

support of the nation’s war effort. The influx 

of laborers needed to staff the assembly plant 

set into motion the slow erosion of formerly 

affluent East Dallas neighborhoods, as 

builders bought and destroyed large homes 

on Gaston, Live Oak, and Ross to construct 

low-end housing and apartments for the 

burgeoning blue-collar workforce. 19 

COMPETITION HEATS UP 

TO BECOME THE AIR 

TRANSPORT CENTER 

OF THE SOUTHWEST 

Throughout the 1940s, the competition 

between Dallas and Fort Worth to become 

the center of air travel in the Southwest 

began to heat up. In 1937, Fort Worth’s 

Meacham Field had opened a new terminal 

that was nicer than Love Field’s. The City of 

Fort Worth dedicated the new terminal to 

Amon G. Carter. Carter was a prominent 

figure in aviation circles and the largest 

shareholder in American Airlines, which 

had been formed in 1934 following the 

incorporation of the Aviation Corporation’s 

airline subsidiaries into American Airways, 

Inc., in 1931. 20 The Texas Air Transport 

facility and the Southwest regional office 


✧ 

A former major in the U.S. Army during World War I, 

Woodall Rodgers founded a law firm with Charles D. 

Turner in Dallas in 1925 that specialized in oil and gas 

law and supported a number of high-profile clients, 

including Standard Oil Company of Indiana and its 

Texas subsidiaries. As mayor of Dallas from 1939 to 

1947, Rodgers helped increase the accountability and 

effectiveness of city government by putting the city on a 

cash operating basis and formalizing its planning efforts. 

He also spearheaded efforts to expand Love Field and 

build Central Expressway, Memorial Auditorium, the 

Dallas Public Library, and Garza Little Elm Reservoir, 

one of the city’s largest water supplies. Among his many 

civic contributions, he helped organize and was the first 

president of the Dallas Salesmanship Club, was founder 

and president of the Greater Dallas Planning Council, 

and served as board chairman of the Dallas Council on 

World Affairs. 



of the Civil Aeronautics Agency (CAA) 

also were based in Fort Worth at that 

time. Despite these efforts, Love Field was 

handling about five times as many 

passengers a year as Meacham Field by 1940. 21 

Sensing the mounting tension between 

the two cities, the CAA suggested in 1940 

that Dallas and Fort Worth join forces to 

build one super airport halfway between 

them that would service residents in both 

cities. After the cities agreed “in concept” to 

such a venture, Braniff and American 

Airlines agreed to buy 640 acres in 

Arlington, deed the property to the city, and 

then lease and operate the joint super 

airport. By 1943 a more detailed plan— 

jointly developed by Dallas, Fort Worth, 

Arlington, American Airlines, Braniff, and 

the CAA—proposed the creation of “Midway 

Airport” on U.S. Highway 183 east of Euless 

in Tarrant County. According to this plan, 

the airport’s administrative building would 

assume a neutral posture, facing north rather 

than east or west so as not to pay undo 

homage to either Dallas or Fort Worth. 22 

Later that year, Carter recommended to 

CAA Regional Director L.C. Elliott that the 

initial plan be altered so the administration 

building faced west and the airport’s hangars 

and repair and maintenance shops were 

closer to Fort Worth. Dallas Mayor Woodall 

Rodgers opposed the changes, claiming 

they would result in greater commercial 

development around the airport on the 

Fort Worth side. Furthermore, Rodgers 

stated, Carter’s proposed changes did not 

make sense given that Dallas supplied 

80 percent of the current air traffic in the 

DFW area. A group of thirty top business 

and civic leaders in Dallas—including 

theater owner Karl Hoblitzelle, banker R.L. 

Thornton, Ted Dealey of The Dallas Morning 

News, and Tom Gooch of the Dallas Times 

Herald—formed a committee to oppose 

the CAA recommendation. A delegation of 

committee members subsequently traveled 

to Washington, D.C., to voice disapproval of 

the recommendation directly to the CAA 

Board and Secretary of Commerce Jesse 

Jones. Dallas officially withdrew from the 

Midway Airport joint venture in April 1943. 

The city’s leadership did not waste any time 

in determining next steps. Not long after the 

delegation’s trip to Washington, D.C., and 

the city’s subsequent withdrawal from the 

venture, Dallas voters passed a $5 million 

bond package to improve Love Field. 23 

In the 1950s, under Mayor Jean Baptist 

Adoue, Jr., Dallas voters passed a $49.5 

million capital improvements bond package, 

along with a $12 million bond package to 

expand Love Field. By 1953, Love Field was 

fourth in the nation in enplaned passengers 

on local service airlines and 10th in the 

nation in the total number of enplaned 

passengers. Meanwhile, Fort Worth continued 

to compete with Dallas for air travelers. 

In April 1953, Fort Worth opened the 

Greater Fort Worth International Airport 

(which would later be renamed the Greater 

Southwest International Airport). Amon G. 

Carter was still the driving force behind the 

city’s commercial aviation efforts. Dallas 

officials believed that the director of 

American Airlines and the company’s largest 

shareholder was leveraging his influence 

to persuade the airline to shift more of its 

flights from Love Field to the new Fort 

Worth airport. Tensions mounted between 

the two cities yet again. When Fort Worth 

offered Dallas one-half interest in the 

new airport and top billing, Dallas city 

officials refused. 24 

The bad blood stirred up during the 

1940s and 1950s would continue to simmer 

between Dallas and Fort Worth for another 

two decades as the idea of a combined super 

airport festered. However, these early failed 

attempts to resolve the issue would prove to 

be necessary, albeit unpleasant, first steps 

toward the realization of Dallas-Fort Worth 

Regional Airport in 1974. 

COTTON CONTINUES TO 

BE ECONOMIC PILLAR 

By the 1940s the city’s ability to 

merchandise cotton matched its ability to 

grow the crop. The Dallas Cotton Exchange 

was home to the myriad entities that 

participated in the process of merchandising 

raw cotton, including some thirty-five 

exporting firms along with numerous spot 

brokers, futures operators, and insurance 

and railroad representatives of interior and 

port compresses. Buyers for domestic and 

foreign mills were headquartered in the 

Dallas Cotton Exchange, whose membership 

by this time included brokers from England, 

Germany, Holland, France, and Japan. After 

local farmers delivered their raw cotton to 

the Exchange, the crops were shipped to 

every country in the world that had facilities 

for the manufacture of cotton. Texas cotton 

was frequently shipped to Bombay, India, 

where it was mixed with India-grown cotton 

to improve its spinning qualities. 25 

✧ 

Dallas County cotton farmers weighed sacks of cotton in 

the field following the harvest. (c. 1937) 



In addition, Dallas was one of the ten 

designated spot cotton markets in the nation. 

In this capacity, the Dallas Cotton Exchange 

maintained a spot quotations committee that 

cooperated with the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture to determine fair prices for the 

CHAPTER VII ✧ 65

✧ 

Bailey Gilmore, a board member of the Dallas Cotton 

Exchange, recorded cotton futures on a chalkboard as 

they came in on the ticker tape. (c. 1951) 



different qualities of cotton relative to the 

quotations of several futures markets. WFAA 

Radio, which had been established on June 

26, 1922, was broadcasting world prices and 

other related market information across the 

floor of the Exchange by the 1940s, providing 

members with timely updates about price 

fluctuations so they could get full value for 

their transactions. 26 

During the growing season from April to 

August, the Exchange tapped into more than 

100 correspondents for information about 

the condition and progress of crops in 

sections of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. 

Exchange members distributed these reports 

to clients in various mill centers and domestic 

and foreign markets. Further enhancing the 

sophisticated operations in the Exchange 

Building was a U.S. Weather Bureau office, 

which reported any meteorological conditions 

that could affect crop production throughout 

the three-state region. 27 

In 1949, D.B. Thompson, president of 

the Dallas Cotton Exchange, reported that 

the city’s cotton surplus had almost been 

liquidated during World War II, as the 

Exchange converted its facilities to support 

the war effort. As part of the European 

Recovery Program following the war, the 

Dallas Cotton Exchange began rebuilding its 

surplus and resumed its preeminent position 

in cotton exports. 28 

By the middle of the twentieth century, 

the Dallas Cotton Exchange’s 136 members 

owned and operated one of the largest office 

buildings in Dallas located at St. Paul and San 

Jacinto streets. The Exchange merchandised 

about 1.7 million bales of cotton a year and 

generated about $250 million in business 

annually. Approximately 1,000 people were 

employed in cotton-related positions in 

Dallas, working as cotton merchants, cotton 

brokers, steamship agents, compress agents, 

railroad freight solicitors, or futures brokers 

representing about 100 companies. Local 

banks financed a major part of the business, 

and railroads, compresses, and gins derived 

significant revenues from the movement and 

sale of the crop. 29 

Around this time, the local cotton 

industry also took a number of steps to meet 

new competition from synthetic fibers, 

which vied with cotton to win more of the 

textile business. These measures included 

lowering the cost of production through 

mechanization and irrigation, constantly 

improving the seed, selecting the best 

qualities for spinning, and creating more 

effective advertising and promotion. 30 

Despite this increased competition, local 

industry leaders remained optimistic. 

“Cotton and its by-products stand with oil as 

our greatest income source,” Thompson 

stated, “and the two have contributed greatly 

to helping build this city and this state. 

Cotton’s future possibilities are limited only 

by the amount of water it is possible to get 

for irrigation purposes in the West and by 

the ability of merchants to find a market for 

additional production.” 31 

MEXICAN CHAMBER OF 

COMMERCE IS FOUNDED 

In 1940, Dallas’ Hispanic population was 

about 6,000, constituting approximately 2 

percent of the city’s overall residents. Most 

lived in Little Mexico, a densely populated 

slum located on both sides of McKinney 

Avenue running from Akard to Lamar streets. 

As Darwin Payne notes, living conditions 

and work opportunities for Hispanics in 

general were far below those of whites in the 

city at that time. Forty percent of the 

dwellings in Little Mexico were adjudged as 

“unfit for occupancy.” Three out of four had 

no indoor toilets. 32 

By 1940 several notable businesses 

had been established by Hispanics in town, 

including El Fenix, run by the Martinez 

family; a Spanish-language movie house; 

two Spanish-language magazines, La Variedad 

and Cinemax; and the Zambrano family 

photography studio. So while the business 

prospects for the city’s Hispanic population 

were limited, there were glimmers of hope. 33 

One year earlier a group of Hispanic 

citizens had formed the Mexican Chamber of 

Commerce with the goal of improving the 

social and economic conditions for Hispanics 

in the city. Along with Chamber President 

Francisco Mongaras, the initial board 

members were Anastacio Reyes, Geronimo 

Hinojosa, Pedro Hernandez, Ignacio R. Flores, 

Rudy Benavides, Maria Luna, J.D. Hernandez, 

Trinidad Molina, Rodolfo Villasana, Augustin 

Rubio, and J. J. Rodriguez. This group of men 

and women set its sights on creating more 

work opportunities for Hispanics and securing 

the necessary resources from the city to 

establish more Hispanic businesses. 34 

Among the Hispanic-run businesses at 

the time was a tamale and chili café on 

Oak Lawn opened by Adelaida “Mama” 

Cuellar and her sons in 1940. This modest 

establishment would grow into El Chico, 

one of the most beloved and enduring icons 

of the city’s renowned restaurant and 

hospitality scene. 

Born on May 30, 1871, near Matehuala, 

Nuevo León, Mexico, Adelaida had crossed 

into Texas in 1892 with Macario Cuellar; the 

two were married in Laredo. Neither spoke 

English, but they found work on various 

ranches in small Texas towns before settling 

as sharecroppers in Kaufman. 35 In 1926, with 

twelve children to feed, Mama Cuellar first 

peddled her homemade chili and tamales 

at the Kaufman County Fair. She made 

more money in the first weekend than her 

husband made in a whole year, according to 

her grandson, John Cuellar. For several 

years, Mama Cuellar continued to sell her chili 

and tamales at the fair, but later she established 

a permanent café in Kaufman. Her sons 

entertained customers with the musical 

instruments she insisted they learn to play. 36 

Not long after she started her restaurant, 

several of her oldest sons and a son-in-law 

branched out to open cafes in Terrell, Wills 

Point, Malakoff, and Tyler, as well as Tulsa, 

Oklahoma City, and Shreveport. After the 

Depression of the 1930s forced a few of 

these cafés out of business, two of the 

Cuellar brothers, with the culinary expertise 

of their mother, opened El Chico in Dallas 

in 1940. By the end of the decade the family 

converged on the city because its economy was 

faring better than other parts of the country. 37 

After the flagship restaurant in Dallas 

enjoyed success, five of Mama Cuellar’s eight 

sons joined forces to build El Chico into a 

chain. The five sons would eventually become 

millionaires. Even after their mother died in 

1969, the Cuellar sons were always mindful 

to run the business in a manner in which 

their mother would have approved. Before 

the family sold the chain in 1998, more than 

100 El Chico restaurants were operating 

in fourteen states, serving some 16 million 

customers a year. 38 


✧ 

Following World War II, business in Dallas was hopping, as evidenced by the volume of pedestrian, streetcar, and automobile traffic downtown. 


CHAPTER VIII 

C ITY E XPERIENCES E CONOMIC B OOM IN P OSTWAR E RA, 1945-1960 

When World War II ended in the summer 

of 1945, there was a great deal of pent-up 

consumer demand nationwide because so 

few products had been available to civilians 

throughout the war. In addition, personal 

savings among U.S. families had reached 

a record twenty-five percent of income 

during the war. These factors drove postwar 

prosperity, as Americans had money to 

spend, and production capacity shifted from 

war products to general consumer products. 

Nowhere was this truer than in Dallas. 1 

By most measures, the city’s business 

environment had fared well during World 

War II. Just as important, the local economy 

had diversified significantly since 1930, 

making it more resilient to downturns in any 

one industry. Dallas, by 1945, had become an 

increasingly attractive place to live and work, 

with strong cotton, retail, oil, banking, and 

manufacturing sectors; plenty of land for real 

estate development; a burgeoning defense 

industry; a high quality of life; and a low 

cost of living relative to other large U.S. cities. 2 

As Dallas set its sights on life after the 

war, local business and civic leaders defined 

several keys to the city’s future success: 

stimulating continued population growth, 

attracting new business and industry, 

developing aviation infrastructure and 

capabilities, and attracting visitors through 

tourism and conventions. Toward the end 

of 1945, residents approved a $43 million 

bond package based on anticipated 

population growth to 750,000 by 1970. 

More than half of these funds were 

CHAPTER VIII ✧ 67

earmarked for new or existing streets, 

sewers, streetlights, water lines, schools, and 

right-of-way purchases for the Central 

Boulevard project. Of this money, $7 million 

was allocated to build a new downtown 

municipal auditorium to attract more and 

larger conventions. 3 

From 1945 to 1960, the city’s population 

would grow from about 350,000 to almost 

680,000. During this time, a number of 

key events and trends bolstered business 

in Dallas, including a wave of corporate 

relocations, particularly in the defense 

industry; a real estate development boom 

spurred by R. L. Thornton’s “Keep the Dirt 

Flyin’” campaign and the advent of air 

conditioning; continued growth of the city’s 

banking, insurance, apparel, and millinery 

industries; increased national media attention 

resulting from the city’s public relations 

efforts and the introduction of Neiman 

Marcus’ Fortnight events; and the birth of 

the Information Age. 

WAVE OF CORPORATE 

RELOCATIONS SWEEPS 

OVER THE CITY 

Called by many at the time “the greatest 

industrial development in the history of 

Texas,” North American Aviation’s (NAA) 

relocation to the Dallas area in 1940 represented 

the birth of the city’s defense industry 

and ushered in an era of major corporate 

relocations that continues to this day. 4 

✧ 

Workers assembled planes at the Chance Vought factory 

next to Hensley Field in Grand Prairie following the 

company’s relocation from Bridgeport, Connecticut, 

in 1948. (1949) 



In late 1947, Chance Vought Aircraft 

dispatched a survey team to several cities 

throughout the Southwest to evaluate 

potential relocation sites. Maker of the 

Corsair aircraft, Chance Vought had 

outgrown its Bridgeport, Connecticut, 

headquarters and was looking for a place 

whose labor force and location offered 

strategic advantages over its current 

operations. The company’s survey team 

found that Dallas’ labor supply was more 

than adequate with a wage scale that was 

ten percent to fifteen percent lower than the 

Bridgeport market. Even more important, 

the team discovered that a segment of the 

city’s employee base had achieved extremely 

high efficiency rates at the NAA plant and 

other manufacturing companies during 

World War II despite their lack of previous 

aircraft experience. Surveyors also found that 

Dallas was an unusually clean city because of 

widespread use of natural gas. Upon hearing 

the survey team’s findings, the Chance 

Vought board approved the move to a facility 

near Hensley Field in Grand Prairie, setting 

into motion the greatest industrial relocation 

in the history of the country up to that time. 5 

✧ 

Employees from the Temco Aircraft Company’s Garland 

and Dallas manufacturing plants presented their 

donations to the Community Chest drive in 1953. 

Pictured here (left to right): Joe Ivy, president of Local 

390 UAW-CIO, E. R. Mitchell, director of Community 

Relations at Temco, J. W. Primrose, and 

Mrs. Charles S. Morris. 



In the midst of the aircraft manufacturer’s 

negotiation process with the City of Dallas, a 

potential deal-breaker arose. The runway at 

Hensley Field was found to be too short to 

accommodate some of the large planes that 

Chance Vought used in its business operations. 

The Citizens Council, a group of the city’s 

most prominent business leaders established 

in 1937 for “wholly educational and civic 

purposes,” called an emergency meeting 

with city officials and leaders from the 

Citizens Charter Association (CCA), 

established in 1930 by a group of influential 

businessmen seeking to present candidates 

for public office who would conduct the 

city’s affairs according to sound business 

principles. Four hours later the Dallas City 

Council voted to provide $256,000 in 

emergency funding to extend the runway 

and secure Chance Vought’s relocation. This 

is yet another example in which local 

business leaders recognized a significant 

opportunity to enhance the city’s business 

environment and then did what was 

necessary to capitalize on the moment. 6 

When Chance Vought moved its entire 

operation from Bridgeport to Grand Prairie 

in 1948, it shipped more than fifty million 

pounds of machinery, equipment, and supplies 

by rail to the old NAA plant next to Hensley 

Field. The aircraft giant also brought a $25 

million annual payroll. 7 

Following NAA’s relocation in 1940 and 

Chance Vought’s in 1948, Dresser Industries, 

a powerful oil and gas company, left 

Cleveland for Dallas in 1950. General Motors 

constructed a $35 million assembly plant in 

Arlington three years later. In 1957, Duncan, 

Oklahoma-based Halliburton Company 

acquired Welex Jet Services, Incorporated, of 

Fort Worth. Two years later, it bought Otis 

Engineering Corporation of Dallas, which 

eventually led to Halliburton’s relocation to 

Dallas in 1961. 8 

These corporations cited a number of 

common reasons for relocating to Dallas, 

including the city’s central location, which 

enabled communication with the East and 

West coasts for longer periods of time 

throughout the workday and reduced 

energy costs associated with shipping and 

distribution. Relocating companies also 

cited the city’s mild climate; proximity to 

major oil and gas fields in Texas, Louisiana, 

and Oklahoma; pro-business attitude in the 

form of low taxes, favorable regulatory climate, 

and non-union labor force; a pervasive spirit 

of volunteerism and boosterism; relative 

cleanliness due to a lack of smog or coalburning 

industries; abundant and highquality 

labor force; good public schools; 

availability of capital offered by large banks 

willing to take risks; a well-developed airport 

with connecting flights to the entire world; and 

efficient and sound local government. 9 

In 1952, William E. Cooper moved to 

Dallas to open a regional sales office for his 

company, Western Lithograph Corporation. 

Upon arriving in town, Cooper noted many 

of the city’s favorable attributes. Most 


importantly, he found a warm, enthusiastic 

business community. “Intelligent national 

firms saw Dallas and Texas as pure potential 

after World War II,” Cooper remarked. 

“Anyone who wanted to travel to the Texas- 

Louisiana-Arkansas territory effectively had 

to put an office here [in Dallas]. Gift 

companies, furniture companies, apparel 

companies, all of them were setting up shop 

in Dallas.” The sentiments expressed by 

Cooper, who would go on to become 

chairman emeritus of the Dallas Market 

Center, echoed those of a number of other 

corporate leaders of the time. 10 

✧ 

Conrad Hilton took time to pose for a photo at the 

opening of the Statler Hilton Hotel in 1955. 



By 1952 the nation had begun to take 

note of Dallas’ thriving and increasingly 

diverse economy, particularly its aviation 

and defense industries. In the April 8 issue 

of Look magazine, Ben Kocivar reported that 

the aircraft industry in Texas was booming. 

Only ten years old, it already employed 

50,000 people and had become the biggest 

industry in Dallas-Fort Worth. Kocivar 

wrote that “booming Dallas-Fort Worth 

plants” had made “acres of planes blossom 

on the Texas plains,” noting that Chance 

Vought, Consolidated Vultee, General Motors, 

Douglas, Lockheed, and Martin were all 

building planes or plants or having parts 

made in the area. Bell Helicopter was 

another major newcomer to the DFW 

metroplex, having built a $3 million 

helicopter plant between Dallas and Fort 

Worth after relocating from Buffalo, New 

York, in the early 1950s. 11 

The magazine article noted that Texas 

was attractive to the aviation and defense 

companies for several reasons. Most of the 

companies wanted to reduce their vulnerability 

to attack with operations too heavily 

concentrated on the East or West coasts. In 

addition, Texas offered good weather most of 

the year, a productive labor supply, and lots 

of flat fields for emergency landings. 12 

From 1945 to 1960, the steady influx of 

companies to the area created a positive selfperpetuating 

cycle. The local economy both 

attracted and benefited from corporate 

relocations, which boosted the local tax base, 

created new jobs for local workers, brought 

thousands of families to the area who 

pumped millions of dollars into the local 

economy, and infused the city with a more 

cosmopolitan, culturally diverse character. 

AIR CONDITIONING 

HELPS “ KEEP 

THE DIRT FLYIN’” 

Aerospace and defense were not the only 

industries booming in Dallas after World 

War II. Under the leadership of Robert Lee 

(R.L.) Thornton, who served as mayor of 

Dallas from 1953 to 1961 and was the 

unofficial king of the city for three decades, 

Dallas also experienced a real estate 

development and building boom. Thornton’s 

“Keep the dirt flyin’” motto, bolstered by the 

growth of air conditioning in the city, inspired 

such landmark projects as the Statler Hilton 

Hotel, the Republic National Bank Building, 

and the Dallas Market Center, not to 

mention an explosion of retail shopping 

malls in the suburbs. He also played a key 

role in convincing numerous companies to 

move their operations to Dallas. 13 

While the first large-scale electric air 

conditioner had been invented in 1902 by 

Willis Haviland Carrier, the 1950s ushered 

in a “Golden Age” of cooling for Big D. And 

though the proliferation of air conditioning 

might not have been the most important 

event of the decade in Dallas, as Dennis 

Holder argues in his 1986 essay, “The 

fabulous Fifties,” it unquestionably spurred 

the development of office buildings, 

shopping malls, and fine hotels. 14 

In January 1950, the first meeting of air 

conditioning engineers ever held in the 

South took place at Fair Park in Dallas. This 

convention spurred greater local interest 

from consumers, builders, and electricians 

who had only dabbled in the technology to 

that point. Two years later, American Airlines 

announced its intention to move from Love 

Field to the new air-conditioned terminal at 

the Greater Fort Worth International Airport 

scheduled to open in 1953. Other airlines 

threatened to follow suit. Dallas corporations 

and banks responded to the threats in 

1952 with a well-organized campaign for 

improvements to Love Field. In February 

1953, the citizens of Dallas approved a $12.5 

million bond issue for a new air-conditioned 

terminal at Love Field. On top of these dollars, 

private funds were pledged for a new runway. 

After the airlines decided to stay in Dallas, 

air traffic at the Fort Worth airport declined 

throughout the remainder of the decade. 15 

✧ 

Known affectionately as “Mr. Dallas” and “Uncle Bob,” 

R. L. Thornton is remembered as much for his civic 

leadership as for his business accomplishments. He 

served as president of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce 

from 1933 to 1936, played a key role in winning the bid 

for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, helped 

organize the Dallas Citizens Council, and served as 

president of the State Fair of Texas from 1945 to 1960. 

During his tenure as mayor from 1953 to 1961, 

Thornton oversaw completion of a major Love Field 

expansion and construction of a new city hall, library, 

and auditorium. 



When Statler Hotel executives turned 

their attention to Dallas in the early 1950s as 

the possible site of a future hotel, Mayor 

Thornton, known affectionately as “Uncle 

Bob,” drove the Statler representatives 

around town in his air-conditioned Cadillac. 

Thornton discussed in great detail the city’s 

traffic patterns, costs per square foot in 

different parts of town, and plans for future 

ingress and egress. At the end of their visit, 

the Statler leadership team agreed to build a 

hotel in town provided they could have a 

particular tract of land downtown at the 

intersection of St. Paul and Jackson. After 

making several phone calls, Thornton 

delivered, and in 1956 the 1,001-room 

Statler Hilton Hotel opened. It was the 

city’s first modern, fully air-conditioned 

convention hotel. 16 

CHAPTER VIII ✧ 69

Air-conditioned homes and automobiles 

were two of the most popular purchases 

Americans made as they spent the money 

they had saved during World War II. Dallas 

benefited from both of these trends. As 

citizens moved to the suburbs in the 1950s, 

retailers followed suit. Stores clustered 

together in a number of new outlying or 

suburban shopping malls, including Preston 

Center, Inwood Village, Westmoreland, and 

Big Town. Neiman Marcus opened its first 

branch store at Preston Center in 1951. 

Sanger Harris, which was sold to Federated 

Department Stores in 1951, opened a store 

in Preston Center in 1957, followed by a 

store in Big Town in 1958. 17 

✧ 

World-renowned Dallas real estate developer Trammell 

Crow (on the right) visited with Gerald Ford in 1974, the 

same year Ford became President of the United States. 

Among his many innovations, Crow is credited with 

pioneering the idea of “building on speculation.” He also 

used short lease arrangements that permitted him to 

raise rents over time and introduced the practice of 

forming partnerships to complete his projects rather than 

using a conventional corporate organization. Crow is best 

known in town for developing the Dallas Market Center. 

But his projects spanned the globe and included 

numerous Wyndham hotels, shopping malls, and officeresidence 

complexes as well as San Francisco’s 

Embarcadero Center and Atlanta’s Peachtree Center. 



Nobody developed more real estate in 

Dallas during the decades following World 

War II than Trammell Crow. By 1950 much 

of the former Trinity River floodplain that 

had been reclaimed in the 1920s by Leslie 

Stemmons and his sons, John and Storey, 

remained unused. At that time, the Stemmons 

brothers and Crow, their partner, resolved to 

build the nation’s finest market center north 

of downtown on some of that land. 18 The 

resulting Dallas Market Center complex 

immediately enhanced the city’s already 

thriving wholesale market and helped put 

Dallas on the global wholesale buyers’ map. It 

also established Crow as a real estate developer 

and visionary of international renown. 

In one of Crow’s first ventures, he sought 

to find tenants for a vacant warehouse 

belonging to the grain wholesaling firm of 

his wife’s family. When one of the tenants, 

battery manufacturer Ray-O-Vac, outgrew 

the space in 1948, Crow bought land and 

built a new warehouse for the firm, the first 

of a long line of warehouse and display 

buildings. Crow and the Stemmons brothers 

built more than fifty warehouses in Dallas. 19 

In 1953 a group of decorators and 

salesmen, who represented fine furniture, 

gifts, carpet, and wall coverings companies 

scattered throughout downtown Dallas, 

approached Crow with the idea of building a 

single location to showcase their merchandise. 

Two days later, Crow presented them with 

preliminary plans for a 40,000-square-foot 

center. In 1955 the 71,336-square-foot 

Dallas Decorative Center opened at Oak 

Lawn and Hi Line Drive, the first design 

center in the nation. 20 

Two years later, Crow opened the 

Homefurnishings Mart, a one-floor facility 

covering approximately 200,000 square 

feet at 2000 Stemmons Freeway. The 

Homefurnishings Mart and Dallas Decorative 

Center soon combined to form the beginning 

of the Dallas Market Center Company. 

Members of the Retail Furniture Association 

of Texas were the first exhibitors in the 

Dallas Market Center. The first market, the 

Summer Homefurnishings Market held in 

July 1955, attracted some 1,850 stores. 21 

The ensuing years would bring expansions 

to the Decorative Center and the 

Homefurnishings Mart along with openings 

of the Trade Mart, Market Hall, Apparel Mart, 

and, in 1974, the World Trade Center. With 

seven floors totaling 1.4 million square feet of 

space at 2050 Stemmons Freeway, the World 

Trade Center immediately became the largest 

building in Dallas Market Center. Combined 

with the opening of the Dallas-Fort Worth 

Regional Airport the same year, the World 

Trade Center propelled Dallas to become an 

international trade center by 1980. 22 

Since its founding in the 1950s, the 

Dallas Market Center has made an enormous 

impact on the city’s economy in terms of 

employment opportunities and total dollars 

spent with local businesses, not to mention 

the benefits of bringing millions of visitors to 

the city over its nearly six-decade lifespan. 

With more than 400 full-time and 1,600 

part-time associates, the Dallas Market 

Center today produces some fifty markets 

per year, ranking it in the list of top-10 

tradeshow organizers in America according 

to Tradeshow Week magazine. The largest 

attendance occurs during five apparel markets 

and four gift/home markets held 

throughout the year, when an estimated 

13,000 people work in showrooms at the 

Dallas Market Center. More than 150,000 

buyers from every state and 84 countries are 

registered for the facility’s markets. 23 Today, 

the Dallas Market Center has an annual 

direct economic impact of more than $266 

million on the city’s economy. 24 

DALLAS ASSERTS ITSELF 

AS FINANCIAL AND 

INSURANCE CENTER OF 

THE SOUTHWEST 

During the 1950s the Federal Reserve’s 

Eleventh District experienced a high level of 

economic activity. Despite a prolonged 

drought in the first half of the decade that 

hurt local agricultural activities, the district’s 

industrial activity was robust and the 

production of crude oil and natural gas 

reached all-time highs. While savings and 

loan associations handled the majority of the 

growing mortgage market in the post-World 

War II housing boom, commercial banks in 

Dallas focused on traditional markets such 

as business and personal loans. The banking 

industry also began to undergo changes 

due to the introduction of new technologies. 

Automated check processing through 

✧ 

Valued at more than $5 million, with vaults, furniture, 

and fixtures exceeding $200,000 in value, the Mercantile 

Bank Building featured a 47,000-pound vault door and 

seven elevators on the ground-floor entrance carrying 

approximately 40,000 passengers daily. 



magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) 

technology and the use of computers to 

manage statistical information allowed larger 

banks to operate more efficiently while 

enabling smaller banks to expand operations 

and start offering new services. 25 

✧ 

Fred Florence served as president of Republic National 

Bank from 1929 until 1957, and then as chairman of the 

bank’s executive committee with the duties of chief 

executive officer until his death in 1960. Like R. L. 

Thornton, Florence was known as much for his civic 

contributions as for his business accomplishments. 

During the Great Depression, he was appointed by Texas 

Governors Ross S. Sterling and Miriam A. Ferguson and 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt to serve on various 

recovery and relief boards. Florence also was an advocate 

for passage of a state bond issue that came to be known 

as Bread Bonds, which afforded immediate relief to the 

hungry and unemployed in the 1930s. Republic National 

helped finance the bond issue and administered its 

benefits in Dallas County. In addition, he served as 

president of the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936 and 

of the Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition the 

following year. (1953) 



After helping establish Dallas as a 

financial center by financing “speculative” 

oil companies during the 1930s, First 

National Bank, Mercantile Bank, and Republic 

National Bank continued to flourish in the 

post-war era. In 1948, The Wall Street Journal 

confirmed the city’s evolution into one of the 

nation’s key financial centers by establishing 

a southwest edition of the paper in the city. 26 

The predecessor to Mercantile Bank, 

Thornton & Lund Bankers, had been 

founded by R. L. Thornton, A. C. Stiles, and 

M.C. Lund in 1916. It was reorganized one 

year later into the Dallas County State 

Bank, which became a national bank, the 

Mercantile, during the Great Depression. By 

October 1926, Mercantile Bank had grown 

to $12.6 million in deposits. That number 

would increase to $28.1 million by 1936 and 

$171.5 million by 1946. By that time, armed 

with the slogan, “We have grown because 

we have helped others to grow,” the bank 

occupied its own thirty-story building at the 

site of the old post office at Main and Ervay. 

Under the leadership of Thornton, the bank 

had also begun to grow its international 

business. Managed by Jacques Villere, who 

spoke and wrote fluent Spanish, Portuguese, 

French, and Italian to assist customers with 

foreign business, Mercantile’s Latin America 

Department served businesses that had begun 

to prosper thanks to the increasing number of 

airline flights from Dallas to Latin America. 27 

Thornton served as president of 

Mercantile Bank from 1916 to 1947, when 

he became chairman of the bank. In 

recognition of his leadership, vision, and 

innovation as a banker (he was the first Dallas 

banker to make automobile loans), the state’s 

bankers selected him as president of the 

Texas Bankers Association in 1924-1925. 28 

✧ 

Ms. Betty Matton displayed a new seatbelt with shoulder 

harness installed in the car of insurance safety engineer, 

Paul Lousignont, in April 1953. This is believed to be the 

first such seatbelt installed in a car in the Southwest. 



Led by Fred Florence from 1929 to 1960, 

Republic National Bank was another of 

the city’s most important banks. By 1951 

construction had begun on the new 

Republic National Bank Building at Pacific, 

Ervay, and Bryan streets. Comprising 

222,000 square feet, the $25 million, thirtysix-story 

tower replaced the Mercantile 

Building as the tallest building in town 

when it opened several years later. Republic 

National reported net earnings of $4.1 

million for 1951, with capital funds, 

including capital, surplus, and undivided 

profits, of $41 million—the largest capital 

account of any bank in the South. It had 

seven additional affiliated banks by that 

time, including Oak Lawn National Bank 

and Greenville Avenue State Bank. 29 

✧ 

Located at 1615 Elm Street, Morris & Son was one of 

the city’s many apparel businesses, founded by Morris 

Weinkrantz in 1914. (1952) 



Like Mercantile Bank, Republic National’s 

international business grew rapidly 

throughout the 1950s. To support continued 

development of foreign trade and Dallas’ 

growing importance as a financial center, the 

bank’s Foreign Department experienced a 

significant increase in the use of its facilities. 

To assist bank customers with their large 

volume of business with Mexico, Republic 

National appointed John B. Glenn as special 

representative of the bank stationed in 

Mexico City. 30 

Under the leadership of Florence, Republic 

National became one of the city’s most 

respected institutions and the state’s largest 

bank, with bank deposits increasing from 

$1 million to almost $900 million. 31 Florence 

was widely regarded as an innovative force 

in U.S. banking industry. He played a 

leadership role in commodity financing, 

particularly with cotton and oil reserves, and 

made Republic National one of the first Texas 

banks to extend loans on oil reserves and 

natural-gas production. In another example 

of his willingness to assume calculated risk 

where others would not, he issued Texas 

Instruments a $2.5 million loan in the early 

1950s when other banks balked, and a 

global technology powerhouse was born. 32 

While the city’s stature as a banking center 

grew, Dallas also earned the reputation as one 

CHAPTER VIII ✧ 71

✧ 

Located across from Cokesbury Books (upper left) at the 

intersection of Main and St. Paul, Sibyl Hats (lower 

right) was one of the city’s many headwear stores. (1952) 



In 1948 home office companies paid 

about $10 million in salaries to 4,300 persons 

employed in Dallas insurance businesses, 

while agents of those companies drew more 

than $3.7 million in commissions. By that 

time the life insurance industry in town was 

particularly strong. Dallas-based life insurance 

companies produced new business of more 

than $294 million in 1948, paying out $30 

million to policyholders and beneficiaries. 

The city also had the best rate of life 

insurance investment gain in the nation that 

year, as Dallas-based companies invested 

$3.7 billion in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, 

and Louisiana. 34 

✧ 

By the middle of the twentieth century, Dallas milliners 

were producing stylish hats for women and men. (1953) 



Dallas’ earliest clothing manufacturers that 

was thriving by mid-century. A thirty-fouryear-old 

Lebanese immigrant who had come 

to the United States several years earlier, 

Haggar established his company with the 

goal to supply the working man with quality 

apparel. After coining the term “slacks” in 

the early 1940s to denote a more formal 

grade of pants, Haggar sold $15 million of 

pants and slacks in 1948. The company’s 

well-known Brogan & Jennings, Page Boy 

(maternity dresses), and Johnston (children’s 

clothes) lines all exceeded $3 million in 

annual sales by that time. Haggar broke new 

ground in the industry when it advertised 

slacks on television in the 1950s and later 

was the first apparel company to ticket 

merchandise with UPC bar codes. 36 

As Dallas workers were producing clothes 

for the nation, the city boasted the country’s 

third-largest millinery market in 1949, with 

more than $8 million in revenues annually. 

Approximately 1,000 people were employed 

by that time in the city’s thirty-one houses that 

shipped hats around the country. They carried 

on a hat-making legacy in town that traced 

its roots back to the 1890s, when L. O. Daniel 

founded the Daniel Millinery Company. 37 

✧ 

Employees in the Haggar sewing room manufactured 

men’s slacks, women’s maternity dresses, and children’s 

clothes. (1940s) 



of the top four insurance centers in the 

country. By the middle of the twentieth 

century, more than 90 insurance companies 

were headquartered in the city. Among these 

were 32 capital stock and legal reserve life 

insurance companies; 15 capital stock 

companies that wrote fire, casualty, surety, 

automobile, marine, and miscellaneous lines of 

insurance; five Lloyds agencies writing fire, 

auto, liability, accident and health, workmen’s 

compensation, marine, and miscellaneous 

policies; three life insurance fraternal 

organizations; a title insurance company; a 

mutual fire insurance company; a workmen’s 

comp and employer’s liability association; and 

a group hospital, medical, and surgical services 

provider. In addition, 10 county mutual fire 

insurance companies called Dallas their home 

base, as did 11 local mutual burial associations 

and five local mutual assessment life, health, 

and accident insurance companies. 33 

APPAREL AND MILLINERY 

MANUFACTURING 

INDUSTRIES BLOSSOM 

BY MID- CENTURY 

In addition to being one of the nation’s 

top banking and insurance centers, Dallas 

established itself as a leader in the apparel 

and millinery manufacturing industries 

by the middle of the twentieth century. This 

accomplishment was all the more remarkable 

considering that fact that these industries were 

practically nonexistent in the city in 1900. 

By 1948 approximately 10,000 people 

in Dallas County worked for apparel 

manufacturers, which had payrolls of $20 

million. The city’s total apparel production 

output was valued at $150 million that year, 

with goods selling in more than 20,000 

retail stores in 3,500 towns and cities 

throughout the United States. Dallas’ peak 

fashion markets occurred in May and 

October with as many as 5,000 buyers. In 

January and August, fill-in market weeks 

attracted some 2,000 buyers. 35 

Founded by J. M. Haggar, Sr., in 1926, 

Haggar Clothing Company was one of 

✧ 

The husband-and-wife team of A. C. and M. L. Williams 

were well-known bootmakers in town. Their company, 

A. C. & M. L. Williams, was located at 8651 

Eustis. (1954) 



By the early 1900s firms such as Baron 

Brothers and the Porter Millinery Company 

had joined Daniel’s company as the leading 

milliners in Dallas, making a wide variety of 

headwear. Fred Cadmus, Sr., who came to 

Dallas from St. Louis in 1911, produced wire 

frames and buckram shapes for Dallas 

milliners. By 1921 his firm, called the Dallas 

Hat Manufacturing Company, had begun 

manufacturing trimmed hats. Cadmus’ sons, 

Fred, Jr., and Emmett, took over the family 

business when he died in 1932, and the 

company flourished and grew under their 


leadership. In 1919, Samuel Goldstein came 

to Dallas from Chicago and installed the 

city’s first hat machines, which turned out 

cloches and tams for the city’s flappers in the 

1920s. Goldstein’s hat manufacturing firm 

grew to become the largest in the city by 

1949. Even in the midst of the Great 

Depression, Dallas milliners produced new 

styles, including the breton, the sailor, the 

pillbox, the doll, the halo, the mushroom, 

the beanie, and the babushka. 38 

Center, were popping up to meet the 

geographically dispersed consumer demand. 

In addition, Neiman Marcus had recently 

completed a $7.5 million expansion and 

remodeling of its downtown store, Titche- 

Goettinger was in the process of doubling 

its store space, A. Harris & Co. had just 

completed an expansion and remodeling 

project, and Sanger Brothers had renovated 

its old location downtown. 41 

DALLAS’ IMAGE 

GROWS IN THE EYES 

OF THE NATION 

… AND THE WORLD 

The population growth, economic 

expansion, and business boom Dallas 

experienced after World War II was not lost 

on the nation. In an April 1954 article in 

Esquire magazine entitled “Dallas: The Eyes 

of Texas,” author Stanley Walker refers to 

John Neely Bryan as the first “Man of Vision” 

in the city, which by the mid-1950s was 

inhabited by hundreds of “Men of Vision,” 

including “rough-hewn, plain-spoken old 

Robert L. Thornton, Sr., banker and present 

mayor; urbane, aesthetic Karl Hoblitzelle, 

the theatre man and capitalist; the great 

merchants, the late Herbert Marcus, Sr., and 

his son Stanley, the late Arthur Kramer, 

Sr…and Eli Sanger, scion of the first great 

Dallas merchants and father of civic music in 

the city.” 39 

Referring to Dallas as the “glittering jewel 

of Texas, with its clean and ever-growing 

skyline and its handsome and steadily 

spreading residential and shopping areas,” 

Walker paid homage to the city’s diverse 

industries as the reasons why it had become 

a center of business and intellectual pursuits 

by 1954. He tipped his hat to the city’s big 

cotton buyers, insurance men, great retail 

merchants, oil men, and wholesalers and 

jobbers of everything from farm implements 

to corsets. But he also affirmed the city’s 

location as a key to its success, saying that 

“Dallas is the natural stopping place on the 

flyways from the southern West Coast to the 

East Coast, from the Southern Hemisphere 

to the North.” 40 

He also pointed out the city’s burgeoning 

character as a place of “fine customers,” where 

the “very rich” and the “so-called middle-class 

people and workers…crave fine things.” This 

was, after all, a time when thousands of the 

city’s residents were moving to the suburbs, 

and a number of shopping malls, including 

Lakewood Shopping Center and Preston 

✧ 

Neiman Marcus displayed a llama as part of its 1959 

South American Fortnight. 



Taking a cue from Stanley Walker’s lavish 

praise for the city, Stanley Marcus, president 

of Neiman Marcus at the time, introduced 

yet another innovation in 1957 that further 

elevated the city’s image and his company’s 

profile on the international scene while 

increasing Dallasites’ awareness of other 

cultures. To celebrate his company’s 50th 

anniversary, Marcus launched the Fortnight 

concept, transforming the flagship downtown 

store into a “a veritable bouillabaisse of 

French culture” in which customers were 

treated to French products, music, art, 

entertainment, and food for two weeks. 42 

Originally conceived by Stanley Marcus 

as a tactic to combat the pre-Christmas 

slump retail stores experienced in the months 

leading up to Thanksgiving, the Fortnights 

soon began to generate more sales at the 

downtown Neiman Marcus store than it 

enjoyed during the holiday season. For the 

next three decades, the Neiman Marcus 

Fortnights became one of the most important 

cultural events in Dallas, exposing the world 

to the city’s unique gifts while broadening 

the cultural perspectives of its citizens. In 

1967, the main floor of the store was 

transformed into an English manor hall for 

the British Fortnight. At the 1969 “East Meets 

✧ 

Through a variety of national and civic activities, Stanley 

Marcus eventually transcended his position as the head of 

one of Dallas’ great companies to become a visionary 

leader and symbol of progressive thinking for the city. 

During World War II, he served on the nation’s War 

Production Board, promoting the conservation of scarce 

resources normally used in the fashion industry by 

encouraging men to wear drooping socks to save valuable 

rubber and devising regulations for manufacturing 

women’s and children’s clothing that diverted textile 

resources to military uniforms. Marcus received the 

Chevalier Award from the French Legion of Honor and 

was named by Harvard Business School as one of the 

greatest American business leaders of the twentieth 

century. In addition, the Advertising Hall of Fame notes 

that he was “among the most important figures in the 

history of American retail merchandising and marketing.” 

COURTESY OF THE DEGOLYER LIBRARY AT SOUTHERN METHODIST 

UNIVERSITY—SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHS 

AND PUBLICATIONS. 

West” Fortnight, an elephant crafted from 

fuchsia orchids guarded the store’s elevators. 43 

By the time the Neiman Marcus Fortnights 

ended its three-decade run, the event had 

brought to Dallas the food, fashion, art, and 

celebrities of almost thirty countries at a 

time when the city’s residents and businesses 

were evolving from a provincial mindset 

to an international perspective. Throughout 

the remarkable run, Stanley Marcus ensured 

that the Fortnights combined culture and 

marketing in a sophisticated and elegant 

fashion to attract new customers and educate 

the citizens of Dallas about the world. 44 

INFORMATION AGE 

DAWNS IN DALLAS 

In 1958, Texas Instruments (TI) 

employee Jack Kilby invented the world’s 

first integrated circuit. Kilby’s invention 

revolutionized the electronics industry by 

CHAPTER VIII ✧ 73

educing the cost of electronic functions by 

a factor of a million to one. 45 It ultimately 

ushered in the Information Age that 

transformed what was possible in business. 

TI’s origins actually dated back some three 

decades. In 1930, John (J.C.) Karcher and 

Eugene McDermott had resigned from 

secure jobs with Amerada Petroleum Corp. 

to stake their careers on a new technology— 

reflection seismography employing signal 

processing in the search for oil. The two men 

founded Geophysical Service, Inc. (GSI) on 

May 16, 1930, when the country was reeling 

from the effects of the Great Depression. GSI 

was the first independent geophysical 

contracting firm specializing in the reflection 

seismic method of geophysical exploration 

for petroleum and other minerals. Later that 

year, future leaders H. Bates Peacock, J. Erik 

Jonsson, and Cecil Green joined GSI. 46 

Not long after its founding, GSI became a 

leader in oil exploration, making big finds in 

Oklahoma, then moving into East Texas. In 

1939, GSI was reorganized with a new firm, 

Coronado Corporation, with GSI being 

relegated to subsidiary status. By that time, 

the company had eleven crews in the field, 

operating around the world. On December 

6, 1941, McDermott, Jonsson, Green, and 

Peacock purchased GSI. The following day, 

six Japanese aircraft carriers launched more 

than 350 aircraft in two aerial attack waves 

on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, intending to destroy 

U.S. military power in the Pacific. The attack 

on Pearl Harbor paralyzed oil companies, 

and GSI started losing $10,000 a month. 47 

McDermott and Jonsson made a prescient 

decision in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, 

determining that the future of the company 

lay in its transistor technology, which had 

widespread applications to the defense and 

consumer markets. The two men, along with 

Pat Haggerty, who was hired in 1945 and 

would go on to become president of TI, are 

credited with turning around the company 

by switching its focus to performing military 

work for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. 48 

The experiences the company gained in 

electronics during World War II provided the 

basis for an entirely new field of business. 

In 1946 the company formed a laboratory 

and manufacturing unit to focus on the 

research and development of electronic 

equipment. Four years later, the name General 

Instruments, Inc., was picked for the burgeoning 

unit, with GSI becoming a subsidiary 

again. When a major contractor for the 

U.S. Navy complained about the similarity 

of General Instruments, Inc.’s name and 

the name of another company, McDermott, 

Jonsson, and Haggerty changed the name to 

Texas Instruments. 49 In yet another example 

of the Dallas banking industry’s willingness to 

take risk in funding a novel idea, Fred 

Florence of Republic National Bank issued TI 

a $2.5 million loan, and a global technology 

powerhouse was born. 50 

✧ 

Inventor Jack Kilby displays on his fingertip an 

✧ 

P. E. “Pat” Haggerty, president of TI, posed at the 

controls of the first all-transistorized computer, 

the IBM 7070. 



Even as Dallas’ African-American population 

integrated circuit, which he invented while working at TI 

1,500 new voters. 53 Trinity Gardens. 55 

in 1958. Kilby’s invention ushered in the Information Age 

and changed the world of business forever. He would go 

on to hold more than sixty patents, including one for the 

electronic portable calculator and the thermal printer. In 

2004, one year before his death, Kilby was awarded the 

Nobel Prize for physics for his invention of the 

integrated circuit. 



Throughout the second half of the 

twentieth century, TI grew to become the 

world’s largest provider of analog, digital signal 

processing, and semiconductor technologies 

for consumer and industrial electronics 

products. In 2007 the company generated 

more than $13.8 billion in revenue, with more 

than 30,000 employees around the world, 

almost one-third of whom worked in Dallas. 51 

became more politically active, job oppor- 

tunities continued to be limited. But a number 

of African Americans had capitalized on the 

post-war economic boom in Dallas and established 

successful white-collar businesses and 

careers. In 1946 the Dallas Express reported 

that Dallas was one of few cities in the nation 

where African-American films were being produced. 

By that time director-actor Spencer 

Williams had produced several films in partnership 

with Alfred Sack, a Jewish businessman 

who owned Sack Amusement Enterprises. The 

African-American movie business in Dallas at 

this time was called “Harlemwood.” By 1947 

there were eleven African American-owned life 

insurance companies with headquarters or 

branch offices in Dallas, as well as several attorneys, 

two dozen physicians, and a handful of 

dentists. In addition, a number of African- 


BUSINESSES 

American entrepreneurs were operating grocery 

stores, restaurants, funeral parlors, and beauty 

MAKE PROGRESS 

or barber shops. That same year, some eight 

AMID HOUSING CRISIS, years after the Dallas City Council had agreed 

OTHER PROBLEMS 

to hire African-American police officers, the 

first two officers, Lee Gilbert Brotherton and 

Following World War II, the Dallas 

Negro Chamber of Commerce (DNCC) 

increased its efforts to promote African- 

American businesses. In 1945 the DNCC 

organized the Dallas Negro Plumbers 

Association to help train plumbers so more 

of them could pass the licensing exam at 

a higher and faster rate. 52 That same year, 

DNCC President A. Maceo Smith worked 

with representatives of Peoples Undertaking 

Company of the Peoples Burial Association 

Ben Thomas, began patrols of the Hall-Thomas 

Street areas. Two more African-American officers 

joined them in 1948. 54 

While a few African Americans carved out 

professional careers or launched successful 

businesses in the years following World War 

II, living conditions for most continued to be 

bleak. Throughout the 1950s the DNCC 

participated in efforts to improve a range of 

issues plaguing African Americans, including 

widespread substandard housing conditions, 

to clean up African-American cemeteries Oak Cliff water problems, Building 

in the city. The next year, the DNCC had 

its most successful voter registration 

campaign to date, recruiting more than 

Maintenance Union Workers’ concerns, and 

petitions for storm sewers in North Dallas, 

Coombs West End Addition Civic League, and 


✧ 

Prince Charles gave H. Ross Perot, Sr., the Winston Churchill Award at a ceremony in Dallas in 1986. Through a variety of business ventures, including the founding of EDS in 1962 and later 

Perot Systems, Perot was one of the city’s most influential business leaders in the twentieth century. 


CHAPTER IX 

B USINESS L EADERS, ENTREPRENEURIAL S PIRIT H ELP C ITY R EBOUND 

A FTER K ENNEDY A SSASSINATION, 1960-1970 

On the surface of things the 1950s 

appeared to be a very good decade for 

Dallas. Business had boomed as the city’s 

population grew more than 56 percent to 

679,684 by 1960. But anyone attuned to the 

city’s political climate during those years 

would have sensed that all was not well in 

Big D. The underlying currents of right-wing 

extremism culminated in two embarrassing 

incidents in the early 1960s before President 

Kennedy’s assassination, disrupting the 

relative calm enjoyed by the city throughout 

the 1950s. In many ways, the stage in 

Dallas was already set for tragedy when 

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 

1963. The deep-seated animosity between 

conservative extremists and other factions of 

the local population, combined with the 

international ignominy cast upon the city 

from Kennedy’s killing, devastated Dallas’ 

morale and presented the city with perhaps 

its greatest challenge to date. 

Once again, when faced with a seemingly 

overwhelming crisis, the city turned to its 

business leaders for guidance. Two business 

icons, Erik Jonsson of Texas Instruments 

(TI) and Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus, 

gladly assumed the leadership mantle by 

refocusing people on the city’s inherent 

strengths and uniting citizens around a 

common cause. At the same time, while the 

city struggled collectively to get back on 

its feet, several entrepreneurial men and 

women launched businesses in the 1960s 

that would grow into globally recognized 

brands and come to exemplify the city’s 

pioneering spirit. 

POLITICAL STAGE 

SET FOR TRAGEDY 

As with much of the nation, the 1960s 

proved to be a turbulent decade for Dallas. 

The 1954 Brown v Board of Education ruling 

for public school integration had served to 

polarize the city’s social, political, and 

business communities. The subsequent 

movement to desegregate schools and 

businesses in Dallas was led by a group of 

prominent white and African-American 

businessmen and clergymen, some driven by 

CHAPTER IX ✧ 75

✧ 

Norman E. Brinker, who served as chairman emeritus of Brinker International until his death in 2009, is recognized as the 

father of DFW’s nationally renowned dining scene. After opening Steak and Ale in 1966, Brinker created or acquired a 

number of casual-dining establishments over the ensuing three decades, earning him the reputation as the father of Dallas’ 

renowned restaurant industry. Founded in 1991, Brinker International today owns such brands as Chili’s Grill & Bar, 

Romano’s Macaroni Grill, and On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina. (May 1982) 

COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY & ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 

moral imperatives, others concerned more 

with maintaining the city’s positive image so 

it could continue attracting new businesses 

and investment. In 1958, 300 white Protestant 

ministers in Dallas signed a statement 

declaring that enforced segregation was 

“morally and spiritually wrong.” Yet two 

years later, Dallas was still one of largest cities 

in the South with an entirely segregated 

school system. When the Dallas chapter of 

the NAACP put pressure on the Dallas 

Independent School District (DISD) board to 

comply with the Brown v Board ruling, 

Superintendent W. T. White declared that 

Dallas schools would not desegregate until 

ordered to do so by the Texas Legislature. 1 

By 1960 the socially and politically 

conservative John Birch Society had a 

large and powerful membership in Dallas, 

including some of its most prominent 

business leaders. The Dallas Morning News, 

meanwhile, published several negative 

articles about Kennedy and his “socialistic” 

tendencies. 2 When Texas Senator, Democratic 

Vice Presidential candidate, and native 

Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife, 

Lady Bird, visited Dallas on November 4, 

1960, four days before the 1960 presidential 

election, they were not warmly received. As 

the Johnsons walked from the Baker Hotel to 

the Adolphus Hotel for a luncheon, a mob— 

led by Texas Republican Congressman Bruce 

Alger—verbally abused them, spit on them, 

and then grabbed Lady Bird’s gloves and 

threw them in the gutter. The city received 

negative national media coverage of this 

event, which damaged the strong reputation 

Dallas had gained since World War II. 3 

In 1961 following several rounds of heated 

debate between the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of 

Appeals in New Orleans and 

Judge William Atwell of the federal district 

court in Dallas, DISD was ordered to 

begin implementing a staged integration plan. 

Mayor R.L. Thornton appealed to the Citizens 

Council to support the successful and smooth 

integration, citing Little Rock and New 

Orleans as examples of cities whose 

reputations had suffered because of their 

failure to integrate schools successfully. In 

response to the mayor’s appeal, the Citizens 

Council embarked on a public relations 

campaign to promote the benefits of a peaceful 

desegregation. The campaign was led by Sam 

Bloom of Dallas-based Bloom Advertising. 4 

Before long the Citizens Council’s efforts 

and the Bloom-led PR campaign for Dallas 

began to gain traction on a national scale. 

After eighteen African-American first-graders 

enrolled in eight all-white DISD elementary 

schools on September 6, 1961, President 

John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert 

Kennedy praised Dallas as an exemplary city 

handling segregation in a peaceful manner. 

Life magazine noted Dallas’ successful efforts 

and The New York Times remarked on the city’s 

peaceful school integration progress 

compared to the problems experienced in 

New Orleans and Little Rock, yet tensions 

were still mounting below the surface. 5 

The city’s Council on World Affairs 

organized a United Nations Day on October 

26, 1963, at which Adlai E. Stevenson, U.S. 

Ambassador to the United Nations, was the 

keynote speaker. After Stanley Marcus 

introduced Stevenson, right-wing extremists 

in the audience at downtown Memorial 

Auditorium heckled Stevenson during his 

remarks. Following his speech, Stevenson 

had to be escorted to his limousine by a 

police entourage. This episode brought 

Dallas even more negative national media, as 

an ABC radio commentator stated on his 

program that “Big D now stands for disgrace.” 

Time magazine’s story on the event was 

entitled “A City Disgraced.” The Dallas Morning 

News was criticized for inciting extremism. 

Mayor Earle Cabell, Citizens Council 

President Erik Jonsson, and Chamber 

President Robert B. Cullum, along with 100 

other leading citizens, sent a telegram to 

Stevenson apologizing for the episode. 6 

As Darwin Payne notes, from a business 

perspective, the headlines and images of 

angry citizens hurling insults at visiting 

dignitaries gave pause to some outside 

businessmen considering Dallas as a place to 

move their businesses or invest their money. 7 

Beyond the damage done to the city’s 

reputation, these episodes were cause for 

much deeper concerns. 

In the wake of the negative publicity, 

Texas Governor John Connally met with 

leaders of the Citizens Council and the 

Chamber of Commerce, asking them to 

encourage civility during an upcoming visit 

to the city by President Kennedy. In the week 

leading up to the visit, Jonsson and Cullum 

were quoted in local newspapers expressing 

the importance of extending the president 

a warm and hospitable welcome. As the 

Citizens Council assumed responsibility for 

sponsoring President Kennedy’s visit, Stanley 

Marcus voiced his concerns about the 

president’s safety to Vice President Johnson, 

saying, “It is a grave mistake to come to 

Dallas.” 8 On Friday, November 22, 1963, at 

approximately the same spot where John 

Neely Bryan built his modest cabin and 

trading post 122 years earlier, President John 

F. Kennedy was assassinated. 

CITY REBUILDS 

AFTER THE FALL 

Following President Kennedy’s assassination, 

hate mail flooded into Mayor Earle 

Cabell’s office. The third member of his 

family to serve as mayor of Dallas, Cabell 

had succeeded R. L. Thornton in 1961, 


promising to end the reign of the Citizens 

Charter Association (CCA) in which local 

politics had come to be dominated by 

millionaire businessmen, bankers, and 

downtown landlords. 9 Because the CCA had 

literally run the city for so long, proposing 

slates of candidates who had promoted a 

pro big-business agenda once elected, 

people blamed those same business leaders 

when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. In 

a July 1964 Fortune magazine article called 

“How Business Failed Dallas,” the Citizens 

Council was criticized for somehow transforming 

its original mission of helping the 

community into the hands-on practice of 

running the community. 10 

The nation’s outrage at Dallas was not 

isolated to hate mail and news articles. Bob 

Rogers experienced firsthand the ire of the 

nation. A newly minted Harvard MBA who 

in 1962 had started working in the Dallas 

office of the New York City-based George A. 

Fuller Company (at the time the nation’s 

largest building contractor), Rogers had 

traveled from Dallas to Boston on business 

two weeks after the assassination. “When the 

cab driver at Logan Airport asked me where 

I was coming from, and I replied ‘Dallas,’ 

he told me to get out of his cab,” Rogers 

recalled. Rogers would go on to become 

president, CEO, and chairman of Texas 

Industries, Inc. (TXI) in Dallas, and served 

as chairman of the Dallas Federal Reserve in 

the 1980s. 11 

On New Year’s Day, 1964, Stanley Marcus 

ran an “advertorial” in The Dallas Morning 

News titled “What’s Right with Dallas?” In the 

editorial ad—which was a Neiman Marcus 

tradition introduced by Stanley Marcus’ 

father, Herbert Marcus, Sr.—Marcus defended 

the city against outside critiques while 

offering an insider’s insightful criticisms of 

the town and its people. Marcus called 

specifically for the city to improve its 

housing for all citizens, which he referred to 

as its “slum” problem; to temper the city’s 

political extremism, which he referred to as 

“absolutism;” to focus less on physical growth 

and more on improving the quality of its civic 

endeavors in the areas of “schools, colleges, 

symphonies, operas, and museums;” and to 

focus less on “civic image” and more on “doing 

good things,” which he believed would take 

care of the city’s image. 12 A number of leaders 

and citizens supported Marcus’ message, 

while others canceled their Neiman Marcus 

accounts and levied anti-Semitic attacks on 

him. In a 2003 article in The New York Times 

on the 40th anniversary of President 

Kennedy’s assassination, Ralph Blumenthal 

praised Marcus’ message to the citizens of 

Dallas as “strik[ing] a perfect balance” between 

criticism and encouragement. 13 

In 1964 six CCA councilmen and 

Citizens Council President John Stemmons 

recruited J. Erik Jonsson to serve as mayor 

and lead the city out of the darkness that 

had enshrouded it after Kennedy’s death. 14 

A revered figure in town because of the 

leadership role he had played in TI’s 

ascendance to international prominence, 

Jonsson accepted the challenge. After he was 

elected, he led the city through a period of 

intense civic introspection and communal 

soul searching. 

In 1965, Mayor Jonsson launched the 

Goals for Dallas program, which engaged a 

broad cross section of citizens beyond the 

Dallas business elite in candid discussions 

about what kind of city Dallas was and what 

it aspired to be. 15 By the time the program 

ended, more than 100,000 people had 

participated in a variety of large- and smallgroup 

discussions, covering such topics as 

public transportation facilities and 

infrastructure, municipal government, 

public safety and services, education, parks 

and recreation, and public health and 

welfare. 16 In an effort to help fund the 

recommendations produced by the Goals for 

Dallas program, Dallas voters approved a 

$175 million “Crossroads” bond issue in 

1967, including $42.4 million for a new city 

hall with a park plaza. The Goals for Dallas 

program was one reason that Look magazine 

would declare Dallas an All-American city in 

1970. Dallas was the only city in its size 

category to win this acclaim. 17 

Thanks to the leadership of such businessmen 

as Jonsson and Marcus, the city 

would survive its most turbulent decade 

with renewed hope for the future. As the city’s 

business establishment sought to regain 

momentum following the Kennedy assassination, 

several local entrepreneurs launched 

companies that revolutionized existing 

industries or created new ones altogether. 

ENTREPRENEURIAL 

SPIRIT FUELS 

BUSINESS ICONS, 

NEW INDUSTRIES 

Bobby Lyle, a professor and administrator 

at the SMU Cox School of Business in the 

1960s and 1970s, observed in Dallas a 

growing community at that time that still 

had a small-city feel to it. “In those days, it 

was impossible to walk into a restaurant and 

not see someone you knew,” Lyle said. 18 

Through his interaction with members of 

the school’s Cox Foundation, which comprised 

many of the city’s leading businessmen at 

the time, Lyle was exposed to the inner 

workings of the Dallas business community. 

He also became keenly aware of the city’s 

entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to 

embrace new business ideas. “At that time in 

Dallas, ideas carried the day,” he remarked. 

“It was not your background or where you’d 

moved from that mattered. If you had a good 

idea, people would listen and invest 

financial resources to help you grow. There 

were plenty of examples of entrepreneurs in 

town who’d not only started their own 

businesses, but who had literally built 

industries, like Ross Perot, Trammell Crow, 

Mack Pogue, and Sam Wyly.” 19 Lyle went 

on to team with internationally renowned 

developer Gerald Hines to develop The 

Galleria Dallas before founding Lyco 

Energy Corp in 1981, which he sold for 

$421 million in 2005 to Enerplus Resources, 

Canada’s oldest energy income trust. 20 

Selwin Belofsky, another enterprising 

young businessman, came to Dallas in 1955 

after serving as a second lieutenant at 

Perrin Air Force Base in Sherman, Texas, 

where he had helped turn the officer’s club 

into a profitable operation. “The business 

environment in Dallas was very good at 

the time,” he recalled, “and there was a real 

pioneering spirit in the city.” 21 

Belofsky also noted the city’s welcoming 

attitude as a key to business growth at that 

time. “In cities like Philadelphia and Boston, 

people wanted to know who your parents 

and grandparents were, and what your 

father did for a living. That was not the case 

in Dallas. It didn’t matter who you were or 

where you were from.” 22 

Belofksy capitalized on the city’s probusiness 

environment to create the Drawing 

Board, Inc., a successful Dallas-based greeting 

card and business forms company. Drawing 

Board grew by leaps and bounds throughout 

the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, when Pitney Bowes 

acquired its business forms division and 

American Greetings purchased its greeting 

cards division. 23 

Throughout the 1960s this rising tide of 

entrepreneurism in Dallas gave birth to a 

number of companies that quickly became 

household names and would ultimately 

achieve international acclaim. Electronic Data 

Systems, Steak and Ale, Mary Kay Cosmetics, 

and NorthPark Center are just a few examples 

of homegrown businesses spawned during 

the decade by men and women who embodied 

the city’s pioneering spirit. 

CHAPTER IX ✧ 77

By the time Dallas officially ushered in 

the Information Age in 1958 with Jack Kilby’s 

invention of the integrated circuit, TI and 

Collins Radio, an electronics company from 

Iowa, had already established corporate 

campuses along Central Expressway where 

Dallas abutted the northern suburb of 

Richardson. Between 1950 and 1978, 

Richardson’s population would grow from 

1,200 to more than 60,000 due, in large 

part, to the arrival of a vast number of 

electrical engineers and computer experts 

employed by TI and Collins Radio, which 

was acquired by Rockwell in 1971. 24 

On June 27, 1962, a former U.S. Naval 

Academy ensign named H. Ross Perot, Sr., 

incorporated a company within the State of 

Texas using $1,000 his wife had loaned him 

from her savings account. This event elicited 

little to no fanfare from the local business 

community and media. Perot selected the 

company name Electronic Data Systems 

(EDS) from potential names he had scribbled 

on a pledge envelope during a service at 

Highland Park Presbyterian Church in 

Dallas. With a two-year pre-law course 

certificate from Texarkana Junior College, 

four years of service in the Navy, and almost 

five years of record-setting sales experience 

with International Business Machines (IBM), 

Perot recognized that business personnel 

needed help in using electronic dataprocessing 

systems. When IBM showed no 

interest in pursuing his idea, Perot left the 

computer mainframe giant to launch EDS. 25 

Perot’s plan was to offer data-processing 

and computing services to companies that 

processed vast amounts of data, such as 

healthcare claims organizations. But instead 

of signing traditional 60- or 90-day contracts 

with clients, he envisioned five-year fixedprice 

contracts, which would enable EDS to 

go into a customer’s organization, set up a 

data-processing system, and then reassign 

the organization’s employees to other jobs to 

save personnel costs, increase profits, and 

maintain a steady flow of business. 26 

Not long after its founding, EDS signed 

an agreement to buy unused time on 

Southwestern Life Insurance’s IBM 7070 

mainframe computer. Two months and 78 

sales calls later, Perot inked EDS’ first 

customer, Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based Collins 

Radio. EDS flew computer tapes and data to 

Dallas for processing. The company’s first 

employees, Betty Taylor and Tom Marquez, 

worked on the Collins Radio account. 27 

In February 1963 the company signed 

its first long-term commercial contract with 

Herman Lay of the Frito Lay Corporation. 

The first of its kind in the IT industry, 

the five-year “facilities management” 

agreement represented the kind of contract 

EDS would repeat over and over, literally 

becoming the data-processing arm of 

hundreds of companies. The long-term, setprice 

relationship also provided EDS with 

predictable business, lessening its exposure 

to economic cycles. Capitalizing on the 

momentum of the Frito Lay deal, EDS soon 

established a contract to process insurance 

data for Mercantile Security Life, the start of 

an interest that by 1990 would establish EDS 

as the largest insurance data processor in 

the nation. 28 

✧ 

Mary Kay Ash posed in front of the first Mary Kay 

location at Exchange Park on Mockingbird Lane not long 

after launching her company in 1963. 

COURTESY OF MARY KAY INC. 

Before the 1960s ended, EDS signed its 

first $1 million-a-month contract, which 

initially involved handling Blue Shield of 

California’s backlogged Medicare data 

processing but expanded to include processing 

for Medicaid. Through this relationship, 

EDS’ workforce almost quadrupled from 

371 to 1,407, as Blue Shield employees 

transferred to EDS. EDS’ stock price hit 

$160 a share in 1969, giving the company a 

paper worth in excess of $1 billion. 29 

After being purchased by General Motors 

in 1984, spun off by GM ten years later, and 

then surviving the dot.com collapse in the 

early 2000s, EDS grew into a Fortune 500 

company with more than 130,000 employees 

and $21.2 billion in revenue in 2006. In May 

2008, Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett- 

Packard (HP) acquired EDS for $13.9 billion 

to become more competitive with IBM in the 

IT services and outsourcing market. 30 

After selling EDS to GM in 1984 for $2.5 

billion, Perot went on to found Perot 

Systems Corporation in 1988 and led the 

company to the Fortune 1000 status it holds 

today. He currently serves as chairman 

emeritus of the board of Perot Systems. In 

addition to his success as a business pioneer, 

Perot has distinguished himself as a public 

servant and philanthropist. Through the 

Perot Foundation, he has donated more than 

$100 million, much of it to causes in Dallas, 

including education projects and programs 

for minorities. In recognition of his efforts 

from 1969 to 1972 to improve the brutal 

treatment of American POWs in Southeast 

Asia, he received the Medal for Distinguished 

Public Service, the highest civilian award 

presented by the U.S. Department of 

Defense. In 1983 he was named head of 

the Texas Governor’s Select Committee on 

Public Education, which installed teachercompetency 

tests and a “no pass, no play” 

rule for high school athletes. In 1992, 

Perot ran for president of the United States 

as an independent candidate, winning 

almost nineteen percent of the vote—one 

of the largest percentages ever for an 

independent candidate. He has received 

many honors for his professional and civic 

accomplishments, including The Winston 

Churchill Award, The Patrick Henry Award, 

and The Eisenhower Award. 31 

By the 1960s with such establishments 

as El Fenix, El Chico, the Pig Stand, and 

Lucas B&B, the city’s burgeoning restaurant 

industry—combined with its growing 

population and entrepreneurial spirit— 

created a fertile environment in which 

someone like Norman E. Brinker could 

launch his “concept restaurants.” In addition 

to serving in the U.S. Navy, Brinker had 

been a member of the 1952 U.S. Olympic 

Equestrian Team who competed in the 1954 

Modern Pentathlon World Championships 

in Budapest, Hungary. He later enrolled in 

the marketing program at San Diego State 

University, where he was elected the first 

non-fraternity student body president and 

graduated with honors in 1957. 32 

Following college, Brinker joined Jack in 

the Box, when it had only five restaurants, 

for the chance to learn from founder Robert 

Patterson, whose entrepreneurial techniques 

he’d studied in school. He rose quickly 

through the ranks and became a major 

partner, helping lead the company to 

national prominence before striking out on 

his own. In 1964 he founded a coffee shop 

called Brink’s in Dallas. Two years later, he 

sold Brink’s and launched a restaurant 

inspired by the warmth and charm of an old 

English country inn—Steak and Ale. 33 


Steak and Ale expanded rapidly throughout 

the ’60s and ’70s, and in 1971, with twentyeight 

outlets, it became a publicly held 

company. In 1976 Brinker sold the chain to 

Pillsbury but continued to serve as chairman 

of Steak and Ale. At the time, Pillsbury’s 

restaurant group owned Burger King and 

Poppin’ Fresh pie shops. In 1982, Brinker 

became chairman of Pillsbury’s restaurant 

group, where he helped re-energize an ailing 

Burger King business and launch a spin-off 

called Bennigan’s. 34 

Brinker subsequently acquired the Chili’s 

Grill & Bar restaurant chain, which Larry 

Lavine had founded in Dallas in 1975. In 

1989 he bought the franchise rights to 

Romano’s Macaroni Grill—an international 

chain of Italian-style casual dining restaurants 

founded one year earlier by restaurateur 

Philip J. Romano in Leon Springs, Texas. In 

1991, Brinker founded Brinker International, 

which today is one of the world’s largest 

casual-dining restaurant operators in terms 

of revenue, comprising such renowned 

brands as Chili’s Grill & Bar, Romano’s 

Macaroni Grill, On The Border Mexican Grill 

& Cantina, and Maggiano’s Little Italy. The 

company operates more than 1,700 restaurant 

locations in twenty countries, generating 

more than $4.3 billion in revenue annually 

and employing over 100,000 employees. 35 

Around the time Perot and Brinker were 

founding their companies, an entrepreneurial 

woman in town was preparing to strike out 

on her own. By 1960, Mary Kay Ash had 

three decades of direct sales experience 

under her belt. Though she had achieved 

considerable success as a salesperson and 

national training director working for 

several companies, she retired in the early 

1960s, frustrated at being passed over 

for promotions in favor of men. As she 

embarked upon writing a book to assist 

women in business, the effort evolved into a 

business plan for her ideal company. In 

September 1963, Ash and her son, Richard 

Rogers, launched Mary Kay Cosmetics with 

a $5,000 investment. In addition to 

providing quality products for women, the 

company offered women the opportunity to 

earn extra money, enjoy more flexibility, and 

grow as independent business owners. 36 

Initially, Mary Kay Cosmetics operated 

out of a storefront at Exchange Park on 

Mockingbird Lane, managing a small 

network of independent consultants who 

marketed the company’s products door to 

door and through small gatherings with 

friends. Ash held her first sales seminar in 

1964, cooking dinner for 200 attendees. 

✧ 

Not long after NorthPark Center’s opening in 1965, shoppers flocked to the innovative mall, which offered luxury retail, 

wide promenades, water features, lush landscaping, and prominent displays of art. Developed by Raymond Nasher on an 

old 97-acre cotton field at the edge of North Dallas, NorthPark continues to be one of the city’s top tourist attractions with 

more than 21 million visitors a year. 


Five years later, she awarded pink Cadillacs 

(1970 Coupe DeVilles) to the company’s top 

five sales directors. Thus was born a symbol 

for business success and company loyalty 

that would evolve into an internationally 

recognized icon. 37 

Since its founding in 1963, Mary Kay 

Cosmetics has averaged double-digit annual 

growth, exceeding $2.25 billion in wholesale 

sales in 2006. During that time, its sales 

force has grown to more than 1.7 million 

Independent Beauty Consultants in more 

than thirty markets worldwide. Meanwhile, 

the company’ initial nine-item collection 

has expanded to include more than 

200 products. 38 

Named “the greatest woman entrepreneur 

in American history” in a study by Baylor 

University, Ash was also recognized as one of 

the most influential business leaders of our 

time by the Wharton School of Business and 

the Public Broadcast System. Both during 

her life and posthumously, she received 

numerous honors from business groups, 

including the Horatio Alger Award. She 

also founded the Mary Kay Ash Charitable 

Foundation, one of the top-giving philanthropic 

organizations in Dallas, which raises 

money to combat domestic violence and 

cancers affecting women. 39 

Raymond D. Nasher was a visionary 

developer who embodied Dallas’ entrepreneurial 

spirit of the 1960s. Following the 

desegregation of the city’s public schools, a 

massive migration of white families to 

Dallas’ suburbs presented residential and 

commercial developers with unprecedented 

opportunities to build. Nasher had a bold 

idea to meet the shopping needs of the rapidly 

growing suburban population: NorthPark 

Center, the largest climate-controlled retail 

establishment in the world at that time. 

The shopping center, situated on a 97- 

acre cotton field at the edge of North Dallas, 

was laid out on an axis like a town and 

designed from the ground up to properly 

display large works of art, as Nasher’s passion 

was sculpture. When it opened in 1965, 

NorthPark’s design and tenant mix—including 

Neiman Marcus, which Nasher had lured 

from its Preston Center location—redefined 

the retail landscape in North Texas and 

the Southwest. 40 

One of America’s first large-scale malls to 

have unity of materials and a policy of 

controlled graphics, NorthPark set a consistent 

standard of quality in materials, architectural 

detailing, and use of natural light. From 

NorthPark’s first day in business, selections 

from Nasher’s collection of twentieth century 

sculpture and modern art have been 

displayed throughout the mall. As a result, 

millions of visitors have been exposed to 

works by such renowned sculptors as 

Jonathan Borofsky, Andy Warhol, Henry 

Moore, Roy Lichtenstein, and Frank Stella. 

In receiving the American Institute of 

Architects (AIA) Award for “Design of the 

Decade - 1960s,” NorthPark was recognized 

as one of the first commercial centers in 

the country to create space for the display 

of fine art. NorthPark was honored again 

in 1992 with the AIA’s 25-Year Award for 

“Design Excellence.” 41 

CHAPTER IX ✧ 79

AFRICAN AMERICANS 

AND HISPANICS FIGHT 

FOR THEIR PIECE OF 

THE GROWING PIE 

Even as the city’s entrepreneurial spirit 

flourished, business boomed, and suburbs 

exploded throughout the 1960s, African 

Americans and Hispanics struggled to carve 

out their share of the growing pie of 

prosperity. In 1960, African Americans made 

up 19 percent of the population in Dallas. 

That number would grow to almost 30 

percent by 1970, with Hispanics making up 

8 percent of the city’s population, as whites 

continued to move to the suburbs. 42 But 

minority-owned businesses and professional 

opportunities for the two groups were not 

growing in proportion to their population. 

As Darwin Payne points out in Big D: 

Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity, 

throughout the 1960s, new African-American 

activist groups emerged or established 

chapters in Dallas to fight for civil rights, 

including the Southern Christian Leadership 

Conference, the Bois D’Arc Patriots, Black 

Citizens for Justice, and the Student 

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). 

The new groups moved to the foreground in 

the city’s civil rights movement, taking much 

of the spotlight from more established 

groups such as the Dallas Negro Chamber of 

Commerce (DNCC), the National Association 

for the Advancement of Colored People 

(NAACP), and the Progressive Voters League. 

In 1968 the SNCC boycotted white-owned 

OK Supermarkets in South Dallas. OK 

Supermarket officials eventually agreed to 

sell all ten of the company’s South Dallas 

stores to African-American businessmen to 

end the boycott. 43 

Inspired by the success of such groups, a 

number of Hispanic groups, including the 

Brown Berets, Los Barrios Unidos, and 

Mexican Americans for Progressive Action, 

emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s to fight 

for their rights as a growing segment of the 

city’s population. Their grievances included 

widespread discrimination against Hispanics 

as well as the high rate of poverty and high 

rate of high school drop outs among the 

local Hispanic population. 44 

While it had a lower profile than some of 

the other more outspoken groups, the 

DNCC continued to work effectively during 

this period. After helping establish the 

Urban Renewal Program in 1958, the DNCC 

teamed up with the Citizens Council two 

years later to organize the fourteen-member 

Dallas Biracial Committee, which was the 

✧ 

Joe Kirven greeted supporters at a political rally held in Woodmen Auditorium during his campaign as a Republican 

candidate for state representative, Place 9, in October 1968. Kirven was a dynamic leader who helped increase opportunities 

for African-American businesses and individuals. In addition to serving as president of the Dallas Negro Chamber of 

Commerce in the late 1960s, he founded Venture Adviser, Inc., to provide low-interest financing for local businesses. 

(The Dallas Morning News, Section A, p. 34, October 13, 1968) 


forerunner of the Urban League of Greater 

Dallas and the Dallas Human Relations 

Commission. The DNCC also helped bring 

Bishop College to Dallas, and worked with 

the Citizens Council to develop the Dallas 

Minority Entrepreneurship Program. 45 

In 1963 and 1964, under the leadership 

of President J. H. Glenn, a prominent real 

estate broker and developer who also 

served on the City Planning Commission, 

the DNCC sponsored a study called 

“Characteristics of the Negro Market in 

Dallas County.” The study was designed to 

help DNCC members better understand the 

African-American market in Dallas and 

respond with businesses, products, and 

services to meet that market’s needs. Among 

its many findings, the study revealed that the 

169,000 African Americans in Dallas County 

at that time were pumping roughly $150 

million into the local economy each year. 46 

By 1968, Joe Kirven, a dynamic business 

and political leader, had taken the helm of 

the DNCC. Recognizing that capital was 

essential to business success and business 

know-how, Kirven began looking for a private 

source of funds for local African-American 

businessmen. In 1969, he organized Venture 

Adviser, Inc., as a funding agency for those 

businesses. The new company provided 

businessmen with guaranteed low-interest 

financing as well as assistance from business 

analysts and economists. 47 

As president of the DNCC, Kirven helped 

canvass 1,000 local employers in the Job 

Fair program to obtain 6,000 summer jobs 

for African-American boys and girls. Kirven 

also led initiatives to increase African- 

American hiring by the Dallas Fire 

Department and fought to end 

discriminatory practices that made it 

difficult for African Americans to obtain and 

hold property insurance. Kirven’s business 

acumen and civic participation would later 

earn him a coveted Jaycee Award, given 

annually to five young people making 

outstanding contributions to Texas. 48 

Around this time, a number of local 

businessmen, including Bobby Lyle, Sam 

Wyly, Don Williams, and Walter Durham, 

established Project Concern. This program 

sought to identify and nurture minority 

entrepreneurship opportunities while bringing 

best practices and financing vehicles to 

those activities. After seeking funding for 

the project from the U.S. Department of 

Commerce, the group of businessmen 

launched a Dallas chapter of the Minority 

Enterprise Small Business Investment 

Corporation (MESBIC), a federally funded 

private venture capital firm licensed by the 

U.S. Small Business Administration to provide 

capital to minority-owned businesses. 

At one point, Dallas MESBIC was the largest 

chapter in the nation, with some $250,000 

available to fund minority businesses. 49 The 

efforts of individuals and groups such as 

these began to improve the business and 

professional opportunities for the city’s 

growing minority population. 


✧ 

This bird’s-eye photograph, taken around the time of DFW Regional Airport’s opening in 1974, reveals the complex’s vast expanse and the stark emptiness of the surrounding prairie, which has 

since been populated by myriad businesses benefiting from the airport’s operations. (1974) 


CHAPTER X 

B USINESS R ISES WITH N EW A IRPORT O PENING, 

F ALLS F ROM C RISES IN B ANKING AND R EAL E STATE, 1970-1990 

In the 1970s the national and Dallas- 

Fort Worth economies experienced the 

deleterious effects of rising interest rates and 

inflation. The Organization of Petroleum 

Exporting Countries (OPEC) ignited a global 

oil crisis when it announced major price 

increases, resulting in gas rationing and long 

lines at the pumps. For Dallasites and 

Americans, efforts made throughout the 

decade to control rising prices were largely 

ineffective. In its 1979 Annual Report, the 

Federal Reserve Bank’s Board of Governors 

stated, “At year-end, the short-term outlook 

for inflation remained bleak.” Economists 

used the term “stagflation” to describe the 

economic environment of the 1970s. 

Overall, the nation’s stagnant economy 

experienced little to no growth while 

inflation drove the cost of goods and services 

higher. The federal government imposed 

wage and price controls in an attempt to 

ameliorate economic conditions. 1 

In this environment, banks had to 

compete for funds, vying with a number of 

competitors such as savings and loans 

(S&Ls) that could play by less restrictive 

rules. Billions of dollars flowed out of banks 

and into institutions that were not governed 

by interest rate caps. These “nonbank banks” 

offered investment products such as mutual 

funds and negotiable order of withdrawal 

(NOW) accounts. 2 

While much of the United States 

experienced a sharp economic decline in 

the face of rising energy costs, the Federal 

Reserve’s Eleventh District economy got a 

boost from higher oil prices, giving rise 

to increased real estate development as 

well as manufacturing and transportation 

enhancements throughout the 1970s. 3 

The decade proved to be a good one for 

business in Dallas, highlighted by the 

historic opening of Dallas-Fort Worth 

Regional Airport and the resulting wave of 

corporate relocations it spurred. From 1970 

to 1980, the city’s population grew 7.1 

percent, from 844, 401 to 904,078. 4 

AIRPORT DISCUSSIONS 

FINALLY BEAR FRUIT 

After several unsuccessful attempts by 

Dallas and Fort Worth to develop jointly 

a major airport, the issue had begun to 

heat back up in the 1960s. In 1961 the Civil 

Aeronautics Board (CAB) ordered hearings 

on proposals to construct a joint airport. Amid 

the hearings, Federal Aviation Administration 

(FAA) Chief Najeeb Halaby vowed his agency 

would not “put another nickel” into either of 

the cities’ independent airports. 5 

By 1964, Fort Worth’s airport, then called 

the Greater Southwest International Airport 

(GSIA), accounted for less than 1 percent of 

air traffic in the nation, while Love Field 

ranked as the eighth-busiest airport in the 

CHAPTER X ✧ 81

nation. 6 After finding that neither Love Field 

nor GSIA was suitable for future needs, the 

CAB refused to name either one as a regional 

air center. Instead, it issued an ultimatum to 

the two cities demanding that they jointly 

determine a site for an airport within 180 

days. If the two cities could not reach an 

agreement, the CAB declared it would 

designate the site itself. 7 

✧ 

J. Erik Jonsson played as prominent a role in the 

development of business in Dallas as any other 

individual in the city’s history. He served as president of 

TI from 1951 to 1958, and then chairman until 1966. 

As mayor of Dallas from 1964 to 1971, he led the city’s 

efforts to build a new city hall designed by I. M. Pei and 

implemented the Goals for Dallas program to help the 

city reestablish its sense of identity and priorities in the 

wake of the Kennedy assassination. He was also 

instrumental in the development of DFW Regional 

Airport, serving as chairman of the airport board from 

1968 until its opening in 1974. In addition, Jonsson was 

a tireless advocate for education, serving or leading the 

boards of nearly a dozen educational institutions as well 

as founding the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies, 

which became the University of Texas at Dallas in 1969. 



In response to the ultimatum, Dallas 

Mayor J. Erik Jonsson, Dallas Chamber of 

Commerce President Robert B. Cullum, and 

Mayor Pro-Tem Carie Welch held a series of 

meetings with Fort Worth officials in 

Arlington, about half way between the two 

cities. 8 In 1965 an Interim Airport Board 

was established with Jonsson serving as 

chairman. Dallas and Fort Worth cofinanced 

a study and selected a site just 

north of GSIA on the border of Dallas 

County and Tarrant County, almost exactly 

seventeen miles from both cities’ central 

business districts. One year later, the cities 

purchased the first 176 acres of land for the 

new regional airport as part of the master 

plan calling for a 17,800-acre site (or 27 

square miles), larger than New York’s 

Manhattan island. 9 

In 1968 the two cities formed the 

Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport Board, 

with Jonsson presiding as chairman. Tom 

Sullivan, deputy director of aviation for the 

New York Port Authority, became the first 

executive director of DFW Regional Airport. 

Later that year, the first $35 million in 

revenue bonds were sold to finance 

construction of the $750 million airport, 

and groundbreaking took place at a site 

bounded by the cities of Grapevine, Irving, 

and Euless. 10 

The DFW Regional Airport (renamed 

DFW International Airport in 1985) 

welcomed its first commercial flight on 

January 13, 1974—102 years after the first 

H&TC engine steamed into Dallas. American 

Airlines Flight 341 arrived on time at 12:07 

a.m. from Little Rock, Arkansas. J. W. and 

Patricia Parker, Fort Worth residents, were 

the first passengers to deplane. 11 By the end 

of its first three months of operation, 

the new airport was averaging 18,000 

passengers per day. 12 

Since the arrival of the first H&TC engine 

in 1872, no single event in the history of 

Dallas stimulated the city’s economy as 

much as the creation of DFW International 

Airport. Not only did the airport create 

temporary and permanent jobs for citizens 

as well as business opportunities for 

hundreds of local vendors, it also boosted 

the city’s tourism and convention business, 

expanded its national and international 

trade, and spurred a massive influx of 

corporate relocations to the DFW area that 

continues to this day. 

In 2007 approximately 164,000 passengers 

passed through the airport each day, for 

a total of 59,786,476 passengers that 

year. More than 5.5 million of those were 

international passengers. To support its 

travelers, the airport has 305,000 full-time 

jobs and a payroll of $7.6 billion, including 

60,000 on-site airport employees. Another 

1,740 people work for the DFW Airport 

Board. The airport’s total economic impact 

on North Texas in 2007 was $16.6 billion. 12 

AMERICAN AIRLINES 

HIGHLIGHTS CORPORATE 

RELOCATIONS SPURRED 

BY NEW AIRPORT 

Since the airport’s opening in 1974 more 

than 200 major companies have relocated 

their headquarters to the DFW metroplex, 

including JCPenney from New York City; 

Kimberly-Clark from Neenah, Wisconsin; 

Exxon from New York City; Fluor from 

Irvine, California; and Comerica Bank from 

Detroit. All cited DFW’s airport as one of the 

main reasons for moving. But no company’s 

relocation to the area has had more 

of an impact on Dallas’ economy in terms 

of employment, economic growth, and 

international trade than American Airlines’ 

(and its parent company, AMR Corp.) in 1978. 

When American Airlines relocated its 

corporate headquarters from New York City 

to DFW in 1978, it already had three key 

facilities located in the area: the Learning 

Center, whose principal function was to train 

flight attendants; the Flight Center, used to 

train new pilots and put experienced pilots 

and first officers through updates on the 

latest technology and equipment; and the 

Southern Central Reservations Center. While 

the airline’s move was clearly influenced 

by the synergies it could enjoy from being 

located near its existing facilities and the new 

world-class airport, DFW’s relatively low cost 

of doing business and high quality of life also 

proved to be deciding factors. 13 

From the moment Al Casey took over as 

chairman and CEO of American Airlines in 

February 1974, he was considering relocating 

the company’s corporate headquarters. In 

1978, with the airline’s Manhattan office 

leases due to expire the following year, Casey 

began to build his case for relocation. 14 

He looked at Chicago, Atlanta, and St. 

Louis as possible sites in addition to the 

DFW area, but after completing a fullscale 

feasibility study, DFW ultimately 

prevailed. Based on his research, the airline 

could achieve twenty-year savings of 

approximately $200 million on rent alone by 

moving from Manhattan to the DFW area. 15 

As Casey engaged local officials in more 

detailed discussions, Henry Stuart, chairman 

of DFW Regional Airport, and Ernie Dean, 

the airport’s executive director, presented 

him with a concrete proposal that included 

$147 million in tax-free bond financing for 

the airline’s new headquarters. American 

Airlines later worked out a “blanket deal” 

with Texas banks whereby the company 

bought $60 million worth of certificates of 

deposit and the banks provided airline 

employees with mortgages at 8.75 percent 

compared to the rate of 10 percent being 

offered at that time. 16 

In the final report Casey delivered to the 

American Airlines’ board in July 1978, he 

also cited a number of quality-of-life issues 


in concluding that DFW was the most 

attractive metropolitan area. Relocation to 

the DFW metroplex would yield significant 

economic benefits to most headquarters 

personnel principally by eliminating the 

high New York state and city taxes. In 

addition, most employees would be able 

to live in one of the many burgeoning 

communities near the airport, dramatically 

shortening their commute times, which 

totaled more than four hours a day for some 

employees working in Manhattan and living 

in outlying suburbs. Casey also noted that 

DFW offered living conditions, housing, 

education, climate, public safety, health 

care, and a civic image sufficient to retain 

current American Airlines employees as 

well as attract future personnel. Of the 

approximately 1,220 American Airlines 

corporate employees offered the opportunity 

to relocate to DFW, 920 people decided to 

make the move. 17 Today, AMR Corp. is the 

largest employer in Tarrant County. In 2006 

the company generated $22.5 billion in 

revenue while employing more than 86,000 

people around the world. 18 

Nearly three decades after Casey’s report 

emphasized the DFW area’s relatively 

low cost of living as a key to its high quality 

of life, the American Chamber of Commerce 

Researchers Association (ACCRA) costof-living 

index for 2007 confirmed his 

claim. Compared to a U.S. average cost of 

living of one hundred, DFW’s composite 

ranking was 90.2, accounting for grocery 

items, housing, utilities, transportation, 

health care, and miscellaneous goods and 

services. Of particular note was DFW’s 

72.3 housing score, 27.7 percent below the 

U.S. average. 19 

American Airlines was only one of many 

major companies that found the allure of 

DFW and its new airport irresistible. From 

1975 to 1980 alone, approximately thirtyfive 

companies from various industries 

moved their corporate, national, or regional 

headquarters to the area. And most listed the 

same set of reasons for relocating as Casey 

had noted in his recommendation to the 

American Airlines board of trustees. In 1976, 

for example, the Associates Corporation of 

North America moved to Las Colinas from 

South Bend, Indiana. The company cited the 

area’s efficient air transportation system, 

favorable corporate environment, strong and 

abundant labor market, affordable and 

available energy costs, high quality of life, 

and relatively low cost of living—along with 

the absence of a state personal income tax or 

a corporate income tax. 20 

Ron White, vice president for business 

development at the Dallas Chamber of 

Commerce in 1980, noted that among the 

city’s myriad advantages, DFW’s airport 

remained the biggest draw. In justifying this 

claim, White explained that the energy costs 

at that time—specifically the cost of oil and 

jet fuel—had caused the cost of airline 

operations to go up. That economic reality 

combined with the Airline Deregulation Act 

of 1978, which allowed airlines to adopt 

new routes and more competitive rate 

structures, created a trend to put more air 

traffic at major hubs. This development was 

significant to large companies with 

considerable business travel and shipping 

needs. And DFW’s new airport offered 

businesses significant cost and convenience 

benefits in that respect. 21 

The growing number of corporate 

relocations spurred by the new airport 

created another positive “ripple” effect for 

the city: For every one job that moved to the 

area, three more jobs were created. Based on 

this figure, the thirty-five largest companies 

moving to Dallas from 1975 to 1980 added 

more than 3,000 jobs, with some estimates 

citing numbers closer to 9,000. 22 

In addition to stimulating the growth of 

Dallas’ population and business activities, 

the new airport spurred population explosions 

in smaller towns such as Coppell, Euless, and 

Grapevine as well as more the established 

cities of Arlington and Irving/Las Colinas. 

Formerly the 6,000-acre Ben Carpenter 

Family Ranch, Las Colinas benefited from 

the opening of the new airport perhaps more 

than any other surrounding city. By 1971, 

with plans moving forward for the new 

airport, Carpenter family members decided 

to develop a community to protect the 

integrity of their land, whose border lay only 

five miles from the proposed airport runways. 

The development grew dramatically over 

the ensuing decade. By the early 1980s, 

more than 200 major companies had 

established international, national, or regional 

headquarters in Las Colinas, including 

Caltex, Diamond Shamrock, the Associates, 

GM, IBM, and Levi Strauss & Co. By 1983, 

more than $1.5 billion had been invested in 

Las Colinas development. One year later, it 

had attracted adjacent developments totaling 

4,000 acres. 23 Today, Las Colinas is home to 

more than 2,000 companies, including three 

Fortune 500 world headquarters. It also has 

more than twenty hotels, including four 

business-class hotels with full-service 

conference facilities to support the meeting 

needs of its thriving business community. 24 

In addition to the economic boost Dallas 

enjoyed from the new airport, the city’s civic 

leadership continued to promote a pro-business 

agenda that encouraged investment and 

development. Following the 1971 to 1976 run 

of Mayor Wes Wise—the first non-CCA mayor 

in three decades—Dallas elected consecutively 

three successful businessmen as 

mayor, each with strong connections to the 

city’s business establishment. Real estate 

developer Robert Folsom served as mayor 

from 1977 to 1981, leading the city through 

a period of strong economic expansion 

and growth. Among Folsom’s many developments 

was the far North Dallas community 

of Bent Tree. Jack Evans, who had developed 

and sold a chain of grocery stores to the Kroger 

Company before taking over as president 

of Cullum Companies, served as mayor 

from 1981 to 1983. A. Starke Taylor, who 

had amassed a fortune in the cotton brokerage 

business as well as several North Dallas 

developments, served as mayor from 1983 to 

1987. 25 These mayors—buttressed by Dallas’ 

business establishment—oversaw an unprecedented 

period of development and business 

expansion in the city that ultimately ended in 

historic collapses in banking and real estate. 

REAGAN 

ADMINISTRATION 

INSPIRES POSITIVE 

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK 

Like much of the nation, Dallas was feeling 

bullish at the dawn of the 1980s. With 

the newly installed Reagan Administration, 

the optimistic economic outlook sweeping 

across the nation pervaded the minds of 

many local business leaders. The Dallas/Fort 

Worth Business’ 1981 outlook issue reported 

that while some of the city’s business leaders 

were worried about the threat posed by 

rising inflation, most were looking forward 

to operating in an unfettered business 

climate of the free enterprise system. As the 

federal government relaxed regulations and 

controls at all levels, business leaders anticipated 

improved conditions, particularly in 

energy, defense, and aerospace. 26 

The banking and financial services 

industry welcomed the Depository Institutions 

Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 

1980. Many industry leaders believed this 

law would bring dramatic changes as 

banks, savings and loans (S&Ls), and credit 

unions began to capitalize on full-service 

opportunities, ATMs, Negotiable Orders of 

Withdrawal (NOW) accounts, and high 

interest rates. 27 CHAPTER X ✧ 83

The DFW real estate market entered the 

1980s with some uncertainty because of 

high interest rates. While many expected 

housing to continue to be a troubled industry, 

most thought commercial development 

would remain strong. Regardless of what 

happened with interest rates, the consensus 

long-term view among real estate leaders 

was positive, as the DFW metroplex 

continued to benefit from the migration of 

professionals and businesses from the Rust 

Belt to the Sun Belt. 28 

Following the opening of the new airport, 

DFW emerged as one of the nation’s largest 

warehouse and distribution centers. From 

1970 to 1980, the average annual absorption 

rate of warehouse space in the Dallas area was 

5.6 million square feet, according to James 

Struble, vice president of Henry S. Miller Co. 

Clients needing warehouse space represented 

a mix of companies moving to the area and 

companies already in town that required 

additional space to expand their operations. 29 

Locally based manufacturing companies 

of all sizes were optimistic about the 

prospects for the future. Paul Thayer, 

chairman of Dallas-based LTV Corp., 

remarked that 1981 would be a significant 

year in setting the stage for an economic 

upturn in the years to come. Thayer 

expected steel production to pick up due to 

increased demand, anticipating in particular 

higher sales in the aerospace sector. 

Meanwhile, E-Systems, an application 

developer and systems integrator serving the 

public and private sectors, announced plans 

to add a 280,000-square-foot engineering 

and computer facility in Garland with 

expectations for increased demand and 

record new orders. Ed Spencer, chairman of 

Honeywell, which had multiple sales offices 

in the DFW area along with a small 

manufacturing facility in Richardson, believed 

1981 would be a year of high demand for 

computer products and services, requiring 

heavy investment in engineering and 

manufacturing capacity to meet that demand. 

However, Spencer also noted that high 

inflation, increasing costs, fluctuating foreign 

currency rates, and rising salaries and wages 

would continue to exert substantial pressure 

on profit margins. 30 

In the early 1980s the local energy 

industry was characterized by a sense of 

controlled optimism. Most industry leaders 

felt that President Reagan’s policies would 

enable the oil industry to continue enjoying 

record-breaking profits through deregulation 

of federal price guidelines. But their 

excitement about the more benevolent 

federal bureaucracy was tempered by 

potential risks posed by political instability in 

parts of the world and worldwide inflation. 31 

Eugene C. Zorn, senior vice president 

and chief economist with Republic National 

Bank, noted that the sectors of Dallas’ economy 

most adversely affected by inflation were 

housing and automobiles, as rising energy 

prices created a drag on these two industries. 

Furthermore, Zorn pointed out that despite 

the city’s key strengths of favorable weather, 

taxes, and strong capital investment and labor 

market, the cost of living and unemployment 

were increasing in Dallas faster than the 

national average, narrowing the competitive 

advantage the region had enjoyed as a 

desirable place to live and do business. 32 

Overall, however, Dallas business leaders 

were feeling good about the prospects of the 

local economy at the dawn of the 1980s. 

And they were not alone in this respect. In 

1981, the Kiplinger Group started a Texas 

Letter, stating that the region had become so 

strong in international economic circles that 

it warranted a letter of its own. (Established 

in the 1920s, the Kiplinger Letter today 

continues to be a trusted source of forecasts 

and advice on how investors can profit from 

business and economic trends.) In addition, 

a report by Aetna Life & Casualty Co. in the 

early 1980s ranked DFW first in the nation 

in overall economic and population growth, 

and first for retail market conditions. 33 

DFW Regional Airport continued to be 

the primary attraction for businesses relocating 

to the area. By the time the airport celebrated 

its 10th birthday in 1984, it was the fourthbusiest 

airport in the world in scheduled 

liftoffs and landings and the eighth-largest 

✧ 

Opened in 1989 and designed by world-renowned 

architect I. M. Pei, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony 

Center is home to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the 

Dallas Wind Symphony, the Turtle Creek Chorale, and 

the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra. 

COURTESY OF ROB MCFARLIN. 

in total passengers enplaned, handling 

approximately 200 million airline passengers. 

Sixty percent of all Texas air cargo enplaned 

there—more than 2.6 million tons of cargo 

and mail. Meanwhile, the number of airlines 

providing service at the airport had expanded 

to over forty, up from just twelve on the 

airport’s opening day in 1974. 34 

In the first half of the 1980s, business 

activity in general reinforced the positive 

outlook that local business leaders and the 

nation had for the city. A whole host of 

companies in town—public and private— 

got swept up in the mounting optimism for 

the local and national economies. 

REAL ESTATE 

DEVELOPERS LEAD 

BUILDING BOOM 

In the 1980s, the citizens of Dallas and 

its leaders proved themselves ready and 

willing to build the infrastructure necessary 

to support the civic activities of a rapidly 

growing major U.S. city. Following the 

opening of the $70 million I.M. Pei-designed 

Dallas City Hall in 1978, Reunion Arena 

opened in 1980 to serve as home for the 

Dallas Mavericks, the town’s new National 

Basketball Association franchise. Two years 

later, the $42 million J. Erik Jonsson Central 

Library (the main library of the Dallas Public 

Library system) opened across the street from 

city hall. In 1983, Dallas voters approved the 

creation of Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), 

a public transportation system featuring 

buses and light rail. Following a 1979 city 

bond election in which voters pledged 

$24.8 million toward a new museum, the 

Dallas Museum of Art opened in 1984, thus 

ensuring a proper balance between sports 

entertainment and cultural activities. The 

Pei-designed Morton H. Meyerson Symphony 

Center opened five years later. 35 

Not about to be outdone by the public 

sector’s activities, the city’s private sector 

spearheaded an unprecedented building 

boom in and around downtown in the 

1980s. Buoyed by the mounting optimism, 

home-grown and outside investors alike 

infused the city with abundant capital for 

new construction. From 1974 to 1982, 

Dallas had an incredible run of commercial 

development that would see the city grow 

from about 1.5 million square feet of office 

space to 14 million square feet. From 1983 

to 1984, the city created more than 29 

million square feet of office space, roughly 

the equivalent of all the office space in 

Miami at that time. 36 


Throughout the decade, a number of major 

commercial office buildings were constructed. 

In 1982 the 50-story Thanksgiving Tower 

opened at 1601 Elm, along with the 36-story 

Harwood Center at Bryan and Harwood. 

The following year, 50-story 1700 Pacific 

opened along with 49-story Energy Plaza at 

1601 Bryan. Through the remainder of the 

decade, five of the six tallest buildings in the 

city were built, including the 72-story Bank 

of America Plaza at 901 Main (1985) and 

the 62-story Fountain Place at 1445 Ross 

(1986). In addition, the 1.4-million-squarefoot 

Cityplace Center opened in 1988, 

serving as home to Southland Corporation 

(today 7-Eleven) among other companies. 37 

The contagious building bug also spread 

to the retail sector, as shopping malls 

sprouted around the downtown area and 

outlying suburbs. Valley View Mall, Town 

East Mall, Prestonwood Mall, and Collin 

Creek Mall offered long-time residents and 

newly arriving families myriad new 

shopping options. 38 Opened in 1982, with 

anchor tenants Marshall Field’s and Saks 

Fifth Avenue as well as the 432-room Westin 

Hotel, the Galleria Dallas was one of the 

grandest examples of the city’s building 

boom in the 1980s. Developed by Gerald D. 

Hines of Hines Interests, the Galleria 

Dallas was modeled after another Hines 

development, the Houston Galleria. The 

Dallas version featured an ice-skating rink, a 

glass-vaulted ceiling, and other architectural 

and design elements of the Galleria Vittorio 

Emanuele II in Milan, Italy. 39 

EXCESSES LEAD TO 

BANKING AND REAL 

ESTATE CRISES 

Like many communities that experience 

periods of rapid economic growth, a 

segment of Dallas’ businesses, investors, and 

consumers got carried away by irrational 

exuberance in the decade following the 

new airport’s opening. These individuals 

and institutions made a host of financial 

bets and investment decisions based 

on spurious assumptions and overly 

optimistic projections—completely devoid 

of responsible risk-management practices. 

One of the attributes that had made Dallas 

great throughout its history—its willingness 

to take risks where others would not— 

proved to be disastrous in the 1980s. 

Two things fueled the economic boom 

in the late 1970s and early 1980s: profits 

from sky-high oil prices and the Reagan 

Administration’s deregulatory policies that 

enabled S&Ls and thrifts to build up 

deposits almost overnight by offering extrahigh 

dividends. The interconnectedness and 

interdependence of the oil, banking, and real 

estate industries in Dallas at the time, along 

with a dose of unethical behavior by a few 

individuals, are what made the ensuing 

crises so insidious and far-reaching. 40 

As Darwin Payne observes in Big D: 

Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity 

in the 20th Century, a number of “aggressive 

entrepreneurs and developers gained control 

of many of the ‘thrifts’ and converted their 

once-conservative operations into engines of 

speculation.” 41 These institutions extended 

loans to finance speculators’ acquisitions of 

land to develop new office buildings, 

residential communities, apartment complexes, 

condos, shopping centers, and the like. High 

oil prices created money to pump into S&Ls 

and thrifts, which in turn fueled real estate 

developments. But this led to a situation in 

which financial institutions, in general, had 

become too involved in and dependent upon 

oil money made possible by high oil prices. 

After reaching a peak of $35 a barrel in 1979, 

oil prices collapsed in 1986—falling from 

$27 a barrel to less than $10 a barrel— 

leaving a number of institutions overextended 

through loans to real estate developers. 

Myriad borrowers defaulted on their loans as 

a result of the massive overbuilding. While 

the S&L collapse was nationwide, it was felt 

most heavily in Texas and centered in Dallas. 42 

The first significant Dallas-area S&L to 

collapse was Empire Savings and Loan of 

Mesquite in 1984. In twelve months’ time, 

David Lamar (Danny) Faulkner had grown 

Empire’s assets from $40 million to $320 

million. Faulkner had developed a landflipping 

scheme in which he drove up the 

value of a piece of land through a rapid 

succession of sale-buy transactions. He then 

used the artificially overpriced land as 

collateral to secure multi-million-dollar 

loans. After Empire became insolvent in 

1984, the Federal Savings and Loan 

Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) had to pay 

out some $300 million to individuals who 

had insured deposits with Faulkner’s S&L. 43 

Vernon Savings and Loan, with almost $1 

billion in deposits, failed in March 1987. On 

April 28, 1987, the FSLIC filed its largest 

lawsuit up to that time against former 

officers and directors of the Vernon Savings 

and Loan Association, including principal 

owner Don R. Dixon. In the suit, the insurance 

fund sought to recover several hundred 

million dollars in damages from Dixon and 

six former officers of Vernon for their 

“systematic looting and wasting” of the thrift 

association’s assets. According to court 

documents, Dixon, who owned more than 

90 percent of Vernon’s stock, and the officers 

specifically misappropriated “at least $40 

million” through unwarranted bonuses, illegal 

dividends, and other unlawful payments. 44 

In addition to those institutions destroyed 

by unsound and unethical business practices, 

a number of major banks with large loan 

portfolios in the energy sector were 

decimated by the plummeting oil prices. As 

loan prospects in the energy industry dried 

up, banks turned to the real estate industry, 

where there was no shortage of opportunities 

to loan money to speculative developments. 45 

First Republic Bank was the largest and 

most notable of the local bank failures. 

On June 6, 1987, First Republic had been 

formed from a merger between two large 

bank holding companies: RepublicBank 

Corporation of Dallas with $20.9 billion in 

assets and InterFirst Corporation of Dallas 

with $18 billion in assets. The resulting 

entity was the largest bank holding company 

in the Southwest and the 11th-largest 

banking group in the United States. By the 

end of 1986, each bank had more than 

36 percent of its loan portfolios in real 

estate. InterFirst had problem energy loans 

as well. 46 

In late January 1988, First Republic 

disclosed that the company would suffer a 

net loss of $657 million for 1987, primarily 

as a result of deterioration in the Texas real 

estate market and the establishment of 

significant reserves on loans to lessdeveloped 

countries. The bank announced 

that $3.9 billion, or 16 percent of the loans 

in the First Republic system, were 

nonperforming as of year-end 1987. 

Nonperforming real estate loans totaled 

$2.08 billion. 47 

On March 16, 1988, on the verge of 

failure, First Republic formally sought the 

FDIC’s assistance. At the time of its 

resolution in July 1988, the bank had $33.4 

billion in assets, making it the largest FDICinsured 

banking organization ever to fail up 

to that time. With an estimated cost to the 

FDIC of $3.9 billion, it was also the most 

costly resolution the FDIC had completed 

up to that time. 48 The FDIC filed suit against 

39 former officers and directors of First 

Republic’s Dallas and Houston banks, 

including some of Dallas’ most prominent 

business leaders. In January 1993, 

39 defendants in Dallas and 27 defendants 

in Houston paid $23 million in an out-ofcourt 

settlement. 49 CHAPTER X ✧ 85

✧ 

In the late 1980s, with the arrival of such companies as Alcatel, Nortel, MCI, Ericsson, and Fujitsu, Richardson’s Telecom 

Corridor was the growth center of the telecom industry in the United States. (Dallassky.com) 


Other notable Dallas banks that failed 

during this time were Highland Park 

National Bank, Bank of Dallas, and MBank 

(formerly R. L. Thornton’s Mercantile Bank), 

which was declared insolvent in March 

1989. After FDIC regulators accused MBank 

directors and officers of being negligent, 

twenty-six of them—again including some 

of the city’s most highly respected business 

leaders—agreed to pay $39.2 million as 

settlement in 1993. 50 

Throughout Texas fifty banks collapsed 

in 1987, with another 113 following suit 

in 1988. From the mid-1980s to 1992, 

the number of banks operating in Texas 

declined from 2,000 to 1,200. Of the state’s 

ten largest banks, all but one was forced to 

merge with stronger out-of-state banks or 

was bailed out by the federal government. 

By 1992 about two-thirds of the state’s 

approximately 300 S&Ls had disappeared, 

through mergers or bankruptcies, including 

BrightBanc, Sunbelt, and Western. 51 

When the dust settled from this monumental 

banking industry collapse, the city’s 

business reputation had suffered severe 

damage. While there had been more than a 

few unethical and avaricious operators in 

the collapse, even proven and trusted industry 

leaders—serving as heads of banks or as 

board directors—had made bad decisions. 

For a city that had earned a well-deserved 

reputation as the banking center of the 

Southwest, it was a humiliating turn of events. 

Beyond the damage done to Dallas’ image, the 

city’s economy was severely impacted. 

Bankruptcies reached all-time highs, and 

property values plummeted. The city had 

almost forty million square feet of vacant 

office space, roughly equivalent to half of all 

the office space in Boston’s central business 

district. As a result, Dallas’ tax base declined 

sharply, which called for either a reduction 

in municipal services to citizens or an increase 

in taxes. 52 Fortunately, Dallas’ economy 

proved diverse enough to weather the storm. 

RISE OF IT AND 

TELECOM INDUSTRIES 

HELPS DALLAS 

SURVIVE CRISES 

As North Texas was rocked by crises in 

oil, banking, and real estate during the 

1980s, DFW’s information technology (IT) 

and telecommunications sectors played 

key roles in sustaining the local economy 

throughout the decade. After Texas 

Instruments (TI) and Collins Radio had 

established corporate campuses along 

Central Expressway in the mid-1950s, 

Dallas had ushered in the Information Age 

when Nobel Laureate Jack Kilby invented 

the integrated circuit at TI in 1958. Four 

years later, Ross Perot formed EDS, giving 

birth to the IT services and outsourcing 

industries that would help companies apply 

Kilby’s integrated circuit and other technologies 

toward productive business ends. EDS 

gave rise to such local IT services powerhouses 

as Perot Systems and Affiliated 

Computer Services (ACS). From 1950 to 

1980, the City of Richardson’s population 

grew from 1,289 to 72,496 thanks to the 

arrival of a vast number of engineers and 

computer experts employed by TI, EDS, and 

Collins Radio, which was acquired by 

Rockwell in 1971. 53 

The DFW area’s early leadership in 

the semiconductor industry paved the way 

for Dallas to become a global leader in 

telecommunications, especially with TI’s 

introduction of the digital signal processor 

(DSP) in 1982. By the time the telecommunications 

industry was “liberalized” in 

the 1980s, Dallas was well positioned to 

leverage its technology infrastructure, talent 

pool, pro-business attitude, and low cost of 

living to attract major telecommunications 

companies from around the world. 54 

The U.S. telecom industry was stimulated 

by the worldwide movement toward free 

enterprise in the 1980s. Deregulation and 

privatization opened new markets for 

telecom manufacturers and service 

providers, increasing competition to develop 

next-generation technologies. The North 

Texas telecom industry took off after the 

Department of Justice and AT&T negotiated 

a complex restructuring in the early 

1980s. Prior to that time, AT&T had enjoyed 

a manufacturing and service monopoly in 

the industry, supported by federal, state, 

and local regulators who believed unfettered 

competition would lead to inferior service. 

The monopoly was divided into several 

local service providers, like Southwestern 

Bell, and one long-distance provider, 

AT&T. As the U.S. market opened up, 

competing equipment manufacturers and 

service providers established operations in 

North Texas. 55 

In 1984, Ericsson—a leading provider of 

telecom equipment and related services 

based in Stockholm, Sweden—relocated its 

U.S. headquarters to Richardson. In 1988, 

Fujitsu—a Japanese provider of IT, 

communications, and network solutions— 

decided to develop a campus complex on 

one hundred acres in Richardson that 

would eventually employ 5,000 people. 

The following year, MCI announced the 

relocation of 1,000 employees to the area 

along with major portions of its engineering 

and network construction operations. Today, 

MCI’s World Engineering headquarters 

are located in Richardson. In the fall of 

1989, Northern Telecom (now Nortel) 

decided to expand the local presence it 

had established in 1972, announcing 

construction of nearly 1 million square feet 

of office space and research facilities. 

The new facility increased Nortel’s local 

workforce to 3,000 employees. Two years 

later, Alcatel (now Alcatel-Lucent)—a global 

communications provider and subsidiary 

of French industrial conglomerate La 

Compagnie Générale d’Electricité (CGE)— 

came to town when it acquired one of 

Rockwell’s business units. 56 

Thank to this unprecedented influx of IT 

and telecom talent, the Richardson Chamber 

of Commerce filed “Telecom Corridor” as 

a registered trademark in 1988. Four years 

later, Washington Technology, one of the 

nation’s leading general technology publications, 

declared that the North Texas Telecom 

Corridor was the growth center of the 

telecom industry in the United States. 57 As a 

result of these developments, DFW’s business 

environment began to take on the look 

of a more diversified, technologically strong, 

and service-oriented economy. 


✧ 

Ron Kirk, Dallas’ first African-American mayor, played a key role in the public-private partnership to build the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas. 


CHAPTER XI 

D ALLAS R ECOVERS FROM C RISES, ECONOMY C ONTINUES TO D IVERSIFY, 1990-2000 

When Annette Strauss became the city’s 

first elected female mayor in 1987, she inherited 

a city that was suffering economically and 

in desperate need of fiscal discipline in the 

form of budget cuts and strategic planning. 

(Adelene Harrison had served as mayor pro 

tem for several months in 1976 after Wes 

Wise resigned to run for Congress.) 1 The 

economic boost and steady flow of large 

corporate relocations the city had enjoyed in 

the decade following the new airport’s 

opening in 1974 had slowed dramatically by 

the end of the 1980s, due in large part to 

crises in banking and real estate. 

By 1991 one-third of Dallas’ downtown 

office space was empty. The collapse of 

the banking and real estate industries 

had transformed iconic buildings on the 

downtown landscape into withering, sickly 

shadows of their former selves. The 

Mercantile Bank Building was empty and 

boarded up. Republic Bank’s thirty-six-story 

building and adjacent fifty-story tower were 

practically empty. The following year, the 

two buildings were sold for $8 million after 

being valued at $50 million in 1989. Much 

of the downtown business district was 

desolate. Meanwhile, the City Council was 

faced with major infrastructure problems. As 

In addition to needing help from the 

Darwin Payne notes, after years of granting 

30,000 lived in the same two-mile radius. 4 compared with 18 percent in 1982. In 

developers whatever zoning ordinances 

and variances they asked for, regardless 

of their impact on the rest of the city’s 

population, the City Council was left to deal 

with excessive traffic problems in North 

Dallas along with crumbling streets in other 

parts of town that had been neglected. 2 

In their book, Dallas Architecture, 1936- 

1986, David Dillon and Doug Tomlinson 

described the situation as “the most 

dramatic example of the consequences of 

irrational development.” 3 

By the spring of 1993, Dallas had 35.4 

percent downtown office vacancy, the 

City Council in the form of infrastructure 

improvements and enhanced services, the 

local economy needed a boost from industry. 

Throughout the 1990s, the usually reliable 

energy sector would decline in importance. 

But Dallas’ business environment would be 

buoyed by a rebounding real estate market 

and the evolution of its IT and telecommunications 

industries, which facilitated the 

city’s transition to more of a knowledgebased 

service economy. Meanwhile, the 

city’s population grew 18 percent for the 

decade—from 1,006,877 in 1990 to 1,188,580 

by 2000. 

highest vacancy rate in the nation. As the 

city’s tax base had fallen from more than EXPANSION OF IT AND 

$51 billion to $43.2 billion, taxes had TELECOM INDUSTRIES 

increased from 50 cents per $100 of assessed 

FACILITATES 

property in 1986-87 to 67 cents per $100 of 

TRANSITION TO 

assessed property in 1992-93. At the same KNOWLEDGE- BASED 

time, the residential patterns of the city 

SERVICE ECONOMY 

had changed dramatically, the result of 

three decades of “white flight” from the 

heart of the city following the 1954 Brown v 

Board desegregation decision. In 1960, 

70,000 Dallas residents had lived within a 

two-mile radius of city hall. By 1990 only 

In the early 1990s, Texas’ energy industry 

continued to wane in terms of its relative 

impact on the state’s economy. The oil and 

gas extraction industry in Texas accounted 

for 7 percent of total state output in 1994, 

CHAPTER XI ✧ 87

Dallas, the total number of oil jobs dropped 

from 18,626 in 1987 to 16,979 by 1993. 5 

The continued growth of DFW’s IT and 

telecom industries played a key role in 

nursing the sickly economy back to its 

once-ruddy glow. From 1988 to 1994, 

employment in Texas’ computer- and 

telecom-related industries grew at more 

than eight times the national rate. Though 

the defense industry in DFW experienced 

lean years during this time, LTV, Bell 

Helicopter, and Lockheed served as 

important catalysts for the growth of the 

IT industry. When those companies had 

moved to North Texas during World War II, 

they brought thousands of scientists and 

engineers, while other workers became 

skilled in electronics, telecommunications, 

weapons, and aerospace manufacturing. 

Many of the individuals filling positions in 

DFW’s burgeoning IT industry in the 1990s 

were former employees of local defense and 

aerospace companies. 6 

The greatest job growth in the state’s 

computer-related services industry in the 

early 1990s occurred in software design 

and computer programming. From 1988 to 

1994, jobs in software production grew 105 

percent in Texas compared with 76 percent 

at the national level, while computer 

programming employment in Texas grew 96 

percent during that time compared to 76 

percent nationally. In 1994, 52 percent of 

the state’s high-tech jobs were situated in 

DFW, followed by Austin with 20 percent 

and Houston with 17 percent. DFW was also 

home to the majority of communication 

equipment manufacturers, with almost 80 

percent of Texas’ jobs in that sector. Telecom 

firms with Dallas-based operations, like 

DSC, Siemens, Motorola, and Ericsson, 

manufactured products ranging from cell 

phones to switching devices used to transmit 

data. So while the high-tech and IT services 

industries were becoming more important 

contributors to the nation’s and Texas’ 

economies, their impact was being felt even 

more strongly in Dallas. 7 

i2 Technologies was one of the early 

software companies established in Dallas. 

Founded in 1988 by Indian-born Sanjiv 

Sidhu and Burma native Ken Sharma, i2 

Technologies specialized in supply chain 

management software and gave rise to a 

whole new industry. 8 By the early 1990s, 

companies like Timken Steel and Black & 

Decker were paying millions of dollars for 

the company’s software, which allowed 

manufacturers to plan optimum production 

schedules. 9 By 2000 the twelve-year old 

company had grown to serve such clients as 

Motorola, Texas Instruments (TI), and 3M, 

forming strategic alliances along the way 

with Oracle, IBM, and Ariba. In 2008 the 

company was ranked #86 among DFW’s 

largest public companies with 2006 

revenues of $279 million. 10 

i2 Technologies and other technologyrelated 

companies diversified not only the 

city’s economy during the 1990s but also its 

population, as professionals from Canada, 

Northern Europe, India, and East Asia came 

to DFW to work for the newly established or 

recently relocated firms. Many of these 

professionals would eventually show their 

true entrepreneurial colors by launching 

their own companies. 

In 1994, for the first time since the state’s 

export figures were reported, Texas’ leading 

export industry was electronic components 

manufacturing, which contributed $11.2 

billion in state exports, followed closely 

by the industrial machinery and computer 

manufacturing industry with $11.1 billion. 

That year, the presence of high-tech firms 

in DFW expanded, as Nokia, Zenith 

Electronics, and GWS Perlos (a phone parts 

supplier) built manufacturing plants or 

distribution centers at Fort Worth’s Alliance 

Airport, whose central location and air, 

rail, and highway access make it ideal for 

global distribution. 11 

DFW’s growing high-tech and IT services 

industries, along with the increasing traffic 

at DFW International Airport and Alliance 

Airport, facilitated the state’s integration 

with the global economy during the 1990s. 

In 1987 exports accounted for roughly 

10 percent of Texas’ gross state product 

(GSP). By 1996 that number had grown 

significantly, with exports contributing 

approximately 21 percent of total GSP. 12 

By 1998, Texas boasted 341,000 hightech 

employees, behind only California. 

DFW had 230,000 of those high-tech 

workers, the most of any area in the state 

and second only to Silicon Valley. According 

to the Texas Workforce Commission, most 

of the high-tech workers in North Texas at 

that time worked in the telecommunications 

industry. Almost 50 percent of Texas’ 129,131 

telecom jobs were located in the Dallas 

area, not surprising given the fact that 

Richardson’s Telecom Corridor was home 

to the largest concentration of telecom 

companies in the world, with more than 600 

firms located within two square miles. 13 

Dallas’ 62,741 telecommunications jobs 

accounted for 3.5 percent of all employment 

in the city, more than twice the telecom 

share of employment in Austin and San 

Antonio. In an October 1998 survey of 

telecom businesses in the area, the Federal 

Reserve Bank of Dallas found that local 

telecom companies represented a good mix 

of service and manufacturing firms. The 

largest telecom employer at that time in 

Dallas was GTE, which—after establishing 

North Texas operations in 1988—employed 

some 14,000 people by 1998. SBC was 

second with 9,000 Dallas-area employees, 

followed by Nortel with 8,000. 14 

By the middle of the 1990s, the success 

of the DFW IT and telecom industries 

had earned North Texas a new nickname, 

“Silicon Prairie.” To the casual observer, it 

may have seemed like this metamorphosis 

had occurred overnight. But the roots of the 

city’s economic transformation had been 

laid with the arrival of defense industry 

companies during World War II, were 

stimulated by the growth of such local icons 

as TI and EDS during the 1950s and 1960s, 

and finally blossomed when the clustering of 

IT and telecom firms reached a critical mass 

in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The 

Silicon Prairie flourished throughout the 

1990s and up to the present thanks to its 

pervasive spirit of “co-opetition,” a term 

coined by Adam Brandenburger and Barry 

Nalebuff in their 1996 book, Co-opetition, 

which describes when firms cooperate to 

expand an industry’s market size while 

competing for market share. 15 

Today, an eclectic collection of “coopetitive” 

firms thrive on the prairie, which 

stretches from Dallas and its northern 

suburbs to Fort Worth and its northern 

suburbs. Prairie dwellers include Match.com, 

Hotels.com, AT&T, and TI in Dallas; Nortel, 

Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Rockwell 

Collins in Richardson; EDS and Raytheon in 

Plano; Entrust and CompUSA in Addison; 

Verizon, i2Technologies, Microsoft, and 

Nokia in Irving; Travelocity in Southlake; 

and RadioShack in Fort Worth. More 

recently, the Silicon Prairie has attracted a 

new breed of high-tech company—the video 

and computer game developer—with the 

establishment of the Dallas Gaming Mafia, id 

Software, 3D Realms, and Ensemble Studios. 

REAL ESTATE REBOUNDS 

A resurgent real estate market in the early 

1990s also helped the city’s economic 

recovery, as single-family, multifamily, and 

nonresidential construction activity picked 

up. In 1994 employment in the real estaterelated 

sectors of Texas’ economy increased 


✧ 

Founder of one of the largest privately owned residential real estate firms in the United States, Ebby Halliday posed for a CHARM magazine article in 1956, looking out over downtown 

Dallas. Halliday is a larger-than-life icon on the Dallas business landscape whose ukulele skills are almost as revered as her real estate know-how. In 1996-97, she was inducted into the Texas 

Women’s Hall of Fame and has been recognized with numerous business awards and civic honors, including the Horatio Alger Award, the Dallas Chamber of Commerce Outstanding Women in 

Business Award, and the Dallas Council on World Affairs H. Neil Mallon Award for Distinguished Civic Service. 

COURTESY OF CHARM, OCTOBER 1956, COPYRIGHT STREET & SMITH PUBLICATIONS, INC. 

by more than 42,000 jobs, accounting for 

nearly 17 percent of the state’s total job 

growth. A rebound in the residential market 

led the statewide real estate recovery, as 

growing demand for housing amid declining 

inventories spurred an 84 percent increase 

in single-family home construction in Texas 

from 1990 to 1994. During that time, the 

average home price in Dallas rose about 

7 percent to more than $120,000. At the 

same time, the city’s office vacancy rates 

edged downward. The average cost for firstclass 

Dallas office space at the end of 1994 

was $17 per square foot, compared to $40 

per square foot nationally. 16 

The local residential real estate market 

benefited greatly from the influx of IT and 

telecom companies, among other businesses, 

during the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Ebby Halliday Realtors was one of the 

leading firms assisting with these corporate 

relocations. Ebby Halliday had founded the 

company in 1945 when a developer asked 

her to help him sell some houses he’d 

built on the old Walnut Hill Golf Course 

in North Dallas. The inventory consisted 

of fifty-two hard-to-sell, hard-to-finance, 

experimental insulated cement homes. After 

dressing up the houses with new carpet, 

curtains and furniture, Halliday sold all the 

houses within a year, realizing in the process 

that she was born to be in real estate. 17 

In 1960 Halliday helped found Relo—a 

not-for-profit corporation that helped 

people transfer from one location to another. 

By 1980, Ebby Halliday Realtors had a 

thriving relocation department. In September 

of that year, the company was instrumental 

in closing $4 million in outgoing sales— 

sales made as a result of a Halliday referral 

to another Relo member. 18 Throughout the 

1990s, the company’s relocation business 

continued to flourish as Dallas’ economy 

rebounded and the city experienced a steady 

flow of corporate relocations. Today, Ebby 

Halliday Realtors is one of the largest 

privately owned residential real estate firms 

in the country. 19 

Among the most significant aspects of 

Dallas’ real estate revival in the 1990s were 

the efforts made to revitalize downtown and 

its surrounding areas. Most notable among 

these efforts was the Victory Park development 

and its centerpiece American Airlines 

Center—led by Dallas Mavericks owner and 

Hillwood Development head Ross Perot, Jr., 

Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks, and Dallas 

CHAPTER XI ✧ 89

Mayor Ron Kirk. In 1995, following a distinguished 

career as an attorney at Dallas firm 

Bennett & Cane, Kirk became the city’s first 

African-American mayor. Not long into his 

tenure, Kirk and City Manager John Ware 

began negotiations with Perot and Hicks 

regarding construction of a new indoor 

sports arena in downtown Dallas. In 1997, 

Perot, Hicks, and the City of Dallas entered 

into a public/private partnership to build the 

new stadium that would replace the outdated 

Reunion Arena, which had opened in 

1980. Perot and Hicks chose an abandoned 

industrial site as the location for the new stadium 

development, located just east of 

Stemmons Expressway/Freeway and just 

north of the West End Historic District, 

which had been revitalized in the 1980s. 20 

According to the terms of the partnership, 

the city invested $125 million in the project, 

extended Houston Street from the West 

End to the new arena at a cost of more than 

$30 million, and agreed to provide $1 

million a year in maintenance and repairs to 

the facility. The Dallas Mavericks and Dallas 

Stars agreed to make lease payments to the 

city of $132 million over thirty years. To 

fund its share of the $240 million project, 

the city issued a hotel occupancy tax of 

5 percent and a car rental tax of 2 percent. 

Perot’s Hillwood Development Corporation 

was granted the contract to develop the arena 

as well as the Victory Park area around 

the new stadium. The actual cost of the 

new American Airlines Center, which opened 

on August 24, 2001, would soar to $420 

million when amenities such as terrazzo 

floors and barbecue grills were added. 21 

DALLAS BECOMES 

WORLD- CLASS 

SPORTS TOWN 

Dallas residents had exhibited a passion 

for sports dating back to the late 1800s, when 

horseracing at the State Fair of Texas 

fairgrounds was one of the city’s biggest 

entertainment attractions. This passion 

continued to grow throughout the 1900s, 

reaching a milestone in 1959 when the 

National Football League (NFL) awarded the 

city a franchise—the Dallas Cowboys. (tThe 

NFL had actually awarded Dallas its first 

franchise in 1952, when the league moved 

the New York Yanks to the city to form the 

Dallas Texans, which folded at the end of its 

inaugural season.) Major League baseball 

came to town in 1972 when the Washington 

Senators moved to Arlington and became the 

Texas Rangers. During the late 1960s and 

early 1970s, local sports fans rooted for a 

Central Hockey League team called the Dallas 

Blackhawks and an American Basketball 

Association (ABA) team called the Dallas 

Chaparrals, which would become the San 

Antonio Spurs in 1973. In 1980 the National 

Basketball Association (NBA) approved a deal 

in which Don Carter and Norm Sonju paid 

$12 million for the right to establish the 

Dallas Mavericks. Then, in the early 1990s, 

owner Norm Green moved the National 

Hockey League (NHL) franchise Minneapolis 

North Stars to Dallas, making it a legitimate 

four-sport town. The Dallas Stars debuted in 

town during the 1993-94 NHL season. 

During the 1990s professional sports 

diversified and flourished in DFW like 

never before. This movement was spurred by 

✧ 

Today, the American Airlines Center is home to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks (shown here playing the San Antonio Spurs), the NHL’s Dallas Stars, and the AFL’s Dallas Desperadoes. The venue 

also hosts a wide range of special events, including Ringling Brothers Circus, concerts by such stars as Tina Turner and The Eagles, and The 2008 Tour of Gymnastics Superstars featuring 

former Olympians. 

COURTESY OF DALLAS MAVERICKS © 2008 AMERICAN AIRLINES CENTER. 


four world championships in football and 

hockey, unprecedented success in baseball, 

the re-emergence of horse-racing at Grand 

Prairie’s Lone Star Park, and the debut of 

NASCAR auto racing at the Texas Motor 

Speedway between Fort Worth and Denton. 

In addition, the purchase of several sports 

franchises by business-minded entrepreneurs 

spurred a flurry of new facilities that would 

enable these teams to become more profitable 

than ever before and pump more money into 

the local economy. 

In 1996 a group of DFW businessmen 

led by Ross Perot, Jr., Frank Zaccanelli, and 

David McDavid bought a majority stake in the 

Dallas Mavericks franchise from Don Carter for 

$125 million. One year later, Perot teamed 

with real estate developer Tom Hicks and the 

City of Dallas on the deal that brought a new 

multi-sports arena to town. The American 

Airlines Center (AAC) promised to increase the 

profitability of the Dallas Stars and the Dallas 

Mavericks and, in the process, make both 

teams more competitive in their respective 

leagues. During the fiscal year ending in July 

2008, the AAC attracted 2.8 million visitors, 

generating millions of dollars of economic 

impact not only through ticket and concession 

sales at the stadium but also at restaurants 

and shops in the surrounding 75-acre Victory 

Park development. 22 

After arriving in town for the 1972 Major 

League baseball season, the Texas Rangers 

achieved a loyal following and a modicum of 

success in its first two decades of play. 

Following his 1980 purchase of the Rangers, 

Eddie Chiles sold the team in 1989 to a group 

of investors that included former President 

George W. Bush, Edward “Rusty” Rose, Tom 

Schieffer, and Richard Rainwater. Five years 

later the team opened the new Ballpark in 

Arlington on April 1, 1994. For the remainder 

of the decade, the team achieved 

unprecedented success. 23 A study in 2000 

found that the Ballpark in Arlington generated 

total in-stadium and out-of-stadium economic 

output of $203 million within DFW. 24 

Two years after owner Norm Green 

brought the Minneapolis North Stars to 

Dallas for the 1993-1994 season, Tom Hicks 

bought the Dallas Stars for $84 million. 

The team steadily improved throughout 

the remainder of the decade. In only its 

sixth season in town, the Stars claimed 

professional hockey’s most coveted prize, the 

Stanley Cup, when it won its first NHL 

championship on June 20, 1999. This 

meteoric rise to the top of professional 

hockey established the team as one of the 

most popular sports franchises in town. 25 

✧ 

The Dallas Cowboys moved from the Cotton Bowl at Fair Park in Dallas to Texas Stadium in Irving for the 1971-72 NFL 

season. During the 1990s, the team won three Super Bowls. (Dallas: Proud Heritage, Shining Future) 


Originally owned by Dallas oilman Clint 

Murchison, Jr., and coached by former NFL 

defensive back Tom Landry, the Cowboys 

struggled through a number of lean years 

after the franchise was established in 

1960. By 1989 the Cowboys had won two 

Super Bowls, lost three, and were the most 

popular NFL franchise in the country, 

known by their fans as “America’s Team.” 

The Cowboys’ stoic coach, Tom Landry, was 

a local legend by that time. 

In February 1989, Arkansas oilman Jerry 

Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys from 

Bum Bright for $150 million and promptly 

replaced Landry with Jimmy Johnson. Over 

the next seven years, the Cowboys won 

Super Bowls in 1993, 1994, and 1996, 

earning official NFL honors as the “Team of 

the Decade” and rejuvenating global interest 

in the team. 26 

Since purchasing the Cowboys, Jones has 

significantly boosted team revenues through 

the construction of additional luxury 

suites at Texas Stadium, exclusive stadium 

concession deals with corporate sponsors, 

and more aggressive licensing agreements 

for products that display the Cowboys logo. 

He was also instrumental in helping the 

NFL negotiate a better contract with the 

television networks, giving owners a bigger 

piece of the rapidly growing NFL pie. 

After failing to reach an agreement with 

the City of Dallas on a new stadium deal in 

the early 2000s, Jones struck a partnership 

with the City of Arlington, whose voters 

approved a deal in 2004 that would use 

taxpayer dollars to pay for a portion of a new 

$1 billion football stadium. In 2007 the NFL 

awarded the 2011 Super Bowl to the new 

stadium. Scheduled to open in 2009, the 

new home of America’s Team will feature 

more than 2 million square feet of space with 

seating capacity of approximately 100,000. 

Thanks to Jones’ business savvy, the new 

stadium, and the team’s continued success, 

the Cowboys’ value increased to $1.5 billion 

in 2008, a 28-percent jump from 2007, 

according to Forbes magazine. This was by far 

the largest increase among NFL teams during 

that time period. In the process, the team 

climbed from third place to first in the 

rankings of most valuable sports franchises, 

leapfrogging the Redskins ($1.46 billion) and 

the New England Patriots ($1.19 billion). 27 

MINORITY BUSINESS 

DEVELOPMENT 

GETS BOOST, 

HISPANIC CHAMBER 

MAKES STRIDES 

In addition to the downtown revitalization, 

the continued expansion of the IT and 

telecom sectors, and the growth of the 

professional sports industry in town, the 

city’s minority business community also 

made significant strides during the 1990s. 

In 1993, the North Texas Commission 

(NTC) and the D/FW Minority Business 

Development Council (D/FW MBDC) 

founded the Mentor-Entrepreneur Program, 

offering small companies one-on-one mentoring 

to help them achieve success in 

an ever-changing and highly competitive 

CHAPTER XI ✧ 91

usiness environment. Each year, the program 

pairs about forty area entrepreneurial 

companies with larger, more experienced 

corporations that offer expertise in areas 

such as marketing, human resources, 

business plan development, and accounting. 

The companies are matched for one year 

and are recognized based on the overall 

development and productivity of the mentor-entrepreneur 

relationship. Entrepreneur 

applicants are required to have been in business 

for at least two years and have a principal 

office in the DFW metroplex. Mentors 

are selected from the corporate membership 

of NTC and the D/FW MBDC. 28 

✧ 

Emmitt Smith, the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, helped 

lead the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl victories 

during the 1990s. (Greater Dallas Visions) 


The Mentor-Entrepreneur Program 

is affiliated with the U.S. Treasury Department’s 

BusinessLINC (Learning, Information, 

Networking and Collaboration) initiative and 

The Business Roundtable. In 1999, DFW’s 

MBDC Mentor-Entrepreneur Program was 

recognized as a model business-to-business 

mentoring program for other BusinessLINC 

coalitions across the country to emulate. There 

are currently fifteen other coalitions 

throughout the United States that are based on 

the DFW model. Since its founding, the 

Mentor-Entrepreneur Program has become a 

recognized resource for small minority- and 

women-owned businesses throughout DFW. 

More than 500 local small businesses and over 

100 mentors have participated in it. 29 

As the minority- and women-owned 

business environment in Dallas was growing 

thanks, in part, to resources such as the 

Mentor-Entrepreneur Program, the local 

Hispanic business community continued to 

build upon the momentum it had achieved 

in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Following its founding in 1939, the 

Mexican Chamber of Commerce had 

continued to grow its membership while 

expanding the services and resources it 

offered to local Hispanic businesses and 

professionals. In 1970 the organization 

changed its name to the Dallas Mexican 

Chamber of Commerce (DMCC) to reflect its 

increasing activities as well as the growing 

Hispanic population in town. The DMCC 

raised more than $700,000 from 1972 to 

1978 to help fund and improve minorityowned 

businesses in Dallas. The first DMCC 

directory was published in 1978. 30 

In 1982, Dr. Juan Flores, president of 

the DMCC, changed the organization’s 

name to the Dallas Hispanic Chamber of 

Commerce (DHCC) and increased the 

DHCC’s efforts to spur economic development 

for its members. The DHCC also played 

a prominent role in improving education 

for local Hispanics and achieving stronger 

representation in the city’s governmental 

affairs. These efforts included the establishment 

of the Dallas Hispanic Chamber of 

Commerce Foundation (DHCC Foundation) 


After hiring a full-time executive director 

and professional staff in 1991, the DHCC 

began construction on a new facility in 1992. 

The following year, the organization 

underwent yet another name change to 

the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of 

Commerce (GDHCC) to encompass the 

growing Hispanic business members 

throughout the Greater Dallas area. That year, 

the GDHCC was named the “State Hispanic 

Chamber of the Year” by the Texas 

Association of Mexican American Chambers 

of Commerce (TAMACC). It was also 

recognized as the “National Hispanic 

Chamber of the Year” by the United States 

Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. 32 

In 1995 the GDHCC partnered with the 

City of Dallas to open its first Business 

Assistance Center (BAC), and then launched 

the Corporate Partners Program the 

following year with sixteen corporate 

partnerships. The United States Hispanic 

Chamber of Commerce recognized these 

and other accomplishments of the GDHCC 

by again naming it the National Hispanic 

Chamber of the Year in 1997 and 1998. 33 

Today, the GDHCC offers a number of 

programs for local Hispanic businesses and 

professionals, including the Small Business 

Transportation Resource Center as well 

as Business Development and Training 

workshops and seminars on topics ranging 

from accounting principles and writing 

business plans to inventory control and 

marketing. The organization’s Incubator 

Program houses and supports beginningentrepreneurs 

by providing affordable 

office space and resources at the GDHCC’s 

Maple, West Dallas, and Oak Cliff Business 

Assistance Centers. Start-up companies 

participating in the program come from a 

number of industries and include Mundo 

Tours, Moda Models Talent Agency, Arden’s 

Home Health Care, and Graciela’s Nutrition. 34 

✧ 

Hall of Fame Quarterback Troy Aikman led the Dallas 

Cowboys to more victories in the 1990s than any other 

NFL franchise, earning the Cowboys the title “Team of 

the Decade.”(Dallas World-Class Texas) 



✧ 

Designed by Renzo Piano and Peter Walker, the Nasher Sculpture Center includes works by Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore. Since 2000, the 

growth of the Dallas Arts District has played a key role in attracting businesses and professionals to the city. 

COURTESY OF TIM HURLSEY. 

CHAPTER XII 

B USINESS C ONTINUES TO T HRIVE D ESPITE B ACK- TO-BACK C RISES, 2000-2007 

Following a decade of strong employment 

growth, continued economic diversification, 

and an 11-percent increase in population— 

from 1,006,877 in 1990 to 1,118,580 in 

2000—the Dallas economy began to slow 

down in early 2000. Three back-to-back 

crises—in the form of the dot.com collapse, 

the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, 

and a sharp decline in the telecom industry— 

rocked the city and tested its economic 

stability. But as Dallas entered a new 

millennium, its broad and diverse business 

foundation proved, yet again, to be resilient 

and up to the test. 

The urban renewal that had begun in the 

late 1990s continued into the new millennium 

as real estate developers renovated old 

buildings and erected new structures to meet 

the needs of the city’s expanding business 

community and professional population. A 

key aspect of this effort involved enhancing 

the city’s arts infrastructure through renovation 

and new construction, as civic and business 

leaders recognized the need to offer 

diverse cultural and entertainment outlets 

demanded by the growing number of 

downtown workers and dwellers as well as 

tourists and conventioneers. In the midst of 

this effort, the city’s commitment to providing 

world-class transportation and distribution 

infrastructure and services remained strong. 

CITY’ S METTLE TESTED 

BY DOT. COM BUST, 

9-11 TERRORIST 

ATTACKS, 

TELECOM DECLINE 

In the first two years of the new 

millennium, the nation experienced a dot.com 

crash that turned thousands of Internet 

princes into paupers and left millions of 

CHAPTER XII ✧ 93

investors smarting from an epic collapse 

that erased billions of dollars of value from 

their investment portfolios. Following the 

meteoric rise of electronic commerce on 

the Internet beginning in the mid-1990s, 

companies had rushed to establish an online 

presence, and in their haste many failed to 

develop solid business plans to support 

those efforts. There was no shortage of 

speculative investors willing to finance these 

ventures. In 1999 there were 457 initial 

public offerings in the United States, most 

of which were for Internet or technologyrelated 

companies. Of these, 117 doubled 

in price on the first day of trading. As the 

media touted the emergence of e-commerce 

and the growing number of Internet IPOs, 

investors—caught up in the euphoria—blindly 

grabbed at every new offering without 

scrutinizing how long it would take these 

new companies to make a profit. Many of 

these dot.com ventures were not able to 

generate online revenues to offset the 

exorbitant investments they’d made. When 

the bubble burst, the decline was precipitous. 

From March 2000 to October 2002 the 

NASDAQ Composite (the leading indicator 

of the performance of technology and 

growth company stocks) lost 70 percent of 

its value, falling from 5,046.86 to 1,114.11. 1 

✧ 

Dallas citizens and tourists gathered in Victory Park’s 

AT&T Plaza for the 2007 New Year’s Eve celebration, as 

fireworks exploded beyond the American Airlines Center. 

COURTESY OF AMERICAN AIRLINES CENTER © 2008. 

the year. The state’s economy experienced 

an employment decline of 1.4 percent for 

the year, exceeding the national drop of 

about 1.1 percent. The following year, 

economic conditions remained weak, as 

the state’s employment declined by 0.1 

percent compared with the nation’s drop of 

0.4 percent. 3 

Around the same time that the terrorist 

attacks occurred, thousands of DFW 

employees began receiving pink slips due 

to a sharp decline in the telecom industry— 

the result of extravagant and irresponsible 

corporate spending throughout the technology 

and telecom sectors. In simplest terms, 

telecom manufacturers had built equipment 

and service providers had bought that 

equipment based on forecasts that incorrectly 

assumed the unprecedented consumer and 

business demand would go on indefinitely. 

This downturn was a particularly bitter 

pill to swallow given the fact that the 

same telecom companies announcing layoffs 

had aggressively pursued new recruits only 

months earlier. For example, in the fall of 

2000, Marconi Communications, a Londonbased 

maker of telecom equipment with 

operations in the DFW area, was in such 

desperate need of skilled employees that 

the company dispatched recruiters (donning 

sandwich boards and in-line skates) to the 

offices of its competitors in Richardson’s 

Telecom Corridor. But by July 2001 the 

company had notified state regulators it 

would lay off 137 local employees as part of 

a broader cut of 4,000 employees. Around 

this same time, Allied Riser Corp, a fiberoptic 

installation company, laid off 290 

employees, or 75 percent of its workforce. 

Other high-tech companies announcing 

layoffs in the area were RF Monolithics, 

MetaSolv Software, Broadband Gateways, 

and Chorum Technologies. 4 From December 

2000 to August 2001, more than 10,000 

DFW employees lost their jobs, most of 

them at Richardson-based telecom companies 

such as Nortel, Alcatel, and Ericsson. During 

roughly the same time period the DFW 

unemployment rate rose from 2.8 percent to 

4.2 percent. 5 

The effects of the telecom and hightech 

layoffs rippled throughout the local 

business community. Office vacancy rates in 

Richardson and Plano more than doubled 

from 2000 to 2001, from 6 percent to 14 

percent, according to the Dallas office of 

Kennedy-Wilson International, a real estate 

firm. From January 2001 to August 2001, 

tenants in the two cities vacated approximately 

580,000 square feet of office space, roughly 

the equivalent of a thirty-story office building. 

Venture capital followed a similar decline. 

In the second quarter of 2001, Dallas 

companies received $176 million in venture 

capital investments in 17 deals, compared 

with $469 million in 37 deals during the same 

period of 2000, according to VentureWire, 

a New York firm that tracks venture capital 

investment. Meanwhile, local restaurants 

and retail establishments also experienced a 

decline due to the tightening economy and 

shrinking workforce. 6 

From the end of 2000 to December 2003, 

DFW lost roughly 132,300 jobs, resulting 

from the dot.com collapse and telecom 

decline and exacerbated by the terrorist 

attacks of September 11, 2001. Of these, 

29,500 jobs were eliminated in the IT 

sector, while 48,300 were lost in the trade 

and transportation industry. Employment 

As a result of the dot.com collapse, the U.S., 

Texas, and DFW economies were vulnerable 

to external forces by the end of the summer 

of 2001; such a force struck in the form of 

terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. In 

the wake of this tragedy, the U.S. energy 

industry immediately cut back activities, and 

the travel and transportation industries were 

forced to lay off thousands of workers due to 

a precipitous drop in demand. 2 In 2001 alone, 

Texas’ high-tech and air transportation 

industries lost 48,300 jobs, which amounted 

to 45 percent of all jobs lost in the state for 

✧ 

Before Hillwood Development Corporation could erect 

any structures for the Victory Park construction, it had 

to oversee a monumental reclamation effort that involved 

cleaning fifteen million gallons of tainted groundwater 

and moving 750,000 cubic yards of dirt, pictured here in 

the foreground in 1997. 

COURTESY OF HILLWOOD CAPITAL—VICTORY PARK. 

✧ 

The American Airlines Center is the crowning jewel of 

the Victory Park development, shown here with the W 

Dallas Victory Hotel & Residences; the twenty-eightstory 

The House residential tower; the forty-three-story 

Victory Tower featuring the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 

and the twenty-eight-story Cirque apartment high rise. 

COURTESY OF HILLWOOD CAPITAL—VICTORY PARK. 


in professional and business services, 

manufacturing, and construction, which 

had benefited from the dot.com and telecom 

build-up, was also hit hard during this time. 

From 1990 to 2003, DFW’s manufacturing 

industry, which includes computer and 

telecom equipment makers, dropped from 

16.6 of the area’s total employment to 

11 percent. 7 

By August 2003 the Federal Reserve 

Bank of Dallas began to see signs that the 

Texas economy had bottomed out and 

was moving toward recovery and expansion. 

In the first five months of the year, several 

industries led the recovery, including 

health services, such as private healthcare 

providers, and education services, which 

included private schools, colleges, and 

training centers. Oil prices had begun to 

stabilize in a narrow range around $30 per 

barrel after price fluctuations in 2001 and 

2002. Manufacturing hours worked were 

increasing, suggesting increased hiring in 

the near-term. Construction employment 

was on the rise, primarily for single-family 

homebuilding, while office construction 

remained flat. 8 

In July 2004, the Dallas Business Journal 

reported a resurgence in the local telecom 

industry, which had sparked a 40-percent 

second-quarter increase in venture capital 

investment in area companies. According to 

a report issued by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 

the National Venture Capital Association, 

and Thomson Venture Economics, venture 

investment in Dallas-area companies rose to 

$130 million in the second quarter of 2004, 

up from $89 million in the second quarter 

of 2003. The largest chunk of that local 

investment, 43 percent, went to telecom 

companies. One deal involving Navini 

Networks helped make Richardson the DFW 

area’s second-quarter leader—with 42 percent 

of the area’s telecom venture funding. 9 

URBAN REVITALIZATION 

STRENGTHENS TIES 

BETWEEN BUSINESS 

AND THE ARTS 

Following the public-private partnership 

formed in 1997 to develop Victory Park 

and the American Airlines Center (AAC), 

an urban revitalization movement swept 

through downtown Dallas. From 1997 to 

2007, the number of residences built or 

planned within one mile of Dallas’ central 

business district increased more than 500 

percent. In 1997 there were 3,400 such 

residences. By 2007 there were 15,204 

residences completed with another 3,486 

under construction and 2,843 announced. 10 

✧ 

Nearly four decades after uniquely melding business and 

the arts through his development of NorthPark Center in 

1965, Raymond Nasher established the Nasher Sculpture 

Center. Today, the Nasher Sculpture Center is one of the 

centerpieces of the world-renowned Dallas Arts District, 

which plays a key role in attracting businesses and 

professionals to the city. (1967) 



As Haya El Nasser pointed out in an 

October 4, 2007, USA Today article, Dallas’ 

effort to revive its downtown was part of 

a larger movement transforming downtown 

areas and urban districts throughout the 

United States. Austin, Fort Worth, Houston, 

and San Antonio were undergoing similar 

changes. In the article, Nasser suggested that 

after five decades of local residents’ steady 

migration to the suburbs, several factors 

were driving the urban revival. Sky-high gas 

prices and increased congestion on the city’s 

✧ 

The Nasher Sculpture Center’s collection offers citizens 

and tourists a cultural oasis in the midst of downtown 

Dallas’ bustling business district. 

COURTESY OF TIM HURLSEY. 

streets and highways presented economic 

and lifestyle incentives to move back into 

the city to be closer to work. An increasing 

number of Baby Boomers, with their children 

either in college or starting to work on 

their own, decided to shed the burden of 

large houses and large yards for the 

convenience of downtown penthouses and 

lofts. Meanwhile, a greater number of young 

professionals, not yet married or without 

children requiring the elbow room afforded 

by big backyards, embraced the innercity 

lifestyle. These people enjoyed the 

convenience of walking to musical and 

theatrical performances as well as museums 

and art galleries, restaurants and night 

clubs, and even sporting events taking place 

throughout the year at the American Airlines 

Center. 11 This trend, which continues 

today, bodes well for not only the city’s real 

estate agents, developers, and construction 

companies but also the myriad businesses 

needed to support the lifestyles of these urban 

dwellers, including restaurants, dry cleaners, 

fitness centers, book stores, art galleries, 

and nightclubs. 

✧ 

Opened in 1989, the Dallas Museum of Art is one of the 

centerpieces of the renowned Dallas Arts District. 

In the same USA Today article on Texas’ 

urban revival, Robert Lang, director of 

the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia 

Tech, explained the benefits of Dallas’ 

downtown revitalization in terms of 

attracting corporations and professionals. 

“The competitive advantages of the six or ten 

‘real’ cities in the country is that they offer 

unrivaled urban living,” said Lang. “If all you 

have is a dead downtown and strip malls 

(which characterized Dallas pre-2000), 

you’re toast. There’s a big part of the workforce 

that just won’t tolerate that anymore.” 12 

At the heart of the city’s urban 

revitalization are two major projects: Victory 

Park and the Dallas Arts District. Before 

Ross Perot, Jr., and his Hillwood 

Development Corporation acquired the 275 

CHAPTER XII ✧ 95

acres for the Victory Park development, it 

was an industrial pockmark on Dallas’ 

downtown and uptown landscapes. Left in 

the wake of the industrial exodus were 

cancer-causing remnants of power plants, 

fuel storage tanks, railroad maintenance 

yards, and incinerators. 13 

Today the Victory Park development 

includes the W Dallas Victory Hotel & 

Residences; The House, a twenty-eight-story, 

147-unit residential tower; Victory Tower, a 

forty-three-story building featuring the 

Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 90 residential 

units, office, and retail space; and Cirque, a 

twenty-eight-story high-rise with 252 apartments. 

Other developments are popping up 

around Victory Park, including high-rise 

condominiums, luxury hotels, and office 

buildings. Perot, like Lang, believes multiuse 

developments—combining commercial, 

residential, dining, and entertainment—are 

critical for Dallas to attract professionals 

and corporations and, in doing so, compete 

successfully with other major cities. 14 

The second major piece of the city’s 

urban revitalization movement is the Dallas 

Arts District. Spanning more than sixty 

acres, it is the largest urban arts district in 

the world and a testament to the unique, 

mutually beneficial partnership between 

business and the arts in the city. In the past 

three decades, public-private efforts have 

been responsible for building the Morton H. 

Meyerson Symphony Center in 1984 and the 

Dallas Museum of Art in 1989. More 

recently, Dallas has reaffirmed its mission 

to become a world-class cultural center 

by committing to the five-venue Dallas 

Center for the Performing Arts, on which 

construction is already under way. The 

interdependence of business and the arts in 

town is multifaceted, as is the economic 

impact of such partnerships. In Dallas 

cultural arts contribute $57.6 billion to the 

local economy—more than thirty percent of 

the state’s cultural arts total. 15 

A vibrant arts district also generates 

business for other economic entities, according 

to Zannie Voss, chair and professor of 

the MA/MBA program at SMU. Voss believes 

the city’s arts district will be a catalyst 

for new development as people not only 

visit downtown Dallas in the evenings, 

but also live there. The new performing 

arts center is already spurring additional 

business development in the form of dry 

cleaners, groceries, pharmacies, retail shops, 

and restaurants. 16 

In addition, the city’s thriving arts community 

is a key attribute that more and more 

corporate leaders and professionals insist 

upon when deciding where to relocate their 

companies or build their careers. A number 

of companies moving to Dallas have forged 

various arts partnerships as a means of fulfilling 

their commitment to corporate social 

responsibility, an increasingly important 

component of a company’s reputation. 

Comerica Bank, a $60 billion financial 

institution (Texas’ biggest) that relocated 

to Dallas from Detroit in 2007, provides a 

good example of this. Within six months 

of moving to Dallas, Comerica had signed on 

as the sponsor of Dallas’ New Year’s Parade 

and made a four-year commitment to be the 

presenting sponsor of the Dallas Summer 

Musicals, Inc. 17 

Perhaps no single person played a larger 

role in the city’s recent arts renaissance than 

Ray Nasher, a pioneer who understood the 

symbiotic relationship between business and 

the arts long before it was trendy. Nasher, the 

successful real estate developer who launched 

NorthPark Center in 1965, always dedicated 

much of his time to his passion—collecting 

sculpture. He and his wife, Patsy Rabinowitz 

Nasher, amassed works by a substantial 

number of the world’s greatest sculptors, 

including Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, 

Alexander Calder, Harry Bertoia, Henri 

Matisse, and Henry Moore. After considering a 

number of museums to house his sculpture 

collection—including the Guggenheim 

Museum in New York, the National Art Gallery 

in Washington, D.C., and the Fine Arts 

Museums of San Francisco—Nasher decided 

to spend $70 million to build a 55,000-squarefoot 

museum and sculpture garden, the Nasher 

Sculpture Center, in downtown Dallas adjacent 

to the Dallas Museum of Art. The center, which 

was designed by Renzo Piano and Peter 

Walker, opened in 2003. 18 

GROWTH OF 

HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY 

EXPANDS CITY’ S 

KNOWLEDGE- BASED 

SERVICE ECONOMY 

The city’s healthcare industry has a long 

history dating back to the early 1870s, when 

Dr. F. E. Hughes and several of his colleagues 

opened the first permanent hospital in Dallas to 

care for indigent patients. 19 The charity hospital 

was located at Wood and Houston streets, in 

the middle of the city’s “red light” district at that 

time. In 1893, Dallas voters approved $40,000 

in bonds for a new hospital, and the following 

year Parkland Hospital opened in a group of 

frame buildings situated on seventeen acres just 

outside the city limits at the intersection of 

Maple and Oak Lawn avenues. 20 In 1898, St. 

Paul Hospital opened its doors for business at 

Bryan and Hall streets, and five years later 

Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas was 

established as Texas Baptist Memorial 

Sanitarium. 21 In 1921 a group of Texas Masons 

approached the city’s first orthopedic surgeon, 

Dr. W. B. Carrell, about caring for children with 

polio regardless of their families’ ability to pay. 

This led to the establishment of Texas Scottish 

Rite Hospital for Children, which broadened its 

focus to other orthopedic conditions in the 

1950s after the newly introduced Salk and 

Sabin vaccine virtually eradicated polio in the 

Western Hemisphere. 22 

✧ 

Located at the intersection of Bryan and Hall streets, 

St. Paul’s Sanitarium opened its doors for patients in 

1898. (1910) 



In 1943, Baylor University College of 

Medicine moved to Houston after receiving a 

grant from a foundation that allowed it to 

operate on more stable financial footing. A 

group of Dallas physicians and businessmen 

headed by Karl Hoblitzelle helped transform 

this crisis into an opportunity by establishing 

what would become one of the world’s leading 

academic medical centers, patient-care 

providers, and research institutions: The 

University of Texas Southwestern Medical 

Center at Dallas (UT Southwestern). 23 This 

event set the city’s healthcare industry on a 

path to world-class status—an attribute that 

many business leaders today cite as a key 

reason for relocating their companies to the 

DFW metroplex. 

Throughout the 1990s the healthcare 

industry was one of the largest and fastestgrowing 

industries in DFW. This growth was 

due in large part to the Health Industry 

Council, which was formed in 1988 when 

Mayor Annette Strauss invited a number 


✧ 

Female patients rested in the girls’ ward of Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children.(1943) 

COURTESY OF THE TEXAS SCOTTISH RITE HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN ARCHIVES. 

of healthcare leaders in town to create 

an organization that would ensure the 

development of healthcare infrastructure 

and resources commensurate with the 

growth of a world-class city. With leaders 

representing the twelve-county DFW region 

as well as every segment within the 

diverse healthcare industry, the Health 

Industry Council served as a catalyst for 

local healthcare businesses by sharing best 

practices within each industry segment, 

educating all DFW business leaders about 

activities within the industry, and promoting 

DFW’s healthcare industry locally, nationally, 

and internationally. 24 

From 1989 to 1995, DFW’s healthcare 

employment grew 43.5 percent from 138,000 

employees to more than 198,000—faster than 

the area’s population and overall employment 

growth. The fastest employment growth 

within the industry during that time 

occurred in the home healthcare services and 

medical equipment rental services sectors. By 

1995, there were 9,203 healthcare businesses 

in DFW providing almost 200,000 jobs— 

more than the communications/information 

industry (165,000 jobs) or the hospitality 

industry (192,000 jobs)—and paying almost 

$6 billion in annual wages and salaries. That 

year, the healthcare industry generated 

almost $50 billion in local economic activity. 

About 82 percent of all healthcare-related 

jobs in the area were in the services sector, 

including jobs in medical offices, extendedcare 

facilities, and laboratories. 25 

From 2001 to 2004, while the general 

DFW economy declined some 4.5 percent, 

the healthcare services industry alone grew 

more than 10.5 percent. From February 

2000 to February 2008, private healthcare 

employment in Texas increased by 257,100 

people, or 29.6 percent, accounting for 

more than a quarter of the state’s overall 

private employment growth. Thirty-four 

percent of that growth occurred in the DFW 

metropolitan area. 26 

Today, the healthcare industry in North 

Texas is one of the most diverse in the country, 

with businesses ranging from provider 

services to research, manufacturing, 

biotechnology, insurance, rehabilitation, 

pharmaceutical, and fitness. The DFW area 

features more than 10,000 healthcare 

✧ 

Nurses placed heated pieces of wool on patients’ body parts affected by polio. (c. 1955) 

COURTESY OF THE TEXAS SCOTTISH RITE HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN ARCHIVES. 

businesses with approximately 250,000 jobs 

paying more than $6.5 billion in annual wages 

and salaries. These establishments include two 

internationally recognized medical schools— 

UT Southwestern and UNT Health Science 

Center—along with Baylor School of 

Dentistry and UT Arlington School of 

Nursing. DFW is home to more than ninety 

hospitals, including the Baylor Hospital 

System, the Presbyterian Hospital System, and 

the Parkland Health and Hospital System— 

the Dallas public hospital recognized for its 

outstanding burn unit and where more babies 

are born than at any other facility in the 

country each year. Several major health 

insurance providers also call DFW home, 

including Humana, Aetna, Cigna, and VHA. 27 

The city’s healthcare facilities, along with 

its reputation as an internationally renowned 

center for medical research and training, 

are key reasons why major corporations 

continue to relocate to the area. In a 2007 

SMU Cox School of Business survey of 

577 presidents and CEOs of DFW-based 

businesses, respondents cited the area’s 

healthcare and medical facilities and 

resources as one of the top-five contributors 

to the area’s high quality of life. 28 

As the local healthcare industry has 

expanded to keep pace with the city’s 

growing population, hospital construction 

and expansion projects have fueled the local 

economy. This reflects a statewide trend, as 

CHAPTER XII ✧ 97

the number of hospital projects in Texas 

from 2000 to 2007 increased an average of 

4.9 percent a year, compared with 3 percent 

nationally. 29 The DFW area currently has 

more than $2.5 billion planned for hospital 

and healthcare system construction projects 

over the next ten years to meet the needs of 

the general population as well as the special 

needs of senior citizens. 30 

CITY DEMONSTRATES 

CONTINUED 

COMMITMENT 

TO TRANSPORTATION 

AND DISTRIBUTION 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

Since Dallas’ humble beginnings as a 

pioneer trading post in 1841, civic and 

business leaders have consistently recognized 

the city’s location as one of its most valuable 

attributes. Today, government officials and 

corporate heads acknowledge that a key to 

the continued success of Dallas will be 

its ability to facilitate the flow of goods, 

services, and people into and out of the 

city. Through a series of recent actions and 

planned projects, the city continues to 

demonstrate a steadfast commitment to 

enhance and exploit its greatest natural 

resource—location. In the coming years, the 

city will realize John Neely Bryan’s dream of 

becoming a great inland port, though the 

Trinity River will not be the channel by 

which this dream is realized. 

Since the early 1900s, Dallas’ business and 

civic leaders have recognized the vital role 

transportation plays in sustaining a healthy 

economy. Today, thanks to the vision and 

determination of such leaders as J. Erik 

Jonsson, Herb Kelleher, and Ross Perot, Jr., 

DFW has arguably the strongest transportation 

and distribution infrastructure of any city in 

the nation. In the past eight years, Dallas has 

renewed its commitment to maintaining its 

world-class infrastructure, recognizing the vital 

role these facilities play in attracting and retaining 

businesses and professionals as well as 

stimulating future economic development. 

These efforts have included significant 

enhancements to DFW International Airport, 

repeal of the Wright Amendment that formerly 

restricted flights at Love Field, and continued 

development of plans for the International 

Inland Port of Dallas in southern Dallas 

County. 

Following the opening of its 205,000- 

square-foot Class A International Cargo Center 

and state-of-the-art 2,400-square-foot 

international perishable treatment facility in 

✧ 

Recognized by Fortune magazine as one of America’s 

best CEOs, Herb Kelleher led Southwest Airlines from its 

founding in 1967 to become the nation’s most profitable 

airline. In addition to being an astute businessman, 

Kelleher’s down-to-earth personality and zany antics 

defined Southwest’s unique culture and earned him the 

loyalty of employees and customers alike. During his 

tenure as CEO at Southwest, it was not unusual for 

Kelleher to show up on the tarmac at Love Field to help 

baggage handlers unload suitcases from aircraft, or to 

sing in-flight announcements to the tune of popular 

theme songs. Kelleher stepped down as chairman of 

Southwest and resigned from its board of directors in 

2008. (c. 1990) (Dallas: Proud Heritage, 

Shining Future) 


1999, DFW International Airport opened its 

two-million-square-foot International Terminal 

D in 2005. International Terminal D is more 

than twice the size of any of the airport’s other 

four terminals. With features including ninetynine 

ticketing positions, a federal inspection 

facility able to process 2,800 passengers per 

hour, and concession areas consisting of 

100,000 square feet, the new terminal can 

support 32,000 passengers daily or 11.7 

million annually. More recently, the Capital 

Development Program represents a $2.7 billion 

investment in DFW International Airport’s 

infrastructure over a five-year timeframe. This 

investment will generate an additional $34 

billion in economic impact on the DFW 

economy and another 77,000 new jobs over 

the next fifteen years. Today, DFW International 

Airport has an annual impact on the North 

Texas economy of more than $14.3 billion and 

supports nearly 285,000 jobs. In addition 

almost sixty-five percent of all international 

cargo in Texas is handled at the airport. 31 

After being founded by Herb Kelleher 

and Rollin King in 1967, Southwest Airlines 

emerged as the nation’s most profitable 

airline, and one of the largest overall in 

terms of revenue by the early 2000s. The 

airline’s no-frills business model, industryleading 

customer loyalty engendered by its 

friendly culture, and relatively low cost of 

fuel were keys to its success. Betting that oil 

prices would go up, the airline bought longterm 

contracts for most of its fuel at $51 a 

barrel through 2009. While other airlines 

have been decimated by the rising price of 

oil, Southwest’s fuel hedging strategy helped 

generate gains on hedging contracts of more 

than two billion through 2007. 32 

Poised to extend its leadership position in 

the industry, Southwest Airlines announced 

in 2004 its opposition to the Wright 

Amendment, a 1979 federal law that limited 

most nonstop flights from Love Field Airport 

only to destinations within Texas and its 

five neighboring states. 33 A lengthy public 

relations and court battle ensued between 

Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. 

In June 2006 the two airlines, DFW 

International Airport, and the cities of Dallas 

and Fort Worth struck a compromise 

that called for the full repeal of the Wright 

Amendment with several conditions. While 

the ban on nonstop flights outside the 

Wright zone was upheld until 2014, 

the airlines serving Love Field were 

immediately allowed to issue throughtickets 

to destinations within the fifty United 

States and the District of Columbia. In 

addition, Love Field’s gate capacity was 

lowered from 32 to 20 gates. International 

service was limited exclusively to DFW 

International Airport. Former President 

George W. Bush signed the proposal into law 

on October 12, 2006, and Southwest and 

American responded immediately with 

expanded through-ticketing from Love Field 

to destinations outside the Wright zone. 

In addition to expanding DFW International 

Airport and liberalizing air traffic at Love 

Field, the City of Dallas is also working to position 

its southern sector as a major inland logistics 

and distribution port for domestic and 

international trade, taking advantage of growing 

congestion at the nation’s deep-water ports. 

U.S. trade with Canada, Mexico, and Asia is 

expected to increase by eighty-five percent by 

2020. This growth will necessitate additional 

capacity at deep-water ports to offload and distribute 

cargo from the large trans-Pacific vessels. 

Located within a one-day drive of Mexico 

and the deep-water ports of Houston and 


Beaumont, Dallas is strategically located to fulfill 

this role. In addition, 35 percent of the 

United States’ population can be reached from 

Dallas within 24 hours by truck or rail, while 

98 percent of the U.S. population can be 

reached in 48 hours. 35 

The International Inland Port of Dallas 

(IIPOD) is a public-private partnership 

designed to serve as a third phase of 

DFW’s regional intermodal development, 

complementing DFW International Airport 

and Alliance Airport. In addition to making 

Dallas the nation’s premier logistics and 

distribution center, IIPOD will serve as a 

catalyst for the city’s southern sector 

investment, job growth, and development of 

sustainable communities, ultimately increasing 

the citywide tax base. 36 

To date, efforts and plans are underway to 

develop more than 6,000 acres in southern 

Dallas County. As currently envisioned, the 

IIPOD project will utilize an Agile Port System 

to speed processing of cargo from port locations 

inland, enhanced security to facilitate the 

customs process, and expanded Foreign Trade 

Zone acreage. The IIPOD will rely on Dallas’ 

four interstate highways and three major rail 

lines to distribute cargo to thousands of 

businesses and hundreds of millions of people 

throughout the United States and beyond. 37 

When it is completed some three decades 

from now, IIPOD will impact more than 

230,000 acres and encompass twelve 

communities. Its impact on businesses and 

residents will be no less staggering, with the 

✧ 

Containers are shipped from and received at the Dallas 

Intermodal Terminal, part of the International Inland 

Port of Dallas. 

COURTESY OF UNION PACIFIC. KEVIN BROWN, PHOTOGRAPHER. 

✧ 

UT Southwestern Medical Center, Zale Lipshy University Hospital, Parkland Memorial Hospital, and Children’s Medical 

Center of Dallas are key elements of the city’s world-class medical facilities. (Dallas: Proud Heritage, Shining Future) 


potential to recreate not only the business 

landscape but also the economy of South 

Dallas, the city’s longest-neglected area. 

Companies shipping cargo through the facility 

will realize significant time and cost savings. 

In addition, thousands of jobs will be created 

by the project, many of which will result from 

adjacent distribution, warehousing, assembly, 

and office support facilities. Retail outlets, 

such as shops, restaurants, and banks, will 

follow to fulfill demands of these industrial 

park employers and workers. 38 

Albert C. Black, Jr.—president and CEO of 

On-Target Supplies & Logistics, one of the 

leading logistics firms in DFW—has long been 

a driving force in promoting increased development 

of South Dallas and expanded business 

opportunities for its residents. Black grew up in 

Frazier Courts, a South Dallas housing project 

where he cornered the landscaping market at 

the age of 12. In 2000, almost three decades 

after purchasing the first power mower in 

Frazier Courts with $63 he had saved, Black 

became the first African-American chairman of 

the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce. In 

this role, he shared his vision of the vital 

relationship between business and community 

with a broader audience than the Chamber had 

historically reached. No one in the city was in a 

better position to spread this message. 39 

After Black founded On-Target as a twoperson, 

part-time custodial supplies and 

janitorial services company in 1982, the 

company quickly evolved into a regional 

logistics management firm with global 

customers and international responsibilities. In 

1996 the company moved into a new 78,000- 

square-foot corporate headquarters and 

warehouse facility in Oak Cliff just a few miles 

from where Black grew up. From 2004 to 

2006, On-Target achieved seventy-eight 

percent compounded annual growth rate. By 

2006 it was the fourth-largest minority-owned 

business in DFW, with revenues of more than 

$58 million and almost 200 employees. The 

following year, it was recognized in the June 

2007 Black Enterprise list of the Top 100 

Companies, ranking 70th for industrial 

companies, up from 87th in 2006. 40 

Even as Black’s business interests have 

expanded, his steadfast commitment to 

South Dallas is apparent in On-Target’s civic 

strategy. In an interview in 2000, Black 

stated, “One of our goals is to improve the 

tax base and infrastructure for the inner city, 

hiring tax users and creating tax producers. 

We can make a difference in the lives of 

our neighbors and build a better community 

through the business and economic 

development of our inner urban areas.” 41 

CHAPTER XII ✧ 99

✧ 

An aerial photo of the Arts District featuring existing buildings as well as renderings of future additions. 

COURTESY OF THE DALLAS REGIONAL CHAMBER. PHOTO CREATED BY GREEN GRASS STUDIOS. 

AFTERWORD 

In his inauguration speech on June 25, 

2007, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert echoed 

Albert C. Black, Jr.’s sentiments about the 

importance of expanding development 

and business opportunities in South Dallas 

as well as other areas of the city where hope 

has waned due to years of neglect. Leppert 

remarked, 

“We must foster an enduring and 

stable economy not just in skyscrapers 

and the city center that serve big business, 

but also in corner shops that serve small 

business and the warehouses that serve 

hourly workers. We must bring growth, 

jobs, and opportunity to areas not 

realizing their full potential and we will 

do that by tapping all of our available 

resources…that means projects like the 

inland port…it means being willing to 

invest aggressively to attract key 

production facilities that can generate 

jobs, housing, and shopping 

opportunities. This will strengthen those 

communities economically but, more 

importantly, foster hope. Because when 

we come together and make real progress 

in South Dallas, Oak Cliff, Pleasant Grove, 

and in West Dallas, then all of Dallas is 

better for it.” 

A former CEO of Turner Construction, 

Leppert aptly described the key to the future 

success of business in Dallas—an allencompassing 

approach that recognizes 

small businesses and the common man as 

well as big business and its leaders. 

At the dawn of a new millennium, the 

civic leaders, business leaders, and citizens 

of Dallas find themselves in an enviable 

position—living in a place of economic 

prosperity and even greater potential. Up to 

this point, Dallas has offered a great many 

businesses the key ingredients necessary for 

success, including a relatively low cost 

structure; a world-class transportation, 

shipping, and distribution infrastructure; 

and a high quality of life for employees. 

Maintaining these strengths, while preparing 

the city’s rapidly growing, increasingly 

diverse population to thrive in tomorrow’s 

workplace, will be crucial to Dallas’ future 

success. 


Epigraph 

1. John H. Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and 

Progress (Dallas: Arthur S. Mathis, Service Publishing Co., 1928), 

144. From the program of the 1927 annual meeting of the Dallas 

County Pioneers’ Association. 

Introduction 

1. Lyssa Jenkens, Ph.D., “DFW Outlook,” Greater Dallas Chamber of 

Commerce, April 2007. Also, U.S. Conference of Mayors, Global 

Insights, 2006. 

2. “DFW Facts,” Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 2007. Also, 

Texas Workforce Commission. 

3. “SMU Cox 2007 CEO Sentiment Survey,” SMU Cox School of 

Business, 2007 (www.coxceosurvey.org/results2007/results.pdf). 

4. Dallas Historical Society (www.dallashistory.org). 

5. Holland McCombs and Holly Whyte, “The Dydamic Men of Dallas,” 

Fortune, February 1949. 

6. Michael Phillips, White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religions in 

Dallas, 1841-2001 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 4-5. 

7. William L. McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered: A Photographic Chronicle 

of Urban Expansion, 1870-1925 (Dallas: Dallas Historical Society, 

1978), 7. 

8. Sixteenth Census of the United States - 1940, U.S. Census Bureau 

Web site (http://www.census.gov). 

9. Stanley Walker, “The Dallas Story,” The Dallas Times Herald, Dallas 

Centennial Edition, February 5, 1956, A11-16. 

10. John William Rogers, The Lusty Texans of Dallas (New York: E.P. 

Dutton and Company, Inc., 1960), 17. Also Walker, “The Dallas 

Story,” A11-16. 

11. Darwin Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History (Windsor Hills, 

California: Sponsored by the Dallas Historic Preservation League, 

Windsor Publications, Inc., 1982), 75. 

Chapter One 

1. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 12. 

2. William L. McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered: A Photographic Chronicle 

of Urban Expansion 1870-1925 (Dallas: Dallas Historical Society, 

1978), 6. 

3. “Dallas Was Founded While Texas Still Was a Republic,” The 

Dallas Morning News, Fiftieth Anniversary Issue, October 1, 1935, 

Section IV, 3-4. 

4. Ibid. 

5. Rogers, The Lusty Texans of Dallas, 30. 


7. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 16-18. 

8. Ibid., 19. 

9. Maxine Holmes and Gerald D. Saxon (editors), The WPA Dallas Guide 

and History (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1992), 

124. 



12. Ibid., 26. 

13. Holmes and Saxon, The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 124. 

14. Ibid., 135. 


16. John S. Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and Progress 

(Dallas: Arthur S. Mathis Service Publishing Co., 1928), 17. 


18. Ibid., 28. 

19. Ibid., 28. 



ENDNOTES 

22. Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and Progress, 56-60. 

23. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 31. Also Frank M. Cockrell, A 

History of Early Dallas. (Chicago: Monroe F. Cockrell, 1944), 14-15. 


25. Holmes and Saxon, The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 150. Also 

Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 19. 

26. Holmes and Saxon, The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 150. Also 

Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 40. 







Chapter Two 




4. Ibid., 34. 

5. Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and Progress, 

66-67. 


7. McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 10-14. 

8. “Crutchfield House First Hotel,” The Dallas Story, The Daily Times 

Herald, August 28, 1949, 5C. 


66-67. 


11. Cockrell, A History of Early Dallas, 39. Also Payne, Dallas: An 

Illustrated History, 37. 

12. McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 15. 



66-67. 


16. Elizabeth York Enstam, “Sarah Horton Cockrell,” Handbook of 

Texas Online. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 45. 

17. Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and Progress, 68. 

Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 45. Also Holmes and 

Saxon, The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 125. 

18. Ibid., 68. 


20. Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and Progress, 14-16. 

21. Herman Steen, Flour Milling in America (Minneapolis: T.S. Denison 

& Company, Inc., 1963), 35-37. 

22. Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and Progress, 50, 

115. 


24. Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and Progress, 50, 

115. 



27. “Wheat Farming,” The Dallas Morning News, Fiftieth Anniversary 

Issue, October 1, 1935, Section Five-III. 


29. “Wheat Farming,” The Dallas Morning News, Fiftieth Anniversary 

Issue, October 1, 1935, Section Five-III. 



32. John Stricklin Spratt, The Road to Spindletop (Austin: University 

of Texas Press, Austin, 1970), 256. Also McDonald, Dallas 

ENDNOTES ✧ 101

Rediscovered, 21. 


34. Ibid., 130. 

35. Ibid., 130. Also Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers 

and Progress, 128. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 37. 


37. McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 10, 129. 


39. Ibid., 41-42. 






45. Phillips, White Metropolis, 22. Also U.S. Census Bureau, Eighth 

Census, 1860, Dallas County, Texas (Washington, D.C., 1864, vol. I, 

manuscript 294-389). 

46. Ibid., 22. Also U.S. Census Bureau, Eighth Census, 1860, Dallas 

County, Texas (Washington, D.C., 1864, vol. I, manuscript 294-389). 


48. Phillips, White Metropolis, 28-29. 


50. Donald E. Reynolds, Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the 

Secession Crisis (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, 

1966), 97-117. Also Phillips, White Metropolis, 28-29. 




54. Ibid., 59. 

55. Ibid., 45. 



58. Ibid., 60. 

59. Ibid., 61. 



62. Phillips, White Metropolis, 39. Also Barry Crouch, “A Spirit of 

Lawlessness: White Violence, Texas Blacks, 1865-1868,” Journal of 

Social History 18 (winter 1984), 226. 


64. Ibid., 179. 

65. “Ex-Slave’s Property Enjoyed Dallas Boom,” The Dallas Story, The 

Daily Times Herald, August 28, 1949, C1. 



Chapter Three 

1. Joseph Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and 

Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, Volume 1 (New York: 

McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1939), 101. 

2. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 46. Also Holmes and Saxon, 

The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 136-137. 

3. Holmes and Saxon, The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 136-137. 

4. Ibid., 136-137. 



7. Ibid., 65. 






13. “Freight Rates To Houston Ranged to $6 Per Pound,” The Dallas 

Story, The Daily Times Herald, August 28, 1949. 







19. Ibid., 43. 

20. Ibid., 43. Also Holmes and Saxon, The WPA Dallas Guide and 

History, 125. 


22. Directory of the City of Dallas for the Year 1875, arranged by F.E. 

Butterfield and P.M. Rundlett (St. Louis, Missouri: St. Louis 

Democrat Litho and Print Co., 1875), 48-50. 



25. Ibid., 128. 

26. Natalie Ornish, “Alex Sanger,” Handbook of Texas Online. 


28. “History of the Texas & Pacific Railway,” Train Web (http://www. 

trainweb.org/texasandpacific/history.html). 




32. Ibid., 69. 

33. Holmes and Saxon, The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 138-139. 




37. Ibid., 15. 



40. Ibid., 30. 

41. Ibid., 32. 



44. Ibid., 70. 

45. Ibid., 75. 









54. The Schoellkopf Company advertisement, The Dallas Morning 

News, October 1, 1935, Fiftieth Anniversary Issue. 


56. Ibid., 131. 




60. Ibid., 21-23. Also Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers 

and Progress, 130. 


62. L. Tuffly Ellis, “The Revolutionizing of the Texas Cotton Trade, 

1865-1885,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73 (April, 1970) 

478, 503, 487, 507-508. Also McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 21. 


64. Ibid., 122. 

65. Ibid., 122. 

66. McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 49-55. Also Lawrence Goodwyn, 

Democratic Promise, The Populist Movement in America (New York: 

Oxford University Press,1976), 18. 

67. Ibid. 

68. Ibid. 


70. Holmes and Saxon, The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 128. Also, 

McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 23.


72. Ibid. Also McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 154-155. 


74. Ibid., 86-87. 

75. Ibid., 147. 

76. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 73. Also Holmes and Saxon, 

The WPA Dallas Guide and History, 86. 

77. Ibid., 139. 


79. Ibid., 171. 


81. Ibid., 140. 


83. Ibid., 153. 



86. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 102-103. Also Tad C. 

Howington, “Thomas L. Marsalis,” Handbook of Texas Online. 


88. Ibid., 154-155. 

89. Ibid., 231. 

90. Ibid., 231-232. 

91. Ibid. 

92. Ibid. 

93. J.T. Trezevant, A History: State Fair of Texas, 1886-1904, Dallas 

Historical Society, 4. 

94. Ibid., 5. 


96. Trezevant, A History: State Fair of Texas, 3. 


98. Trezevant, A History: State Fair of Texas, 6. 

99. Ibid., 7. 

100.Ibid., 10. 

101.Ibid., 16. 

102.Ibid., 16. 

103.Ibid., 22. 

104.McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 236-240. 

105.Trezevant, A History: State Fair of Texas, 1. 

106.Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau Web site, 2008 (www.visit 

dallas.com). 

107.Cochran, Dallas County: A Record of Its Pioneers and Progress, 56-60. 

108.Ibid. 

109.McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 35. Also Diana J. Kleiner, 

“Galveston, Texas” and George B. Dealey, “Alfred Horatio Belo,” 

Handbook of Texas Online. 

110.Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 94. 

111.McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 35. 

112.Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 96. 

113.McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 35. 

114.Darwin Payne, Big D: Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity 

in the 20th Century (Dallas: Three Forks Press, 2000), 212-214. 

115.Dallas Historical Society Web site (www.dallashistory.org). 

Chapter Four 

1. Twelfth Census of the United States - 1900, U.S. Census Bureau 

Web site (http://www.census.gov). 


3. Ibid., 122-124. 

4. Payne, Big D, 3-5. 

5. Ibid., 8 


7. Ibid. 

8. Ibid., 137-138. 

9. Ibid., 140. 

10. Sewell Web site (www.sewell.com). 

11. Payne, Big D, 37. 

12. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 141, 209. 

13. The Texas Centennial and Dallas Exposition, 1836-1936 (Dallas: 

Dallas Historical Society, 1936), inside front cover. 


15. “Apparel Manufacturing Industry Grew Into Lusty Young Giant in 

50-Year History,” The Dallas Story, The Daily Times Herald, August 

28, 1949, J6. 

16. Ibid. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Ibid. 

19. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 124. Also Don M. Coerver 

and Linda B. Hall, “Neiman Marcus,” Handbook of Texas Online. 

20. Ibid., 124. 

21. Coerver and Hall, “Neiman Marcus,” Handbook of Texas Online. 

22. Ibid. 

23. Payne, Big D, 36. Also Marcel Quimby, “Dr. Benjamin R. Bluitt and 

the Bluitt Sanitarium,” Legacies, Spring 2007, 21. 

24. Ibid., 17-18. 

25. Ibid., 19. 

26. Ibid., 20-21. 


28. Ibid. 


30. Ibid., 6. 



33. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 122. Also Fourteenth Census 

of the United States-1920, U.S. Census Bureau Web site 

(http://www.census.gov). 

34. Andy DeShong, Dallas Chamber of Commerce: Its First Seventy 

Years, 1909-1979, Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 1. 

35. Ibid., 2-3. 

36. Accomplishments from 1910-1916, Greater Dallas Chamber of 

Commerce. 

37. Ibid. 

38. Constitution, by-laws, and other materials of the Dallas 

Advertising League, Dallas Advertising League file, Dallas 

Historical Society. 

39. DeShong, Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 4-5. 

40. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, pages 171-173. 

41. Thomas E. Barry, Eugene T. Byrne, Journey Toward Prominence: The 

Edwin L. Cox School of Business at SMU, 1920-2005 (Dallas: SMU 

Cox School of Business, 2007), 23-24, 138-140. 

42. Payne, Big D, 10-12. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 158. 

43. Ibid. 

44. Payne, Big D, 10-15. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 158. 

45. Payne, Big D, 10, 21. 

46. Ibid., 12-21. 

47. Patricia E. Gower, “Creating Consensus, Fostering Neglect: 

Municipal Policy in the Progressive Era,” paper presented to Texas 

State Historical Association, March 2000, 7-9. 

48. Phillips, White Metropolis, 63. 

49. Ibid., 63-64. 

50. David Flick, “The Great Flood of 1908: When Disaster 

Transformed a City,” The Dallas Morning News, May 25, 2008. Also 

Jackie McElhaney, “After the Deluge, the Impact of the Trinity 

River Flood of 1908,” Legacies, Fall 1999, 17-23. 

51. Payne, Big D, 24-25. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 

146-147. 

52. Ted Dealey, Diaper Days of Dallas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 

1966), 23. 

53. Ibid. 


55. DeShong, Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 1. 



ENDNOTES ✧ 103


59. Lisa C. Maxwell, “George E. Kessler,” Handbook of Texas Online. 


61. Ibid. 



64. Haya El Nasser, “Sky’s the new limit for urban living in Texas and 

beyond,” USA Today, Thursday, October 4, 2007. 


66. Ibid., 178-179. 



69. Ibid. 

70. 1914 – 1992, Upon A Strong Foundation: A Historical Perspective and 

a Future Outlook for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, The Federal 

Reserve Bank of Dallas, 1992,12-13. 

71. Ibid. 

72. Ibid. 



75. Upon a Strong Foundation, 13. 



78. Ibid., 12-13. 

79. Ibid. 

80. Ibid., 15. 






86. “Cotton’s Contribution to City, State Hailed” The Dallas Story, The 

Daily Times Herald, August 28, 1949, 5L. 

87. DeShong, Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 7-8. 

88. Robert L. Knight, “An Attorney’s First Year’s Experience as 

President of a State Fair,” December 1916. 

89. Ibid. 

90. Ibid. 


92. Jackie McElhaney, “Gone but not Forgotten: From Pig Stands to 

Ports o’ Call,” Legacies, Spring 2007, 6. 

93. Ibid. 

94. Cheryl Hall, “Martinez clan makes El Fenix restaurants a Texas 

tradition through three generations,” The Dallas Morning News, June 

16, 1996. Also Teresa Palomo Acosta, “Miguel Martinez,” Handbook 

of Texas Online. 

95. Ibid. 

96. McElhaney, “Gone but not Forgotten,” 6-7. 

97. Ibid., 8-9. 

Chapter Five 

1. Twelfth Census of the United States - 1900, U.S. Census Bureau, vol. 

2, Population, part 2, 784, 787; Fourteenth Census of the United 

States - 1920, U.S. Census Bureau, vol. 2, Population, General Report 

and Analytical Tables, 732-733. 


3. DALLAS Magazine, March 1922, 6. 

4. Ibid. 

5. DALLAS Magazine, January 1922, 9. 

6. Ibid. 

7. Ibid. 

8. DALLAS Magazine, February 1922, 7. 

9. DALLAS Magazine, January 1922, Chamber President Frank Smith’s 

opening letter. 





13. DALLAS Magazine, March 1922, 10-11. 

14. Ibid. 

15. DALLAS Magazine, January 1923, 9,17-18. 

16. Elaine Poulos, “Dallas tools up,” 150 Years in Business: A Texas 

Tribute: 1986, DALLAS Magazine, 96. 





21. “Etheridge Printing,” 150 Years in Business: A Texas Tribute: 1986, 

DALLAS Magazine, 125. Also Etheridge Web site (www.etheridge.com). 

22. Dallas Business Histories, A-Z, three file boxes of individual files, 

Dallas Historical Society. 



25. 7-Eleven Web site (www.7-eleven.com). 


27. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 179. Also “Karl Hoblitzelle,” 

150 Years in Business: A Texas Tribute: 1986, DALLAS Magazine, 

113. Also Hoblitzelle Foundation Web site (http://www.hoblitzelle.org/ 

founders.html). 

28. Ibid. 


Also, Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 190. 


31. “Cotton Grows with Dallas” The Dallas Story, The Daily Times Herald, 

August 28, 1949, 8-9C. 

32. Michael, V. Hazel, Celebrating the Dallas Historical Society: The 

Early Years, 1922-1946 (Dallas: The Belo Foundation, 2002), 2-5. 



35. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, pages 138-143. 


37. Ibid., 148. 

38. Ibid., 148. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 143. 



41. “Love Field Developed With ‘Flying Machine,’” The Dallas Story, 

The Daily Times Herald, August 28, 1949, G1. 



44. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 145. Also, Payne, Big D, 134. 



47. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 196. Also Payne, Big D, 134. 



50. Ibid., 86-87. 

51. Phillips, White Metropolis, 78-79. Also Patricia Evridge Hill, 

Dallas: The Making of a Modern City (Austin: University of Texas 

Press, 1996), 91-100. Also Fourteenth Census of the United 

States – 1920, U.S. Census Bureau, vol. 1, Population, 72, and 

vol. 4, Population-Occupations, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 

162, 164, 166, 173. 

52. Phillips, White Metropolis, 88. Also “To the White Laboring Men of 

the City of Dallas,” Texas 100 Per Cent American, March 30, 1923, 

4. Also Twelfth Census of the United States – 1900, U.S. Census 

Bureau, vol. 2, Population, part 2, 784, 787; Also Fourteenth 

Census of the United States – 1920, U.S. Census Bureau., vol. 2, 

Population, General Report and Analytical Tables, 732-733. 


54. Ibid., 101. 

55. Phillips, White Metropolis, 100. Also Norman D. Brown, Hood, Bonnet 

and Little Brown Jug: Texas Politics, 1921-1928 (College Station, Texas: 

Texas A&M University Press, 1984), 231. Also Payne, Big D, 95.

56. Phillips, White Metropolis, 101. Also Payne, Big D, 96. 


58. Ibid., page 82. 

59. 50th Anniversary Celebration Program, 1926-1976, Dallas Black 

Chamber of Commerce, Dallas Public Library. Also, Dallas Public 

Library Web site (dallaslibrary.org). 

60. Ibid. 

61. Ibid. 

Chapter Six 

1. Bill Sloan, “Brother can you spare a dime…1930-1939,” 150 Years 

in Business: A Texas Tribute: 1986, DALLAS Magazine, 38. Also 

Fifteenth Census of the United States–1930, U.S. Census Bureau 

(www.census.gov). 


3. Ibid. 


5. DALLAS Magazine, February 1932, 7, 21. 

6. Upon a Strong Foundation, 18-19. 



9. Ibid., 19. 


11. Ibid. 


13. Gardner Soule, “The Prophetic Professor,” American Petroleum 

Institute Quarterly, Centennial Issue, 1959, 16. 

14. Paul Giddens, “Birth of an Industry,” American Petroleum Institute 

Quarterly, Centennial Issue, 1959, 13. 

15. Allan Nevins, “Three Fabulous Decades,” American Petroleum 

Institute Quarterly, Centennial Issue, 1959, 22. 

16. Ibid., 24. 



19. Ibid., 165. 

20. Jerrell Dean Palmer, “Haroldson Lafayette Hunt,” Handbook of 

Texas Online. 

21. Hunt Oil Company Web site (http://www.huntoil.com/). 


23. Palmer, “Haroldson Lafayette Hunt.” 


25. Palmer, “Haroldson Lafayette Hunt.” 

26. The Magnolia News, Founders Issue, April-May 1941. 

27. DALLAS Magazine, March 1931, 8. 

28. The Magnolia News, Founders Issue, April-May 1941. 


30. DALLAS Magazine, May 1932, 22. 


32. Ibid. 


34. R.P. Brooks, “Dallas One of Few Oil Centers Showing Growth 

Without a Boom,” The Dallas Story, The Daily Times Herald, August 

28, 1949, 38. 



37. Ibid., 192. Also Bill Sloan, “Brother can you spare a dime… 1930-39,” 

38. 

38. Ibid. 

39. Brooks, “Dallas One of Few Oil Centers,” 38. 

40. Sloan, “Brother can you spare a dime… 1930-39,” 38 

41. Ibid., 38-40. 

42. Ibid., 42. 

43. The Texas Centennial and Dallas Exposition, 1836-1936, Dallas 

Historical Society, 1936, 52. 


45. Joan Jenkins Perez, “Robert Lee Thornton,” Handbook of Texas 

Online. 


47. The Texas Centennial and Dallas Exposition, 1836-1936, 52. Also 

McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered, 243. 



50. The Texas Centennial and Dallas Exposition, 1836-1936, 4-5. 

51. Ibid., 56. 

52. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 213. Also Payne, Big D, 193-194. 

53. The Texas Centennial and Dallas Exposition, 1836-1936, 25. 

54. Ibid., inside front cover. 

55. Ibid. 


57. Ibid., 193-195, 223. 

58. Dallas Public Library Web site (http://dallaslibrary.org/ctx/archives/ 

MA80-3.html). Also Neil Sapper, “Antonio Maceo Smith,” Handbook 

of Texas Online. 

59. Ibid. 


61. Ibid., 201, 212-214, 229, 232-233. 

62. Dallas Public Library Web site (http://dallaslibrary.org/ctx/archives/ 

MA80-3.html). 


Chapter Seven 


2. Craig Hanley, “High-flying Forties, 1940-49,” 150 Years in 

Business: A Texas Tribute: 1986, DALLAS Magazine, 45. 

3. Seventeenth Census of the United States – 1950, U.S. Census Bureau 

(www.census.gov). 





8. Ibid. 

9. Hanley, “High-flying Forties,” 46. 








17. Ibid. 



20. American Airlines Web site (www.aa.com). 


22. Ibid., 238-240. 

23. Ibid. 

24. Ibid., 308-309. 


26. Ibid., 123. Also WFAA Web site (www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/ 

dws/spe/2002/wfaafifty/radio.html). 

27. Ibid., 123. 

28. “Cotton’s Contribution to City, State Hailed” The Dallas Story, The 


29. Ibid. 

30. Ibid. 

31. Ibid. 


33. Ibid. 

34. Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Web site (http://www. 

gdhcc.com/freedomweb/index.php?src=gendocs&link=history_main) 

35. Gerald D. Saxon, “Adelaida Cuellar,” Handbook of Texas Online. 

36. Karin Shaw Anderson, “She dished up Tex-Mex legacy in Kaufman 

ENDNOTES ✧ 105

County: Cuellar turned cooking into recipe for success,” The Dallas 

Morning News, Saturday, September 16, 2006. 

37. Ibid. 

38. Ibid. 

Chapter Eight 




4. Ibid., pages 223-224. 




8. Ibid., page 228. 

9. Ibid. Also, Payne, Big D, 315. 

10. Dennis Holder, “The Fabulous Fifties, 1950-59,” 150 Years in 

Business: A Texas Tribute: 1986, DALLAS Magazine, 50. 

11. Ben Kocivar, “Texas Grows Wings,” Look, April 8, 1952. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Holder, “The Fabulous Fifties,” 54. 

14. Ibid., 53. 

15. Ibid., 54. 

16. Ibid. 

17. Ibid., 55. 

18. Ibid. 

19. Diana J. Kleiner, “Trammell Crow,” Handbook of Texas Online. 

20. Dallas Market Center Web site (www.dallasmarketcenter.com). 

21. Ibid. 

22. Ibid. 

23. Ibid. 

24. Ed McClellan, Ph.D. “Dallas Market Center Economic Impact Study,” 

2001. 



27. Thirty Happy Years, Mercantile National Bank 30-year anniversary 

brochure, 1946. Also Payne, Big D, 224. 

28. Joan Jenkins Perez, “Robert Lee Thornton,” Handbook of Texas Online. 

29. Republic National Bank of Dallas Annual Report 1951, Thirty- 

Second Annual Meeting of Stockholders, January 8, 1952. 

30. Ibid. 

31. Ibid. 

32. Joan Jenkins Perez, “Fred Farrel Florence,” Handbook of Texas 

Online. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 229. 

33. “Dallas Ranks High As Insurance Center,” The Dallas Story, The 


34. Ibid. 

35. “Apparel Manufacturing Industry Grew Into Lusty Young Giant in 

50-Year History,” The Dallas Story, The Daily Times Herald, August 

28, 1949, J6. 

36. Ibid., Also Haggar Clothing Company Web site (http://www.haggar. 

com/gs/about.html). 

37. “Apparel Manufacturing Industry Grew Into Lusty Young Giant.” 

38. Ibid. 

39. Stanley Walker, “Dallas: The Eyes of Texas,” Esquire, April 1954. 

40. Ibid. 

41. Ibid. 

42. “Celebrate Neiman Marcus Fortnight once more at the State Fair 

of Texas,” Annotations, Volume IX, Number 1, Spring 2007, 1-2. 

43. Ibid. 

44. Ibid. 

45. TI Web site (www.ti.com). 

46. “Firm that Fathered Big TI Observes Its 35th Birthday,” The Dallas 

Morning News, May 20, 1965. 

47. Ibid. 

48. Ibid. 

49. Ibid. 



51. TI Web site (www.ti.com). 


53. “Black Chamber Cemetery Improvements,” correspondence file, 

Dallas Public Library. 



Chamber of Commerce, Dallas Public Library. 

Chapter Nine 


2. Ibid., 349-351. 

3. Ibid. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 241. 


5. Ibid., 344-345. 

6. Ibid., 356-358. 

7. Ibid. 

8. Ibid. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 243. 


10. Ross Ramsey, “The City of Hate, 1960-69,” 150 Years in Business: 

A Texas Tribute: 1986, DALLAS Magazine, 61. 

11. Interview with Bob Rogers, October 23, 2007. 

12. Stanley Marcus, “What’s Right with Dallas?” The Dallas Morning News, 

January 1, 1964, Section 4, page 1. 

13. Ralph Blumenthal, “Dallas comes to terms with the day that 

defined it,” The New York Times, November 20, 2003. 


15. Ramsey, “The City of Hate, 1960-69,” 64. 



18. Interviews with Bobby Lyle, September 2007. 

19. Ibid. 

20. James Stevenson, “Enerplus Splashes Into U.S. With Takeout of 

Lyco Energy,” Resource Investor, July 18, 2005. 

21. Interview with Selwin Belofsky, October 27, 2007. 

22. Ibid. 

23. Ibid. 

24. Albert W. Niemi, Jr., David E. Perryman, “Surviving and Thriving: 

A Look at the Dallas-Fort Worth Economy,” Dallas Business Journal, 

25th Anniversary Edition, 2000. 

25. Damon Arhos, “Electronic Data Systems,” Handbook of Texas Online. 

26. Ibid. Also EDS Web site (www.eds.com). 

27. EDS Web site (www.eds.com). 

28. Ibid. 

29. Ibid. 

30. Ibid. 

31. George Russell, “Need a Rescue? Call Ross,” Time, Friday, January 6, 

2007. Also Perot Systems Corporation Web site (http://www.perot 

systems.com/about/Ross_Perot.htm). 

32. Peter Romero, “Brinker: a man with a vision,” Nation’s Restaurant 

News, December 19, 1988. 

33. Ibid. 

34. Steak and Ale Web site (www.steakandale.com). Also Brinker 

International Web site (www.brinker.com/company/ourstory.asp). 

35. Ibid. Also Dallas Business Journal Book of Lists 2008, 16. Also 

Romero, “Brinker: a man with a vision.” 

36. Mary Kay, Inc. Web site (www.marykay.com/company/company 

founder/default.aspx.). Also, “Mary Kathlyn Ash,” The Dallas Morning 

News, (www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/spe/2001/marykayash/extra.html). 

37. “Mary Kathlyn Ash,” The Dallas Morning News. 

38. Mary Kay, Inc. Web site. Also “Mary Kathlyn Ash,” The Dallas 

Morning News. 

39. “Mary Kathlyn Ash,” The Dallas Morning News. 

40. NorthPark Center Web site (http://www.northparkcenter.com/ 

history.html). 

41. Ibid. 

42. Payne, Big D, 390-394.

43. Ibid., 394. 

44. Ibid., 395. 


Chamber of Commerce, Dallas Public Library. 

46. Ibid. 

47. Ibid. 

48. Ibid. 

49. Interviews with Bobby Lyle, September 2007. 

Chapter Ten 


2. Ibid., 33. 

3. Ibid. 

4. Nineteenth Census of the United States – 1970, U.S. Census 

Bureau (www.census.gov). Also Twentieth Census of the United 

States – 1990, U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov). 

5. Payne, Big D, 375. DFW Airport Web site (www.dfwairport.com/ 

visitor/index.php?ctnid=28981). 

6. Greene, Dallas USA, 218. 

7. Payne, Big D, 376. Also DFW Airport Web site. 


9. Greene, Dallas USA, 219. Also DFW Airport Web site. 


11. DFW Airport Web site. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Niemi, Perryman, “Surviving and Thriving…”. Also Interviews with 

Al Casey, March 2002. 

14. Ibid. 

15. Ibid. 

16. Ibid. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Dallas Business Journal Book of Lists 2008, 16. 

19. DFW Facts, Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 2007. Also 

DFW Facts, Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 2008. 

20. Terri Bronocco, “Metroplex confronts ‘challenges’ from new corporate 

residents,” Dallas/Fort Worth Business, October 27, 1980, 1, 22-23. 

21. Ibid. 

22. Ibid. 

23. Niemi, Perryman, “Surviving and Thriving…” Also Greene, Dallas 

USA, 210. 

24. Las Colinas Marketing Alliance (www.lascolinas.com). 

25. Payne, Big D, 406, 427-429. 

26. “Outlook ’81: Executives see light at end of dark economic tunnel,” 

Dallas/Fort Worth Business, December 29, 1980, 1, 22-27. 

27. Ibid. 

28. Ibid. 

29. Randall Nordhem, “Warehousing: Solid local leader feeling some slowdown 

pinch,” Dallas/Fort Worth Business, December 1, 1980, 1, 14-15. 

30. “Outlook ’81…” Dallas/Fort Worth Business, December 29, 1980, 

1, 22-27. 

31. Ibid. 

32. Ibid. 

33. Greene, Dallas USA, 207-208. 

34. Ibid., 220. Also Payne, Big D, 423. 


36. Paul Zane Pilzer, Other People’s Money: The Inside Story of the S&L 

Scandal, 82. Also Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 281-282. 

37. Dallas Architecture Info Web site (http://www.dallasarchitecture. 

info/tall). 


39. “Galleria Dallas Announces Celebration of 25 Years as the Premier 

Shopping Destination in North Texas,” Galleria Dallas Web site 

(www.galleriadallas.com). 


41. Ibid. 

42. Ibid 

43. James Ring Adams, The Big Fix: Inside the S&L Scandal (New York: 

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1990), 206, 211. 

44. “F.S.L.I.C. Sues Vernon Officials,” Special to The New York Times, 

April 28, 1987. 


46. “Managing the Crisis: The FDIC and RTC Experience, 1980-1994,” 

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, August 1998, 595-598. 

47. Ibid. 

48. Ibid. 


50. Ibid., 441. 

51. Ibid., 439-441. 

52. Pilzer, Other People’s Money, 82. 

53. Texas Almanac Online (www.texasalmanac.com/population). 

54. Niemi, Perryman, “Surviving and Thriving.” 

55. Marci Rossell, Meredith Walker, “Telecom in North Texas: A Case 

Study in Agglomeration,” Southwest Economy, Issue 6 – November/ 

December 1998, 12. 

56. Niemi, Perryman, “Surviving and Thriving.” Also Alcatel-Lucent 

(www.alcatel-lucent.com), Ericsson (www.ericsson.com), Fujitsu 

(www.fujitsu.com, MCI (www.mci.com, Nortel (www.nortel.com/ 

corporate/corptime). 

57. Perryman, Niemi, “Surviving and Thriving.” 

Chapter Eleven 


2. Ibid., 442-444. 

3. David Dillon, Doug Tomlinson, Dallas Architecture, 1936-1986 

(Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985), 139. 


5. Robert W. Gilmer, “Oil Extraction in the Southwest: Smaller, 

Profitable and at Home in the City,” The Southwest Economy, Issue 4 – 

1996, 4. 

6. “Employment Growth, 1988-1994,” U.S. Bureau of Labor 

Statistics (www.bls.gov/). Also D’Ann M. Petersen, Michelle 

Thomas, “From Crude Oil To Computer Chips,” The Southwest 

Economy, Issue 6 – 1995, 1-2. 

7. Petersen, Thomas, “From Crude Oil To Computer Chips,” 3. 

8. i2 Technologies Web site (www.i2.com). 

9. Mark Kilmek, “i2’s CEO: Sanjiv Sidhu,” Forbes ASAP, February 

23, 2008. 

10. Dallas Business Journal 2008 Book of Lists, 23. Also Lisa DiCarlo, 

“i2 Technologies: Ahead of Its Time,” Forbes, June 27, 2000. Also 

i2 Technologies Web site. 

11. Petersen, Thomas, “From Crude Oil To Computer Chips,” 4. 

12. Fiona Sigalla, “Back in the Saddle Again,” The Southwest Economy, 

Issue 2 – 1996, 2. 

13. Richardson Chamber of Commerce Web site (www.richardson 

chamber.com). 

14. Rossell and Walker, “Telecom in North Texas…” 1. Also Texas 

Workforce Commission, Fourth Quarter 1997. 

15. Rossell and Walker, “Telecom in North Texas…” 3. Also Adam M. 

Brandenburger, Barry J. Nalebuff, Co-opetition (New York: Currency 

Doubleday, 1996). 

16. D’Ann Petersen, “Is Texas Real Estate Boom a House of Cards?” 

The Southwest Economy, Issue 3 – 1995, 1. 

17. Ebby Halliday Realtors Web site (http://www.ebby.com/about/ 

about.shtml?section=about). Also Horatio Alger Award Web site 

(www.horatioalger.com). 

18. “Moving individual employees: Support network tries to ease 

problems of workers, families,” Dallas/Fort Worth Business, 

October 27, 1980, 23. 

19. Ebby Halliday Realtors Web site. 


21. Ibid. 

22. Karen Robinson-Jacobs, “America Airlines Center remains Victory’s 

ENDNOTES ✧ 107

iggest draw,” The Dallas Morning News, October 12, 2008. 

23. Texas Rangers Web site (http://texas.rangers.mlb.com). 

24. “Analysis of Potential Economic and Fiscal Impacts for the 

Ballpark in Arlington,” City of Arlington, October 2000. 

25. Sports Encyclopedia (http://www.sportsencyclopedia.com/nhl/ 

dallas/dalstars.html). 

26. Dallas Cowboys Web sites (http://lb.dallascowboys.com), (http:// 

stadium/dallascowboys.com) 

27. Ibid. 

28. “Mentoring Program Contributes to The TransSynergy Group’s 

Success,” , Business Wire, January 31, 2003. Also “North Texas 

Commission Revs Up to Recruit Mentoring Teams,” North Texas 

Commission, October 19, 2005, (http://www.ntc-dfw.org/news/ 

newsarchives/me06.html). 

29. Ibid. 

30. Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Web site 

(http://www.gdhcc.com/freedomweb/index.php?src=gendocs&link 

=history_main). 

31. Ibid. 

32. Ibid. 

33. Ibid. 

34. Ibid. 

Chapter Twelve 

1. “Crashes: The Dotcom Crash,” Investopedia (investopedia.com/ 

features/crashes/crashes8.asp). 

2. Fiona Sigalla, “The Unsinkable Texas Economy Takes on Water,” 

Southwest Economy, Issue 1 – January/February 2002, 1. 

3. D’Ann Petersen, “Texas Economy Warming Up in 2003,” 

Southwest Economy, Issue 4 – July/August 2003, 11. 

4. Jeff Bounds, “Meltdown hitting smaller firm,” Dallas Business 

Journal, July 27, 2001. 

5. Richard A. Oppel, Jr. “Dallas Bleeds as Job Cuts Rake Tech Sector,” 

The New York Times, August 5, 2001. 

6. Ibid. 

7. D’Ann Petersen, Priscilla Caputo, “Economic Recovery Under 

Way in Major Texas Metros,” Southwest Economy, Issue 2 – 

March/April 2004, 3. 

8. Petersen, “Texas Economy Warming Up in 2003,” 1. 

9. “Dallas area’s reviving telecom industry sparking investments,” 

Dallas Business Journal, July 28, 2004. 

10. Haya El Nasser, “Sky’s the new limit for urban living in Texas and 

beyond,” USA Today, Thursday, October 4, 2007. 

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Ibid. 

15. Katherine K. Buxton, “The Art of Business,” CoxToday, Spring 2008. 

16. Ibid. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Michael Granbury, Janet Kutner, “Arts patron Raymond Nasher 

dies, “The Dallas Morning News,” March 18, 2007. Also Randy 

Kennedy, “Raymond D. Nasher, 85, Dallas Art Collector Who 

Built a Museum, Dies,” The New York Times, March 20, 2007. 


20. Parkland Hospital Web site (www.parklandhospital.com/whow 

eare/milestones/index.html). 

21. Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History, 171-173. Also Baylor Health 

Care System Web site http://www.baylorhealth.com/aboutus/newsroom/factsheets/history.htm) 

22. Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children Web site (www.tsrhc.org) 

23. George J. Race, M.D., UT Southwestern: Commemorating the First 

Half Century (Dallas: The University of Texas Southwestern Medical 

Center at Dallas, 1997), 3. 

24. The Health Industry Council of the Dallas-Fort Worth Region 

Web site (www.healthindustrycouncil.org/about the industry). 

25. Terry L. Clower, Ph.D., Bernard L. Weinstein, Ph.D., “The Dallas/Fort 

Worth Health Industry: Economic Impact and Growth,” University of 

North Texas Center for Economic Development and Research, 

November 1998. 

26. Mike Nicholson, “Health Care: Hospital Building Boom Under 

Way in Texas,” Southwest Economy, March/April 2008, 14. Also The 

Health Industry Council of the Dallas-Fort Worth Region Web site. 

27. “DFW Facts,” Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, 2007. Also 

The Health Industry Council of the Dallas-Fort Worth Region 

Web site. 

28. 2007 SMU Cox CEO Sentiment Survey (www.coxceosurvey.org/ 

results2007/results.pdf). 

29. Nicholson, “Health Care: Hospital Building Boom Under Way in 

Texas,” 14. 

30. The Health Industry Council of the Dallas-Fort Worth Region 

Web site. 

31. “Facts about DFW Airport,” “History of DFW Airport,” DFW 

International Airport Web site (www.drwairport.com). 

32. Jeff Bailey, “Airline Shrugs at Oil Prices,” The New York Times, 

November 29, 2007. 

33. “Wright Amendment,” Austin American-Statesman Web site (www. 

statesman.com/news/content/gen/ap/tx-Wright_Amendment.html). 

34. Trebor Banstetter, “Loves New Menu: 25 New Cities,” Fort Worth 

Star-Telegram, October 17, 2006. Also “Wright Amendment 

Reform Act of 2006 Enacted into Law; Southwest Airlines Offers 

Customers $99 One-Way Fares and Increased Travel Options 

from Dallas Love Field,” (Press Release) Southwest Airlines, 

October 7, 2006. 

35. “Economic Development Profile” and “Inland Port,” City of Dallas, 

Office of Economic Development Web site (http://www.bigded.org). 

36. Ibid. 

37. Ibid. 

38. Ibid. 

39. Perryman, David, “Building from the Inside Out,” CoxToday, 

Spring 2000, 17-18. Also On-Target Web site (www.otsl.com). 

40. Ibid. 

41. Ibid. 

Afterword 

1. Pegasus News, Monday, June 25, 2008, http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/jun/25/full-text-tom-lepperts-inagurationspeech/?print). 


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SHARING THE HERITAGE 

Historic profiles of businesses, 

organizations, and families that have 

SPECIAL 

THANKS TO 

contributed to the development and 

economic base of Dallas and Dallas County 

DAVACO ...................................................................................114 

Ebby Halliday ............................................................................118 

Central Hardwoods, Inc. ..............................................................121 

Thompson & Knight ....................................................................122 

Padgett Printing .........................................................................124 

Cedar Hill Economic Development Corporation................................126 

Dallas County Community College District .....................................128 

American Health Benefits.............................................................130 

Hydrotex ® ..................................................................................132 

Sparkman Hillcrest Funeral Home and Memorial Park ......................134 

Freed’s Furniture ........................................................................136 

Dallas County Schools .................................................................138 

Shippers Warehouse, Inc. .............................................................140 

Oriental Rug Cleaning Company, Inc..............................................142 

Eclipsemed, Ltd. .........................................................................144 

Humphrey & Associates, Inc. ........................................................146 

Capital Senior Living ..................................................................148 

Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas ....................................150 

DeHay & Elliston, L.L.P...............................................................152 

Business Brokers Network ............................................................154 

Asel Art Supply ..........................................................................155 

Shake & Shingle Supply, Inc. ........................................................156 

Gittings ® ...................................................................................157 

A. C. Horn & Co. .......................................................................158 

First Baptist Dallas ....................................................................159 

Interior Resources.......................................................................160 

CareFlite ® .................................................................................161 

Winfree Academy Charter Schools .................................................162 

The Staubach Company................................................................163 

Fred L. Lake & Co. Inc................................................................164 

Strasburger & Price, L.L.P. ..........................................................165 

Aaron Family Jewish Center 

Cavanaugh Flight Museum 

Greater Dallas 

Chamber of Commerce 

Southwest Airlines 

SHARING THE HERITAGE ✧ 113

DAVACO 

✧ 

Rick Davis, CEO, was named to the Retail 

Construction Hall of Fame in 2006 in 

recognition of his distinguished career and 

DAVACO’s continued contribution to the 

retail industry. 

It all began with one client and a small 

team of professionals with the determination, 

ingenuity and skill to give national retailers a 

faster, more efficient way to execute change 

and bring their stores to market. It was a novel 

idea in 1990, and after nearly two decades, 

there is still no other company quite like 

DAVACO. A pioneer of the retail services 

industry, DAVACO has demonstrated time and 

again that no one can execute change at the 

retail level like DAVACO can. 

Today, DAVACO is the leading provider of 

retail services and the largest company of its 

kind. While DAVACO has a nationwide 

presence and over seven hundred employees 

across the country, DAVACO’s roots are firmly 

planted in Texas, the place that owner/CEO 

Rick Davis calls home. In many ways, 

DAVACO’s history is still in the making, but it 

is a part of the Big D landscape that will stand 

the test-of-time. 

The founder of DAVACO, Rick Davis, grew 

up the son of a Dallas firefighter, and eventually 

followed in his father’s footsteps to also become 

a firefighter. But, serving the community was 

not the only thing they had in common. 

Like his dad, Davis chose to take advantage of 

his “off-days” to venture into other business 

opportunities. A career as a firefighter would 

have been an honorable choice, but Rick soon 

discovered his true passion was in real estate 

and construction. At the age of twenty-five, the 

son of an entrepreneur turned out to be one 

himself as Davis formed his first company, 

Rick Davis Properties. 

Rick Davis Properties developed 

multifamily dwellings, including a 104-unit 

apartment complex in Dallas. The company 

also built retail shopping centers and office 

complexes around Big D, and Davis, 

continuing to expand on his entrepreneurial 

goals, helped First Interstate National Bank 

get started with a $3 million federal charter. 

During the 1980s, Big D was changing. 

With a collapse in the oil and gas industry, real 

estate and the savings and loan industry, the 

Dallas business market plummeted, and Davis 

found his entrepreneurial skills taking a back 

seat to basic business survival. In 1990, Davis 

left the real estate and banking business, 

investing in a small start-up company called 

Fixture Perfect, Inc., which installed store 

fixtures for retailers. 

Davis, recognizing the company’s potential, 

purchased the remaining interest in 1991 to 

become sole owner, and in the company’s first 

year it fulfilled its five-year strategic plan and 

met its financial goals, with sales climbing from 

less than $1 million annually to more than 

$2.5 million. Davis has served as chief 

executive officer throughout the company’s 

history, overseeing management and strategic 

development that has resulted in an average 

double-digit annual growth. 

The first big step in building DAVACO as 

it is known today came in 1991 when the 

company landed large rollouts for clients 

such as Blockbuster Video, which was 

experiencing such rapid growth that it was 

opening a new store every fourteen hours. 

DAVACO, still known as Fixture Perfect, Inc., 

used the opportunity to position itself for 

future growth by implementing a systematic 

program to build a nationwide network of 

skilled retail professionals. 

By 1992, Davis realized the company would 

be more successful by shifting its focus from 

working for fixture manufacturers to working 

directly for retailers to assist with larger scale 


strategic initiatives, and within a year the 

company added firms like Pier 1 Imports 

and RadioShack to its growing client list. 

Throughout its history, DAVACO has sought to 

expand client services wherever possible, and 

continues to evolve to meet the ever-changing 

needs of its retail clients. Through expanded 

service offerings, acquisitions and organic 

growth driven by a growing and more diverse 

client base, DAVACO continues to reach new 

milestones over the years, including: 

• 1996: DAVACO acquired West End Travel 

to streamline travel arrangements for the 

company’s ever-mobile, ever-growing 

workforce. DAVACO specializes in national 

programs, so the ability to get employees 

from one site to another is an important and 

ongoing logistical challenge. In any given 

week, hundreds of projects are being 

executed all across the country. The inhouse 

travel agency gives DAVACO direct 

access to the SABRE reservation system, 

lowest fares and immediate ticketing for 

last-minute changes. 

• 1997: DAVACO first demonstrated its 

commitment to employing cutting-edge 

technology by adding an advanced, secured 

website where clients could track job 

information and view, upload, and 

download CAD drawings and photographs 

of finished stores. 

• 1999: The company moved its 

headquarters, tripling its square-footage as 

sales hit a record high, jumping by more 

than sixty-three percent from 1998. 

• 2000: In its tenth year, the company 

expanded its services further by adding a 

brand merchandising division to provide 

soft-line merchandising and vendor shop 

services. These services include full-service 

and supplemental coordinator coverage, 

merchandising of new shop installations, 

graphic rollouts, product launches and 

✧ 

Above: DAVACO’s offices are located at 

6688 North Central Expressway, near SMU 

campus in Dallas, Texas. 

Below: Leaders from DAVACO’s nationwide 

field team meet annually for the “All-Star 

Leadership Meeting.” 


✧ 

Veteran employees at the ribbon-cutting 

ceremony for the 2008 office expansion. 

From left to right: John Rodarte, Kervin 

Lewis, Doyle Gage, Rick Davis, Mark 

Roberson and Paul Hamer. 

promotions, product knowledge training, 

visual and window displays and in-store 

sales support. 

• 2002: Fixture Perfect International changed 

its name to DAVACO (inspired by A Davis 

Company) to reflect the company’s 

expanded service offerings and to position 

itself for continued growth. 

• 2004: DAVACO acquires NCS (National 

Construction Services), an Ohio-based, 

regional provider of retail services. 

• 2006: DAVACO acquires Artistic 

Consolidation, adding another level of 

expertise and a centralized warehouse 

facility in Tennessee. 

• 2008: DAVACO further expands its office 

space to include the first floor of 6688 

North Central Expressway, giving the 

company three floors of the building. 

The expansion provides additional capacity 

and gives the company flexibility to 

accommodate long-term growth plans to 

better service their retail and restaurant 

clients, including additional support 

functions such as training and conferencing 

facilities as well as other operating resources 

and equipment. 

Today, DAVACO is the largest provider of 

retail services. The company specializes in 

the quality management and execution of 

high-volume rollouts, retrofits, resets, in-store 

merchandising, shop-in-shops and associated 

logistics and consolidation. DAVACO offers 

a comprehensive range of services that helps 

retailers maximize brand presence and 

profitability at retail. 

What differentiates DAVACO from any 

other service provider? Everything. In fact, 

there is no other company that offers the 

same people, retail and restaurant expertise, 

breadth of services or nationwide scale as 

DAVACO does. 

Because DAVACO is a service-based 

provider, the company places significant 

emphasis on the recruitment and retention of 

quality employees with retail experience— 

from installation of store fixtures to previous 

management of Fortune 500 retail companies. 

In fact, DAVACO’s management team has an 

impressive 350 plus years of retail experience 

alone. This expertise gives DAVACO and its 

team of over 700 associates the unique 

ability to understand the challenges that clients 

face at the store level and to provide the 

best solutions. 

With an exclusive focus on retail, 

DAVACO represents a variety of segments: 

Specialty retail, drug and convenience, 

restaurants, home centers, big box/supercenter, 

discount/outlets and department stores/shopin-shop. 

Unlike any other company in the 

industry, DAVACO specializes in the execution 

of change in an open-store environment, 

during regular store operating hours with 

minimal disruption to store personnel or the 

customer. This is important to retailers because 

closed stores often mean lost sales. 

DAVACO is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, 

but its employee base extends across the 

country. This efficient and strategic 

infrastructure allows nationwide retailers to 

implement programs with cost efficiencies and 

speed-to-market. To maintain a well-trained 

employee base that services clients from coast 

to coast, DAVACO is committed to ongoing 

training, new-employee mentoring programs, 

web-enabled communication systems and 

technology support to give field associates the 

tools they need for success and maximum 

quality job performance. 

As veterans of executing change for retailers, 

DAVACO is the leading resource for service 

with a single point-of-contact. The execution 

efficiencies afforded by a nationwide employee 

base and a business model scalable from 

50 to 5,000 stores helps retailers realize 

speed-to-market, brand consistency and 


profitability across their entire fleet of stores. 

By streamlining the multitude of consultants, 

suppliers, designers and contractors associated 

with retail changes, the company manages 

a cohesive best practices process through 

which its customers complete their programs 

in an orderly and cost-effective manner 

without compromising quality. 

DAVACO is active in both the retail industry 

and the community. The standard is set by 

Davis and this spirit of “involvement” infiltrates 

the company. 

Davis serves as a member of a variety of 

retail industry organizations and advisory 

boards, the Association for Retail Environments, 

United States Green Building Council and 

SPECS Advisory Board, to name a few. 

To support the local Dallas community, 

Davis contributes his time for speaking 

engagements and other leadership venues and 

opportunities, as well as serves on the Salvation 

Army’s Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex Advisory 

Board and the Executive Board of SMU’s Cox 

School of Business. The company is a member 

of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and the 

North Texas Chapter of the United States 

Building Council. 

DAVACO supports multiple charitable 

programs each year, many of which are in 

collaboration with the company’s retail clients. 

The company is consistently committed to 

the Dallas/Fort Worth Salvation Army’s 

efforts, including the “Angel Tree” program 

and other volunteer opportunities. DAVACO 

also sponsors the Ronald McDonald House of 

Dallas and the “Breast Cancer 3-Day” team 

of walkers, benefiting Susan G. Komen for 

the Cure. 

Over the years, DAVACO has been 

recognized for its achievements. DAVACO was 

named to the Dallas 100 by the Caruth 

Institute for Entrepreneurship at SMU’s Cox 

School of Business as one of the 100 fastestgrowing 

private companies in the North Texas 

area for six consecutive years—every year the 

company was eligible based on the award’s 

maximum company size requirements. 2007 

(ranked 10), 2006 (ranked 18), 2005 (ranked 

20), 2004 (ranked 28), 2003 (ranked 36), 

2002 (ranked 70). DAVACO was also named 

the "Texas Family Business of the Year" by the 

Institute for Family Business at Baylor 

University and awarded the 2008 Momentum 

Award for nationwide employee growth by the 

Dallas Regional Chamber. 

In addition, Davis was named a finalist for 

the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 

Award in 2000 and 2006, and in 2006, he was 

inducted into the Retail Construction Hall 

of Fame. 

Throughout its history, DAVACO’s 

comprehensive service offering has taken 

strategic and thoughtful planning, combined 

with a commitment to listening to clients and 

providing the services they truly need. Careful 

consideration has always been taken in 

assuring that services are being added in a 

manner that maximizes the company’s ability 

to service national retail brands without 

sacrificing quality. It is through managed 

growth that the company builds on its 

ongoing success. 

The company’s future looks bright. 

DAVACO is poised for long-term growth and 

committed to maintaining the innovative spirit 

that built the company. Davis has created a 

culture that encourages ideas, is responsive 

to the marketplace and focused on new 

opportunities that add value for customers 

including initiatives for customer satisfaction, 

service offerings, technology advances, and 

strategic acquisitions and alliances. With the 

foundation in place, DAVACO is making 

history as it navigates its way down the path 

of success. 

✧ 

CEO Rick Davis' family attending the 

Dallas 100 Award Ceremony (from left to 

right): Rick’s daughters, Paige and Meredith, 

and wife, Sheree Davis. 


EBBY HALLIDAY 

✧ 

Above: Ebby greeted in Jackson, Mississippi 

in 1957 by the welcoming committee from 

the Mississippi State Association of 

REALTORS where she spoke at 

their convention. 

Below: Ebby’s signature “Little White 

House” office at the corner of Preston Road 

and Northwest Highway in Dallas. 

The Ebby Halliday family of companies— 

comprised of Ebby Halliday, REALTORS ® , 

Ellen Terry, REALTORS ® , Dave Perry-Miller & 

Associates, Home Team Mortgage and Home 

Team Insurance—is the largest independently 

owned and operated residential real estate 

services company in Texas and ranks tenth in 

the nation. Founded in 1945, the company is 

one of the oldest and most respected fullservice 

residential real estate firms in the 

country, offering brokerage, leasing, mortgage 

and insurance services. 

Ebby Halliday has attained iconic status, 

earning the title “First Lady of Real Estate.” 

She is credited with paving the way for 

women in the ranks of the National 

Association of REALTORS ® leadership. At the 

Association’s one hundredth anniversary 

celebration in May 2008, Ebby played a 

key role in the festivities, serving as honorary 

chair of the gala held at its Washington, 

D.C. headquarters. 

As a result of the work ethic and values 

of its founder, the Ebby Halliday organization 

is a forward-thinking company, built on 

a strong business-based foundation of 

technology, education and training classes, 

and professional support staff, all striving to 

serve its associates and the client’s needs. 

Born in Leslie, Arkansas and reared in rural 

Kansas, the company matriarch became a 

budding entrepreneur in 1918. Beginning 

work at the tender age of eight, Ebby would 

ride her pony from one wheat farm to another 

selling Cloverine salve, good for bug bites, 

cuts, and bruises. Ebby quickly learned the 

profit system. “My little pony was my office 

and he cost nothing to maintain.” She bought 

the salve for five cents and sold it for ten 

cents. The five cents she made was all profit, 

as her pony ate free grass and drank water 

from the stock pond. 

Sales have been in Ebby’s blood since 

then when she first learned the value of 

repeat business and attention to customer 

service. She worked during high school in a 

department store in her hometown of Abilene, 

Kansas, selling back-lace Gossard corsets 

and ready-to-wear clothing to farm women. 


After graduating from high school in 

1929, Ebby began her career in millinery 

merchandising taking her from Kansas 

City to Omaha, Nebraska and then to 

Dallas, Texas. In Kansas City, Missouri, she 

got a $10-a-week job selling hats for 

Consolidated Millinery in the basement of 

the Jones Department Store. It was during 

this time that Ebby began using the name 

that would make her famous. “Your name, 

Vera Lucille Koch, will never get you 

anywhere.” Halliday remembers her coworker 

telling her. “I never questioned it. I 

was a country girl in the big city, and she was 

in charge of the $25 hats.” 

Eventually she was transferred to sell 

hats in several different cities. In 1938, she 

was transferred to the W.A. Green Department 

Store at 1819 Elm Street in Dallas. “I thought 

I’d died and gone to heaven,” she said. But 

by now she had her eyes on opening her own 

hat shop. 

One day while at the doctor who was 

removing her tonsils, she heard him and his 

nurse talk about stock tips. Once she got her 

voice back, she asked him for his investment 

advice. He was reluctant to advise a woman 

on such matters because “when they lose, 

they cry.” Ebby said, “Try me!” 

Ebby got $12,000 from a $1,000 

investment in cotton futures; Ebby opened 

her own hat boutique. She hired a designer 

and was doing business in an old Victorian 

building on Fairmount Street in Dallas. 

When a customer’s husband built fifty 

single-family “spec” houses made of insulated 

concrete, he knew exactly whom to call. 

Through his wife, a message was sent to Ebby. 

“The next time you visit your friend that 

sells those crazy hats, ask her if she has any 

ideas on how to sell my crazy houses.” Not 

one to shy away from a challenge, she took 

on the initial houses, sold them and soon 

leapfrogged from selling hats to two- and 

three- bedroom houses to GIs returning 

from World War II. “Those original homes 

were strongly built—they’re still standing.” 

By decorating the houses and hiding the 

concreteness of them using fresh carpeting, 

wall coverings, and furniture, she sold the 

houses in about a year. 

Then she sold a cornfield near Marsh Lane 

to George Mixon Sr., who brought in young 

builders Dave Fox and Ike Jacobs, who later 

became Fox & Jacobs, one of the nation’s first 

production home builders. 

The more she sold houses, the more she 

liked it. 

This was the beginning of Ebby’s career in 

real estate in which she would become one of 

the first women to break in to the tightly 

gated all-male business community in Dallas 

simply by playing by their rules. Her business 

acumen and femininity charmed them to 

death. “I never traded on being a female. I 

work like a dog and always act like a lady.” 

“Homeownership is one of the strengths of 

America,” says Ebby. “And, for me, there is 

certainly more satisfaction in helping a young 

couple into their first home than in selling 

them their first hat”! 

✧ 

Mary Frances Burleson, President & CEO 

of the Ebby Halliday Companies with 

founder Ebby Halliday. 


✧ 

Ebby’s official biography, Ebby Halliday: 

The First Lady of Real Estate, released in 

February 2009. 

Ebby Halliday, REALTORS ® is one of the 

city’s first luxury boutiques. The company 

has represented the area’s finest homes for 

over sixty-three years. At one point, having 

represented so many sales on the famed, Strait 

Lane, Ebby even earned the nickname, “the 

queen of Strait Lane.” Ebby easily recalls the 

names, addresses and businesses that were 

pivotal in her career and the growth of the 

company. They are all part of her secret of 

her success in sales, whether she is selling 

salve to farm workers or houses to corporate 

executives. “Let them know that you are 

interested in them, and it has to be honest, 

of course.” 

At ninety-eight, Ebby answers her own 

phone, drives her Cadillac to work every day 

and still puts in a nine-hour workday. “I don’t 

smoke, I don’t drink, and I don’t retire.,” 

says Ebby. 

Ebby works hard. “She’s a legend, but she’s 

also a real person and she makes a difference 

in people’s lives,” according to Ginny Shipe, 

CEO of the Council of Real Estate Brokerage 

Managers, which inducted Ebby as their first 

honoree in its Hall of Leaders in 2000. 

“She is just a magical lady. When you 

are with her, you want to be with her. She 

engages everyone,” says a spokesperson for 

the National Realtors Association. 

Ethics underpin Ebby’s outlook on success 

and drives the company. “If we are unethical 

or inefficient, if we make derogatory remarks 

about others, we injure ourselves. If we share 

what we are and what we have, we build 

up ourselves and others, and inevitably the 

whole human race improves.” 

One of Dallas’ “greatest citizens” attributes 

the success of her company as a “team 

effort, not a one-woman show. “I may be the 

cheerleader, but it’s been a team effort.” Ebby 

has built her company by selecting, retaining, 

and rewarding outstanding managers, by 

building pride in a home-team approach, and 

by recognizing the importance of the sales 

associates who represent the company. 

The company was founded on three 

principles of service: to the client, to the 

industry and to the community. Over the 

years, Ebby and the company has contributed 

to many charitable programs for women 

and children, the environment, the arts, 

and higher education, as well as Ebby actively 

supporting her political candidates and 

often serving on their campaigns. It is her 

community and charitable work that won 

her the coveted Horatio Alger Association of 

Distinguished Americans Award in 2005. 

Ebby’s benevolence echoes the sentiment 

of her late husband, Maurice Acers, who was 

comfortable cracking cases for the FBI as well 

as being a Rotarian with perfect attendance. 

At his core was a simple slogan he kept on 

his desk: “Do something for somebody every 

day.” Ebby and Maurice shared both their 

personal and professional lives with Maurice 

serving as legal counsel and chairman of 

the board of Ebby Halliday Real Estate 

REALTORS ® . “Theirs was a thirty-five year 

romance, full of love and accomplishment 

and doing for others. Everything about this 

dynamic duo was unusually exciting.” 

Continuing to be in the middle of the 

action, Ebby says, “I hope to die with my 

boots on, doing something for my 

family…my business family, the real estate 

industry and the community. I would like 

for my tombstone to say, ‘She did the best 

she could’.” 

Ebby’s biography, Ebby Halliday, The 

First Lady of Real Estate was released in 

2009. Pro Football Hall of Fame and real 

estate executive, Roger Staubach wrote the 

foreword stating, “Ebby’s story weaves history, 

economics, politics, personal anecdotes, 

business lessons, and life principles into a 

chronicle of an extraordinary life set against 

a background of the business of real estate.” 

Ebby Halliday is, as a man who is one of 

her most successful national contemporaries 

puts it, “without a doubt the most revered 

and respected woman ever to be part of our 

industry.” And while residential Realtors have 

long seen women fill their ranks with 

ambitious and successful women of all 

ages, it was Ebby who became one of the 

first in the nation to turn her talents into 

an entrepreneurial venture, Ebby Halliday, 

REALTORS ® , that has made her an institution 

in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, an international 

legend among Realtors, and a role model to 

people of all ages. 


Central Hardwoods, Fine Hardwoods and 

Architectural Products, under the present 

leadership of Joe Pete Wilbert, is the proud 

third-generation Dallas company whose 

craftsmanship graces some of the finest 

interiors in the Southwest. Committed to 

create enduring, beautiful, and elegant 

spaces, Central Hardwoods is one of the 

most respected, cutting-edge innovators in 

the industry. 

The Wilbert family tradition of working 

with wood dates back more than 150 years 

in Germany’s Black Forest region. Joe Pete’s 

great-great grandfather and family immigrated 

to southern Louisiana along the Mississippi 

River in Iberville Parish where the family 

thrived building sawmills, a planning mill and 

a shingle factory to take advantage of the 

hardwood trees that grew along the river. 

Joseph P. Wilbert, JP’s father, arrived in Dallas 

as a salesman for a lumber company, fell in 

love, fought in World War II, and returned to 

his sweetheart in Dallas with $5000 won in a 

dice game on a troop ship returning from 

England. That $5000 was the seed money that 

set up Central Lumber Company, which 

opened its doors in 1946. The name would be 

changed in 1999 to Central Hardwoods to 

encompass the growing expansiveness of the 

business throughout the South. 

Today Central Hardwoods remains an 

independent, family-owned and operated 

concern. The third generation Dallas family is 

beginning to make its mark on the business 

as it thrives and grows, especially with the 

addition of Central Hardwoods Designer 

Showroom in downtown Dallas. 

Providing the finest hardwood lumber and 

architectural wood products, Central 

Hardwoods is at the center of the design 

and building industry in Dallas. This rich 

heritage for over sixty years has provided 

superior service and competitive pricing to 

architects, builders, designers, manufacturers, 

distributors, and cabinet makers. 

Well-known locations that display the 

quality of Central Hardwoods materials 

include: The Mansion on Turtle Creek, 

American Airlines Center, Southern 

Methodist University, The Ball Park in 

Arlington, Nasher Sculpture Center & Nasher 

Institute for Modern Sculpture, Fluor 

Corporation Headquarters, Fair Park Music 

Hall, and many more. 

For additional information on Central 

Hardwoods, visit www.centralhardwoods.com. 

CENTRAL 

HARDWOODS, 

INC. 

✧ 

Above: Joe Wilbert and Will Caruth fishing 

on the Gulf Coast in the 1940s. 

Below: Wilbert family photograph: Peter, 

Ted, Elizabeth and Joe Pete Wilbert. 


THOMPSON & 

KNIGHT 

✧ 

William Thompson. 

Founded in 1887 and headquartered in 

Dallas, Texas, Thompson & Knight was 

among the first law firms to practice in the 

city’s historic Old Red Courthouse. As the city 

boomed into a globally recognized hub for 

commerce, finance, technology, and energy, 

Thompson & Knight expanded its reach 

domestically and throughout the world. 

Thompson & Knight maintains a strong 

presence in the United States with locations 

in Dallas, Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, San 

Antonio, and New York City. Globally, the firm 

operates offices in Mexico, South America, 

Europe, and North Africa and has attorneys 

and resources in Subsaharan Africa and Asia. 

While Thompson & Knight’s strategy for 

global expansion deviates from traditional 

approaches to some degree, directing its 

attention to the areas of Latin America, North 

Africa, and Europe, among others, this 

strategic growth has led to considerable 

success for the firm. Thompson & Knight 

believes success is built in increments and has 

sought growth to deepen and strengthen its 

service capabilities for its clients. Thompson 

& Knight has counseled clients in 118 

different countries (well over half the world), 

and in one year alone, the firm helped its 

clients close transactions in more than 

thirty-five countries worldwide. 

Acknowledged globally as a premier energy 

firm based largely on its expertise and 

experience in the industry, Thompson & 

Knight focuses on energy finance, taxation, 

business transactions, and dispute resolution. 

In addition, Thompson & Knight is recognized 

for its strong practices in intellectual 

property, real estate, and corporate reorganization 

and bankruptcy, among others. In 

response to its clients’ needs and goals, the 

firm launched an energy consulting company, 

Thompson & Knight Global Energy Services, 

LLC, to offer a vast array of specialized services 

to the energy industry. Thompson & 

Knight has continually demonstrated the 

ability to achieve favorable results for its 

clients by listening and reaching solutions 

that are congruent with the clients’ goals. This 

high degree of responsiveness, an integral part 

of the service provided by Thompson & 

Knight, has established an unwavering sense 

of trust between the firm and its clients. The 

firm’s clients consistently express a very high 

level of trust in its attorneys, and in particular, 

cite the creative, thoughtful, and effective 

business and legal solutions they provide. 

Thompson & Knight stands out among top 

firms in the United States and Latin America. 

The American Lawyer named Thompson & 


Knight one of the top forty law firms in the 

United States based on growth and financial 

performance. Thompson & Knight is one of 

only two Texas-based firms to receive this 

distinction. Many of the firm’s attorneys are 

selected by their peers for inclusion in each 

edition of The Best Lawyers in America ® , 

placing the firm among the most highly 

represented law firms in the United States. 

Thompson & Knight regularly has more 

attorneys included than any other firm in 

Dallas. The firm has also been recognized 

for its strong presence in Latin America, 

having been named a recommended law 

firm by Latin Lawyer. Additionally, many of 

its attorneys belong to reputable and 

distinguished organizations, including the 

American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, 

American College of Tax Counsel, American 

College of Trial Lawyers, American College 

of Real Estate Lawyers, and the Association 

of International Petroleum Negotiators, 

among others. 

Thompson & Knight has a long-standing 

commitment to maintaining a substantively 

diverse and inclusive environment for 

employees and to contributing meaningfully 

to the advancement of diverse individuals 

and women in local communities. The 

firm’s dedication to diversity and inclusion 

is evident in the clients for whom it works, 

the organizations in which it is involved, and 

most importantly, in its employment 

practices. Thompson & Knight has regularly 

demonstrated that achieving diversity and 

inclusion is among its highest priorities. 

The firm takes its commitment to diversity 

seriously and maintains accountability 

through substantive efforts, honest selfassessment, 

and successful implementation 

of diversity and inclusion initiatives for all 

personnel. Thompson & Knight has been 

recognized numerous times by its clients and 

communities for its accomplishments in the 

areas of diversity and inclusion. 

The firm’s culture is based on the 

philosophy that what one does every day 

matters. By influencing opinions, modeling 

good citizenship, and fostering growth in 

its markets, Thompson & Knight consistently 

makes a positive impact in its communities 

and for its clients, colleagues, families, and 

friends. The firm has been named by the 

Dallas Business Journal as one of the 

“Best Places to Work” in the Dallas/Fort Worth 

metroplex every year since 2004. Through 

the collective knowledge, relationships, 

high ethics, team approach, and dedication to 

serve amongst all its employees, Thompson & 

Knight helps its clients achieve their business 

goals. Thompson & Knight clearly makes 

an impact. 

Thompson & Knight is located at 1722 

Routh Street, Suite 1500 in Dallas, Texas, and 

on the Internet at www.tklaw.com. 

✧ 

R. E. L. Knight. 


PADGETT 

PRINTING 

✧ 

Above: Padgett Printing was founded in 

1903 by Cyrus Padgett. 

Below: Padgett shop at Olive and Bryan 

Streets in Dallas around 1930. 

From its first hand-operated press to the 

sophisticated digital printing of today, Padgett 

Printing has met its customers most demanding 

printing needs for more than a century. 

Padgett Printing was founded in 1903 by 

Cyrus Padgett, who set up shop at the corner 

of Main and Ervay in downtown Dallas where 

the flagship Neiman Marcus store now stands. 

“It was a trade shop with a high level 

of craftsmanship,” explains grandson Don 

Padgett. “Uncle Hal usually handled sales 

and public relations. My dad, Jay D., was 

interested in mechanics. It made him happy 

when a press broke down and he could crawl 

under and fix it.” 

By 1922 when Cyrus’ sons, Jay D. and 

Hal Winfield Padgett, joined the firm, the 

company had grown large enough to relocate 

several times. In 1948 the company moved to 

Harry Hines Boulevard. 

Four generations of Padgetts have led the 

company. Today, grandsons Win and Don 

Padgett, Don’s son David Padgett, and Win’s 

daughter Lauren Padgett, carry on the family 

tradition of professional, state-of-the-art 

printing at a location in the Trinity Industrial 

District near downtown Dallas. Win serves as 

chairman and Don, an attorney, is the company’s 

general counsel. David is environmental, 

health, and safety director, and Lauren works 

in the company’s purchasing department. 

David Torok joined Padgett Printing as 

president and chief executive officer in 1989. 

Other key executives include David Marsh, 

chief financial officer; Charles “Chip” 

Chebuhar, vice president and sales manager; 

Rick Olsen, plant manager; and Kirk 

Lawrence, chief information officer. 

For the first seventy years of its existence, 

Padgett Printing was a letterpress operation. 

From its roots as a trade shop, the company 

eventually branched out into publication 

work. In the 50s and 60s, many large corporations 

were moving their operations to 

Dallas, prompting Padgett to do more work 

for advertising agencies, design firms, and 

large corporations. 

Sales had peaked at about $8 million per 

year in 1989 when the Padgetts realized 

they needed a new strategic direction. “We 

needed a good operations guy,” explains Win, 

who was selling as well as managing the firm 

at the time. 

Torok, whose broad experience included a 

variety of operations and marketing positions 

in the industry, was hired as president and 

chief executive officer. His first priority was to 

get the company on a firmer financial footing, 

a move that paid off quickly when sales 

jumped $2 million in one year. 

Torok’s second priority was moving 

Padgett Printing into the computer age, 

upgrading equipment and techniques to 

keep the company in step with rapidly 

changing technology. 

By the 1990s, Padgett Printing had the first 

eight-color press in the Southeast to offer 


waterless printing. Padgett installed its first 

digital press in 1998 and digital press now 

accounts for more than ten percent of the 

company’s business. In 2007, Padgett added a 

twelve-color Heidelberg press that prints sixover-six 

or up to twelve colors in one pass. 

Padgett’s state-of-the-art presses allow 

customers to customize press runs and even 

vary information piece by piece. 

Today, mailing and fulfillment is a growing 

area and Padgett now has the capacity to print 

and mail more than 700,000 pieces per day. 

To expand in this area, the company acquired 

an additional 15,000 square feet across from 

its main plant. 

Padgett’s leadership is due not only to its 

mastery of technology, but also its service 

infrastructure. The company’s unique integration 

of sales representatives with production 

coordinators allows for better communications 

and detail management throughout the 

production process. 

In addition to its main production facility 

in Dallas, Padgett maintains sales resources 

serving San Antonio and Austin. 

Under Torok’s leadership, Padgett’s annual 

sales have increased to more than $30 million. 

In recognition of his achievements, Torok was 

inducted into the Printing Industry Hall of 

Fame in 2007. 

Padgett is committed to doing its part to 

conserve and protect the environment. Its 

policy is to support the “Three R’s” of waste 

management—Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle— 

and to promote good environmental practices. 

The Purchasing Department leads in this 

effort by promoting the development and 

use of environmentally friendly products, 

services, and suppliers. 

Padgett employs more than 125 persons in 

seven departments and the employees are 

involved in a number of charitable activities 

including Alzheimer’s Association, Texas 

Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, Christmas 

in July, Parish Episcopal School of Dallas, 

and Captain Hope’s kids. The company also 

supports the Dallas arts community, including 

a recent display of the artwork of painter 

Katherine Baronet. 

While Padgett Printing is proud of its 

105-year-old legacy, it is equally proud of its 

flexibility. The company continues to change 

and grow with the times while managing to 

retain its family atmosphere. 

“We have the right technology, suppliers, 

people and customers,” says Torok. “We are 

very comfortable about our future and where 

the company is going.” 

The printing industry has changed dramatically 

since 1903, but Padgett Printing has 

stayed on top by changing its services as the 

times and industry has changed. In doing so, 

Padgett has remained on the leading edge of 

the visual communications industry. 

Padgett Printing Company is located at 

1313 North Industrial Boulevard in Dallas 

and on the Internet at www.padgett.com. 

✧ 

Above: Brenda Funk, human resources 

manager is shown in Padgett’s lobby. 

Below: Padgett family and executive team. 

Back row left to right: David Torok, 

president and chief executive officer; Lauren 

Padgett, purchasing department; Don 

Padgett, general counsel; Charles “Chip” 

Chebuhar, vice president and sales manager; 

and Kirk Lawrence, chief information 

officer. Second row: Win Padgett, chairman; 

David Padgett, environmental, health, and 

safety director; and Rick Olsen, plant 

manager. Forefront: David Marsh, chief 

financial officer. 


CEDAR HILL 

ECONOMIC 

DEVELOPMENT 

CORPORATION 

✧ 

Above: Cedar Hill Business Park is located 

just off Highway 67 and is served by rail. 

Below: Cedar Hill Economic Development 

Corporation is located in the new 

Government Center on Uptown Boulevard. 

The population of Cedar Hill was 

increasing rapidly in the early 1990s and 

citizens began to be concerned about the need 

for orderly economic development. A local 

chemist, Peggy Wilson, approached the City 

Council and urged quick action to begin an 

economic development program. 

The Council agreed that such action was 

necessary and formed a nine-member 

advisory committee; three appointed by the 

City, three by the school district, and three by 

the Chamber of Commerce. 

Wilson was elected chairman of the 

advisory committee, with Robert Feil serving 

as vice chairman. Other members were Paul 

Aruda, Curtis Deatrich, Don McGee, James 

Mobley, Alfi Scherrer, Phyllis Stewart, and 

David Vedral. 

The advisory committee surveyed Cedar 

Hill residents to determine how they 

envisioned the city’s future and, after 

compiling a list of concerns, organized 

subcommittees to look into funding, asset 

enhancement, and community image. 

In January 1994 voters approved a special 

sales tax to fund the economic development 

effort and the Cedar Hill Economic 

Development Corporation (EDC) was 

incorporated in September 1994. 

Original members of the EDC Board of 

Directors included Chairman Peggy Wilson, 

Donald Heitzman, Sr., Bill McMillan, 

Kathleen Whiteaker, and Gerald White. Three 

Ex Officio members were Victor DiTommaso, 

Al Armistead, and James Gober. Linda 

Humble was the EDC’s first director. 

Since voters had approved a half-cent sales 

tax for economic development, it made sense 

to recruit retail development to the city 

which, in turn, would increase funding. The 

day after the election, Wilson called a 

developer who owned vacant land at the 

intersection of Highway 67 and FM 1382 and 

asked him to consider developing it. Today, 

that land is the location of Cedar Hill’s 

retail district. 

There was not a lot of development in Cedar 

Hill when the EDC was formed in 1994 and the 

organization’s original budget was only 

$150,000. One of the EDC’s first initiatives was 

to purchase an undeveloped industrial park 

from a company that had gone bankrupt in the 

mid-1980s. Much of the corporation’s early 

budget was spent on improving the park’s 

infrastructure to attract future tenants. Today, 

the Cedar Hill Business Park has five tenants 

and is fifty percent occupied. 

In the past decade, Cedar Hill has added 

three million square feet of retail space along 

both sides of FM 1382 and Highway 67, 

expanded its medical service sector, attracted 

professional office development, and increased 

the number of hotel rooms. Cedar Hill has also 

experienced growth in its industrial sector. The 

JCPenney Store Support Center expanded in 


2007, while Metals Supply purchased land in 

the Cedar Hill Business Park for a new branch 

facility, joining the other four businesses 

already located there. Cedar Hill will further 

enjoy enhanced accessibility to industrial areas 

with the addition of Loop 9 at the southern 

edge of the city. 

Cedar Hill, with its numerous nearby 

attractions, has also become a major 

destination for tourists. Cedar Hill State Park, 

one of the most visited state parks in Texas, sits 

alongside Joe Pool Lake and the beautiful 

Balcones Escarpment. A number of nature 

preserves are located in the city and include the 

Audubon Society’s Dogwood Canyon. The 

Audubon’s Dogwood Canyon Nature Center is 

planned for the 270-acre site and is expected to 

attract 30,000 visitors annually when it opens. 

Clancy Nolan joined EDC as director in 

1995. Since the EDC’s budget was being used 

primarily for infrastructure projects at the 

business park, Nolan concentrated on such 

areas as business retention that did not 

require a lot of funding. He visited area 

businesses often to see how they were doing 

and if their needs were being met. 

Nolan made a significant impact on the 

local business community until his death in 

2002. A road named in his honor now runs 

through Cedar Hill. 

Today, the Cedar Hill EDC, which operates 

as a department of the City of Cedar Hill, has 

three full-time staff members: Director Allison 

J.H. Thompson, Business Retention and 

Marketing Manager Michaela Dollar and 

Executive Assistant Jean Dyer. The 

organization’s annual budget, still funded by 

the special sales tax, now totals $3.5 million. 

During the summer of 2008, the Cedar Hill 

EDC moved to a new location in the Cedar 

Hill Government Center. The first of its kind, 

the Government Center houses offices for all 

the City departments in addition to the Police 

Department and the Cedar Hill Independent 

School District. 

Although it was established along the old 

Chisholm Trail in the 1850s, the population of 

Cedar Hill has nearly doubled in recent years 

and now totals nearly forty-five thousand 

residents. As Cedar Hill continues to grow and 

add more job opportunities, the Cedar Hill 

Economic Development Corporation is working 

to retain local businesses while attracting those 

who will help diversify the local economy and 

maintain Cedar Hill’s premier quality of life. 

For more information about the Cedar Hill 

Economic Development Corporation, please 

visit www.CedarHillEDC.com. 

✧ 

Above: Cedar Hill’s scenic beauty and 

location on Joe Pool Lake add to the city’s 

high quality of life. 

Below: Since 2000, Cedar Hill has added 

over 3 million square feet of retail space, 

including the new Uptown Village. 


DALLAS 

COUNTY 

COMMUNITY 

COLLEGE 

DISTRICT 

With seven colleges, a “virtual” campus 

and thousands of classes to choose from, students 

and community members know that the 

Dallas County Community College District— 

the largest undergraduate institution in 

Texas—understands how important education 

is to professional success. DCCCD’s 

mission is to educate students of all ages, from 

all walks of life, who represent the diversity of 

the community so that they can become 

productive and responsible contributors in 

those communities. 

During the turmoil and triumphs of the 

1960s that enthralled a nation, Dallas-area 

leaders envisioned a city, community and 

county of well-educated, productive citizens 

who would lead the region into the next 

century. They knew that progress, profit, 

culture and expansion would depend on an 

educated workforce, and their top priority 

was access: schools close to all residents; 

educational opportunities that would take 

students from where they were to where they 

wanted to go in their careers; and links to 

additional education, employment, workforce 

development and lifelong learning. 

More than 1.5 million students later, 

DCCCD serves people of all ages from all 

walks of life who simply want to succeed both 

personally and professionally. DCCCD–formerly 

the Dallas County Junior College 

District—celebrated its fortieth anniversary 

throughout 2006-2007; the district continues 

to enrich lives and build community. 

From the kid next door to a submariner on 

the other side of the world, students who 

attend DCCCD are friends, neighbors and 

strangers who all have something in common: 

education. They are seeking an associate’s 

degree, a certificate program, workforce 

education, job retraining or classes that will 

improve their lives and aid them in lifelong 

learning. Most attend classes on a college 

campus; many also choose to take courses 

through distance learning, which continues to 

grow as technology evolves. 

In fall 2007, more than 64,000 credit 

students and 25,000 continuing education 

students filled the district’s campuses: 

Brookhaven, Cedar Valley, Eastfield, El 

Centro, Mountain View, North Lake and 

Richland colleges, as well as the Dallas 

TeleCollege, a division of the R. Jan LeCroy 

Center for Educational Telecommunications. 

Administered by district offices in downtown 

Dallas and Mesquite (the District Service 

Center), DCCCD serves a diverse student 

population; employs faculty, staff and 

administrators from Dallas County and 

beyond; and serves as a conscientious steward 

of taxpayers’ dollars. 

Students are the district’s business, and 

they are important members of its education 

family. Thousands of students have earned 

associate’s degrees and certificates in occupational 

and technical programs during the past 


five years from the district. The percentage of 

degrees awarded also continues to increase 

for several ethnic groups, especially among 

Hispanic, African-American and Asian 

students. Currently, DCCCD enrolls eleven to 

thirteen percent of all community college 

students in Texas. 

The faces, ages and backgrounds of 

DCCCD students accurately reflect the 

communities within Dallas County. In fall 

2007, enrollment reflected the diversity of the 

student body, which comprised the following 

ethnic groups: 37.3 percent Anglo; 23.2 

percent African American; 27.9 percent 

Hispanic; 8.9 percent Asian/Pacific Islander; 

and 0.5 percent Native American. DCCCD 

colleges also welcomed international students 

from more than seventy countries, who 

comprised 2.1 percent of the total student 

population. Emeritus programs for lifelong 

learners, as well as courses that meet the 

needs of English as a second language 

students, reflect the diverse nature of the 

district and its students, too. 

Additionally, DCCCD employs approximately 

700 full-time faculty members, plus 

more than 2,500 adjunct faculty members 

who bring their work experiences into their 

classroom lectures. And salaries for DCCCD 

faculty ranked among the top five in the state 

of Texas in 2007, according to the Texas 

Community College Teachers Association. 

In 2004, Dallas County residents approved 

a $450 million bond program. As construction 

moves forward, DCCCD will provide 

state-of-the-art facilities for the anticipated 

influx of students that will grow as Texas 

grows over the next twenty years. Among 

the hundreds of projects funded by the 

bond program, the district is building five 

community education campuses that will 

provide access to higher education for 

residents who live in underserved or fastgrowing 

areas of Dallas County. The new 

satellite campuses, each of which will be 

administered by one of DCCCD’s existing 

colleges, are located in Garland, Pleasant 

Grove, west Dallas, south Irving and Coppell. 

While lifelong learning for seniors may 

mean enrolling in senior adult programs at 

DCCCD colleges, thousands of other students 

(at least 25,000 for both the fall and spring 

semesters in 2006-2007) sign up to learn 

and earn more…or just to improve their lives 

and enhance their leisure time through 

continuing education. 

Hundreds of area companies know the 

value of providing a continuing education to 

their employees through DCCCD as well. 

Annually, the district enrolls more than 

60,000 continuing education students; most 

of those students enroll in workforce 

education classes. Economic development 

and opportunities for minority- and womenowned 

businesses are key areas that DCCCD 

also addresses. 

For more information, visit the Dallas 

County Community College District’s website 

at www.dcccd.edu. 


✧ 

Above: Eric Balthrop. 

Right: Robb Rothrock. 

AMERICAN 

HEALTH 

BENEFITS 

More than four-thousand-percent 

revenue growth since its inception is 

proof enough that company founder 

Eric Balthrop had a good idea when he 

founded American Health Benefits in 

June 2001. With more than fifty million 

Americans lacking health insurance and 

millions of others needing a supplement 

to high-deductible major medical 

policies, Balthrop saw an opportunity 

to provide health-related services at 

affordable prices. 

American Health Benefits, Inc., (AHB) 

sells medical benefits to individuals, 

families, and small companies. Benefits 

range from supplementary group insurance 

coverage for accidents to doctor, 

dental, and hospital re-pricing. The 

company’s products fill in the gaps 

where major medical coverage falls 

short, mostly due to high deductibles, 

high co-pays, long waiting periods, and denial 

of coverage for pre-existing conditions. 

Balthrop, who studied abroad at the 

University of London and the London School 

of Economics holds a bachelor’s degree in 

Business Administration from Midwestern 

State University. Balthrop, who serves as the 

company’s president and founder, began the 

company with $800 borrowed from his father, 

a 350-square-foot office, and a healthy dose of 

determination. Building a company from the 

ground up was very difficult and proved to be 

more than a one-man job, making room for 

Robb Rothrock, who joined AHB in July 2001 

as a partner. Rothrock, who holds a finance 

degree from the University of Texas at 

Arlington and is a close friend of Balthrop’s, 

had recently been with a software company 

and began discussions in regard to working 

with Balthrop. Rothrock joined AHB 

as a fifty percent owner on a full-time 

basis as executive vice president, now 

chief executive officer. Balthrop believes 

that the decision to sell half of his company 

to Rothrock and bring him on as a 

partner was the single best decision he 

has made to date, helping him transform 

the company into a multi million-dollar 

enterprise. 

The men eventually were joined in 

the business by their fathers, who 

brought more than eighty years of combined 

business experience to the company. 

Renn Rothrock, vice president and 

chief financial officer, has served as both 

president and CEO of public and private 

corporations, and vice president of First 

National Bank of Mobile, Alabama. 

Ralph Balthrop, vice president and chief 


information officer, has a background in government 

electronics, consumer electronics, 

and semiconductors. His experience with 

Texas Instruments and Raytheon encompassed 

finance, manufacturing, and the 

development of defense and government 

electronics, space, information technology 

and special mission aircraft. 

The company began when Balthrop 

acquired approximately 500 dental plan 

members (through his own personal sales as 

well as from a handfull of part-time sales 

representatives) and has grown to more than 

5,000 members. The company’s products 

appeal to the uninsured and those with 

high-deductible major medical plans that 

have no coverage for the “front end.” The 

company, which began with only a handful of 

people, now employs more than sixty in its 

sales centers, customer service department, 

and executive offices. The company uses a 

proprietary CRM database, predictive dialers, 

and a phone system with VOIP capability. 

American Health Benefits sells directly to 

the public with an inside sales force of over 

forty. Along with its Dallas sales office, the 

company has sales offices in Abilene, Texas, 

and Muskogee, Oklahoma. Rapid expansion 

via satellite sales offices, with all administration 

and data management centralized at 

its Dallas headquarters, is central to the 

company’s planned growth. 

The company offers a more affordable 

alternative to major medical health insurance. 

In addition, many U.S. residents are ineligible 

for major medical insurance coverage due to 

poor health or low income levels. To help 

meet the ever-growing, ever-changing needs 

of its customers, AHB adds to its product 

line wherever possible. The company recently 

added a prescription drug card with a 

$10 co-pay, a $15,000 group life insurance 

policy, a $10,000 accident policy, a $10,000 

critical care policy, a $25/$50 doctor visit 

reimbursement plan, and a $500/day 

hospitalization policy. 

AHB has access to these policies through 

its relationship with American Consumer 

Health Association (ACHA), a nonprofit 

association founded in 1985. In 2004, ACHA 

awarded AHB an exclusive marketing 

agreement for acquisition, retention, and 

maintenance of its members and contracts 

with vendors across the United States. 

The synergy of Balthrop and Rothrock 

has proven to be quite a winning 

combination of creative ideas, hard work, 

and perseverance. Their relationship and 

dedication to this industry are a big part of 

the company’s success. 

The future looks bright for the company. 

Health insurance is becoming more expensive 

every year and is offering less coverage. Even 

charging higher premiums, many HMOs are 

going out of business, and many businesses 

are electing not to renew group policies. 

Hospital and prescription drug costs are 

skyrocketing. Because of all this, AHB’s 

business is booming and the company has an 

aggressive growth plan in place. 

Company expansion in 2008 will come via 

expansion of its current (reseller) business, 

development of broker (wholesale) business, 

Internet web-commerce, expanding its business-to-business 

segment, and development 

of association services and management 

businesses. Our efforts in expanding into 

these areas will help us to achieve our mission 

of providing accessibility for millions of 

Americans seeking quality healthcare at 

affordable prices. 


HYDROTEX ® 

✧ 

Hydrotex ® is a manufacturer and 

distributor of unique high performance 

lubricant and fuel improver solutions. As an 

employee owned company, we help our 

customers save energy, limit pollution, 

improve safety for employees and families. 

Our products and services leverage over 

seventy years of innovation resulting in 

superior lubrication solutions and high 

touch customer service. 

Hydrotex ® has evolved from a “cowboy” 

culture to a high-tech, high-performance 

industrial lubricants company. “It’s been like a 

cultural earthquake,” says company President 

and CEO John Beasley. “Over the past twenty 

years, we’ve gone from a traditional direct 

sales company based on western culture to a 

very high tech approach that is engineering 

and science oriented,” he notes. 

Hydrotex ® is a leading manufacturer of high 

performance lubricants and fuel improvers. 

The company helps its customers save energy, 

limit pollution, improve operational reliability 

and protect capital assets. 

The company was founded in 1936, 

making it one of the oldest and most 

respected firms in its field. It was first located 

in the Wilson building in downtown Dallas, 

across from Neiman Marcus. In its early days 

it sold a line of protective coatings, such as 

roof coating, sealants and paint. 

The company had several locations before 

moving to its current headquarters at 12920 

Senlac Drive in Farmers Branch. Hydrotex ® 

also owns a manufacturing plant in Tulsa, 

Oklahoma, and maintains more than thirty 

distribution centers strategically located 

across the nation. Hydrotex ® is one of the few 

grease manufacturers in the country. 

Protection of the environment is a major 

concern at Hydrotex ® and the company is 

committed to business methods and 

technologies that reduce emissions and toxic 

waste as well as conserve valuable natural 

resources. The company considers ecological 

stewardship a core value and insists on a 

number of precautions to help protect the 

environment in executing its Lubrication 

Solution Partner Strategy. 

For example, Hydrotex ® formulates its 

products to eliminate known carcinogens 

while its fuel improvers substantially reduce 

harmful exhaust emissions. In addition, 

Hydrotex ® fuel improvers increase fuel 

economy through more efficient combustion 

and extend fuel efficient performance by 

keeping engines clean. Hydrotex ® synthetic 

engine oils, gear oils, and transmission 

fluids also improve fuel economy and reduce 

waste oil. 

The combination of Hydrotex’s consultative 

service and product technologies reduces 

energy consumption in industrial applications. 

The company develops non-toxic, bacterialresistant 

greases, high performance food-grade 

lubricants, and Hydrosynthetic industrial 

and automotive lubricants that allow for 

exceptionally long drain intervals, thus 

conserving petroleum resources and reducing 

waste oil disposal into the environment. 

Hydrotex ® users have a much reduced carbon 

footprint from a lubrication point of view. 

One of the more popular Hydrotex ® 

products is Essentialube ® . First introduced 


in 1946, Essentialube ® has been continually 

improved over the years to become recognized 

world-wide as a unique, multi-functional 

performance product. Essentialube is safe for 

use in fuel systems and as a blending and 

cleaning agent in engine oils, hydraulic fluids, 

transmission fluids, and a multitude of 

other applications. 

As an employee-owned company, 

Hydrotex ® brings a unique approach and 

attitude to the workplace. The company has a 

number of long-time employees who work 

together in a collaborative group. 

“The culture of this company is very 

unique,” comments Dwight Gleaves of Dallas, 

who has been with the company forty-four 

years. “With our company, what you see is 

what you get,” he says. “The friendships and 

relationships we have established with our 

customers are what make us Your Lubrication 

Solution Partner.” 

“Hydrotex ® is a family company,” adds 

Arch Archilla of Dallas. “We work together, 

everybody supports everybody else, and 

we sell excellent products.” Archilla 

retired as a regional sales manager after 

fifty years, but still services some of his 

long-time customers. 

Another long-time employee, Kermit 

Nash, believes “finding solutions is the key to 

our business.” Nash, headquartered in North 

Carolina, has sold Hydrotex ® products since 

1974 and has seen tremendous change 

during his career. “We used to be ninety 

percent agriculture but now we offer a 

multitude of products for a wide variety of 

industrial applications. If Hydrotex ® doesn’t 

have the right lubricant for a customer, we 

will seek to create the right lubrication 

solution,”he explains. 

With more than three hundred products, 

the Hydrotex ® market includes many 

segments, from family farms to the big oil 

companies, who use Hydrotex ® products 

in their exploration. Hydrotex ® helps 

school districts save money and reduce 

pollution with energy saving lubricants 

and fuel improvers. In Texas alone, more 

than sixty percent of the school districts 

purchase Hydrotex ® products. Across the 

nation, the company has trained over thirteen 

thousand school bus technicians in proper 

lubrication methods. 

To make sure customers are educated on 

the principles of lubrication, Hydrotex ® offers 

seminars, on-site training, as well as plant 

lubrication audits and surveys to help insure 

that potential problems are identified before 

they become real problems. 

According to Hydrotex ® ’s Mission 

Statement, “Our goal is to be recognized as 

the industry leader in the United States in the 

marketing of high performance lubricants 

and fuel improvers to all significant general 

market segments. We believe that the best 

way to achieve industry leadership is to 

distribute our products and information 

services through direct distribution methods 

which allow efficient transfer of product 

application knowledge, as well as the 

product, to the ultimate user of our products 

at the point of sale.” 

For more information about Hydrotex, 

please visit www.hydrotexlube.com. 


SPARKMAN 

HILLCREST 

FUNERAL HOME 

AND 

MEMORIAL 

PARK 

In 1893, Will R. Sparkman began a 

“Tradition of Excellence” in service that 

prevails today at Sparkman Hillcrest Funeral 

Home and Hillcrest Memorial Park. For four 

generations, the Sparkman family and their 

caring, capable staff have perpetuated the 

uncompromising standard of service that 

makes Sparkman Hillcrest unique in the 

industry and a “Dallas tradition.” 

In the early days, when horse-drawn 

carriages would lead the funeral procession 

from home or church to a nearby cemetery, 

the funeral home had been owned by the 

George W. Loudermilk Undertaking Company 

since 1893. Historically the term “undertaker” 

comes from the concept of one agreeing 

to undertake a necessary service. Early 

undertakers were former cabinet makers 

who were called upon to make coffins for 

the deceased. To transport coffins to the 

cemetery, Loudermilk matched teams and 

beautifully outfitted carriages sporting “the 

only rubber tires in the city” and became a 

source of great pride. As the business entered 

the age of the automobile, hearses were the 

original ambulances for transporting the 

sick to hospitals as well as the deceased to the 

burial ceremony. 

The four generations of Sparkmans began 

when Will R. Sparkman purchased the 

business in 1920 and operated it under the 

name of Loudermilk-Sparkman for many 

years. In keeping with his firm’s growing 

reputation as Dallas’ premier funeral home, 

Sparkman moved his business to a famous 

city landmark in 1926, the A.H. Belo Mansion 

at Ross and Pearl Street, built and presented 

by Colonel A.H. Belo, founder of The Dallas 

Morning News, to his son and his family. 

Under lease for fifty years, the lovely mansion 

was remodeled, with its homelike qualities 

and colonial grandeur carefully preserved. 

At that time, Will R.’s two sons, Louis N. and 

Hal C. Sparkman joined the family business. 

Under the presidency of the second generation 

of Sparkman’s Louis N., the business was 

expanded to include a second funeral home at 

Garland Road and Easton to serve the White 

Rock and Garland areas. At that time, Louis 

N.’s son L. N. “Bill” Sparkman, Jr. entered the 

family business in 1951 as the third generation. 

Today, Sparkman Hillcrest still remains 

in the capable hands of President L. N. “Bill” 

Sparkman, Jr. with his son David L. Sparkman 

as the fourth generation represented. 

The original Sparkman’s funeral home 

remained at the downtown location until it 

moved in 1968 to its present location at 

Boedeker and West Northwest Highway, 

resulting in what we know now as Sparkman 

Hillcrest. This new corporation gave the 

North Dallas area its major full-service 

funeral home surrounded by the rolling acres 

of a cemetery that dates back to 1850, which 

had been part of the Caruth family holdings. 

Over the years, Sparkman Hillcrest has 

provided caring service for Dallas residents 

including many famous and infamous. 


Luminaries provided for by the Sparkman 

family include Tom Landry, Greer Garson 

and Buddy Fogelson, Mickey Mantle, 

Senator John Tower and his daughter, former 

Dallas Mayor Annette Strauss, former Texas 

Governor W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, respected 

art collector Raymond Nasher, Mary Kay Ash, 

and the Perot family. Among the infamous 

would be Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde, 

whose funeral service was held at the Belo 

Mansion in May 1934. 

Today, Sparkman Hillcrest is a full-service 

funeral home, with a beautifully landscaped 

and maintained eighty eight acre Memorial 

Park, with private burial estates around the 

lake, a stately mausoleum and two garden 

mausoleums equipped with interior and 

exterior wall crypts, a flower shop, and two 

chapels, all located at one conveniently 

located complex. The spacious and gracious 

funeral home is designed for the comfort and 

convenience of the families in need. There are 

handsomely appointed staterooms, parlor walls 

of Venetian Marble, visitation rooms with lush 

mohair furniture, exquisite marble floors, and 

the L. N. “Bill” Sparkman Jr. Family Lounge for 

the perfect intimate gathering of family and 

friends. Every effort has been made in providing 

comfort and care to all. 

Sparkman Hillcrest Funeral Home and 

Memorial Park radiates symmetry, balance, 

and excellent taste. Acres of green rolling 

berms encircle the grounds painted with the 

palettes of the seasons: like a silken Persian 

carpet, Summer is radiant with the splendid 

crepe myrtle reds, pinks, and lavenders, the 

beds of annual blues, purples, yellows and 

corals; Fall flourishes with an explosion of 

scarlet, mahogany, russet, against a background 

of brown and taupe; Winter possesses 

its own subtle palette of live oak sage, gray, 

and taupe; Spring reinvigorates the landscape 

with early redbuds followed by blossoming 

Bradford Pears and Dogwoods. On the south 

end of the property, the “Little Mermaid” lake 

shimmers like a cabochon sapphire reflecting 

this march of the Seasons. 

Sparkman Hillcrest also provides numerous 

outreach programs that greatly benefit 

the Dallas community at many different levels. 

Dignity Memorial Escape School provides parents 

and children with critical abduction prevention 

and escape techniques, while Dignity 

Memorial Smart & Safe Living educates seniors 

on personal safety and crime prevention. They 

also assist grieving widows and widowers by 

offering a social support program known as 

L.I.F.T. (Living Information For Today). 

For 116 years the Sparkman family, and 

Sparkman Hillcrest Funeral Home and 

Memorial Park, has provided compassion, 

comfort, and professionalism, as well as pride 

of service for families of all faiths who are 

wishing to honor their deceased with a 

Celebration of Life. 


FREED’S 

FURNITURE 

Freed’s Furniture was founded in 1938 by 

David Freed, an immigrant from Russia who 

was a cabinet builder by trade. Dave leased a 

building on Elm Street (the area known as 

Deep Ellum) in downtown Dallas, but since 

he could not afford to purchase a new sign he 

adopted the name used by the previous 

tenant—National Furniture Supply. 

National Furniture Supply operated 

originally as a used furniture store and Dave 

took in a lot of his inventory in trade. As 

Dave’s sons–Bernard and Joe, his daughter, 

Pearl—and his son-in-law, Aaron Klausner, 

came into the business, the store was 

upgraded from used furniture to new. The 

business prospered and moved north from 

Elm Street; first to the corner of Greenville 

and Ross Avenue in the 1950s, and then to 

the corner of Greenville and Northwest 

Highway in 1961. 

Stories abound about the colorful founder 

of Freed’s and his unconventional approach 

to business. As one story goes, a customer 

walked into the store on Deep Ellum one day 

in the mid 1940s and asked Dave how much 

he wanted for a certain chair. The chair was 

easily worth $10. 

Dave asked, “What will you give me 

for it?” 

The customer replied, “I don’t want to give 

you a price, just tell me what the chair costs!” 

Dave asked, “Would you give me $1 

for it?” 

The customer said, “Yes.” 

Dave asked, “Would you give me $2 

for it?” 

The customer replied, “Sure!” 

Dave then asked, “Would you give me $3 

for it?” 

And the customer said, “Sure.” 

This went on as the price went up to $4, 

$5, and then $6. 

But, when Dave asked, “Will you give me 

$7 for it?” The customer became irritated and 

said, “No!” 

Dave persisted, “You give me your word, 

you will not pay $7 for this chair?” 

The customer replied, “No. I give you my 

word. I will not pay $7 for this chair.” 

At this point, Dave says firmly, “The price 

for this chair is $7.” 

Upset, the customer then said, “Fine! I’ll 

take it! I’ll pay $7 for it!” 

Dave then said, “You can’t have it. You 

gave me your word you would not pay $7 

for the chair and I can’t let you go back on 

your word!” 

At this point the customer got mad 

and left. 

Joe Freed turned to his father and said, 

“Pop! What was that? You didn’t make the 

sale and you made the customer mad." 

Dave replied, “What you know…everybody 

knows. But what I know...nobody 

knows.” Then he walked away. 

The family pondered the comment for 

years, not certain exactly what Freed was 

trying to say. However, Howard Freed believes 

he finally figured out what his grandfather 

meant: “He knew that the customer was never 

going to pay $10 for the chair, and he was not 

going to sell it for less.” 


The three Freed siblings had nine children 

between them, and all of them worked in the 

business at some time while growing up. 

Bernard and Ida’s son, Gary, and their 

daughter, Joyce Schwartzberg, along with her 

husband, Sammy, made a career at Freed’s, 

working for more than twenty years each. 

Aaron and Pearl’s four daughters; Sheila, 

Mimi, Debbie and Judy, either worked there 

themselves, or their spouses did. Joe and 

Eileen’s daughter, Pam, and son, Howard, 

also became career employees. Their other 

daughter, Diane, worked part-time while 

attending school. In 1978, Howard married 

Debbie Wishnow and they had two children, 

Lindsay and Clay. Clay joined the firm 

in 2005, becoming the fourth generation 

of the Freed family to be involved in the 

family business. 

The name of the company was changed to 

Freed Furniture Company, Inc. in 1950 and 

to Freed’s Furniture Showcase, Inc. in 1991. 

In 1974 the family acquired a facility on LBJ 

Freeway at Midway Road and the company 

thrived in that location until 1991. Joe Freed, 

the radio voice of the furniture store, became 

well known as Joe “No-Interest” Freed. 

The furniture industry declined in the 

late 1980s and, after Bernard passed away 

unexpectedly in 1987, Joe and Aaron decided 

to liquidate the company and sell or lease the 

real estate. Joe’s son, Howard, leased one of 

the buildings in 1991 and created a new 

entity, Freed’s Furniture Showcase. Five years 

later, Howard purchased the real estate from 

the family. 

Howard’s vision was to create a furniture 

store offering quality merchandise with 

stylish, high-end designs at affordable prices. 

The company adopted the slogan "You Can 

Afford Your Dreams" and attempts to live up 

to that slogan with everything it sells. 

Today, the main showroom and headquarters 

of Freed’s is located at 4355 LBJ Freeway 

in Dallas. A new showroom at 3803 South 

Cooper in Arlington opened in the summer of 

2008. A distribution center is located at 4720 

Simonton Road in Dallas. 

More than 50,000 customers shop at 

Freed’s each year, contributing to annual sales 

of $15-$20 million. This figure is expected to 

grow to $25-$30 million with the addition of 

the new Arlington showroom. The company 

has approximately 100 employees. 

In 2003, Howard, along with twenty other 

home furnishings retailers in the North 

Dallas area, founded the North Dallas Design 

District. The purpose of the association was 

for several dealers to pool some of their 

advertising dollars to promote the area, rather 

than just their own stores. The association has 

conducted several promotions, raising money 

to benefit several local charities. 

In addition to the North Dallas Design 

fundraisers, Freed’s contributes to several 

local schools and religious organizations 

through donations of products and gift cards. 

For additional information about Freed’s, 

visit www.freeds.net. 


DALLAS 

COUNTY 

SCHOOLS 

Dallas County Schools (DCS) is a 

governmental agency providing services to 

independent school districts and charter 

schools around the state. Under this system, 

the ISDs handle their respective classroom 

functions while DCS provides unified, 

efficient and cost-effective support services. 

Formalized education in Dallas County 

goes back as far as 1850 when Abner Nash 

became the first official teacher in the county, 

telling Dallas County Commissioners that 

his top priority would be to maintain good 

discipline. Four years later, the county began 

recording the names and ages of every child 

enrolled in its one-room schoolhouses. 

By 1855, a survey outlined the “school 

lands” of Dallas County, and at some later 

unknown time, the first unofficial superintendent, 

W. L. Cabell, began serving the county. 

He is believed to have served in an unofficial 

capacity because no record has been found 

describing his appointment, and County 

Commissioners had not yet decided how 

school superintendents should be chosen. 

J. G. Stevens served as Dallas County’s first 

official superintendent of public education 

beginning on May 10, 1887. Little is known 

about the school system in the early days 

other than the names of the superintendents 

who served. The seventh superintendent, 

Thomas E. Henry, became the first to purchase 

schoolbooks. At the turn of the century, 

more than 115 school districts were operating 

in the state. 

Between 1915 and 1927, the county school 

board began consolidating school districts 

in order to make more efficient use of the 

state’s education funding. Around the same 

time, school districts began petitioning the 

school board for permission to build high 

schools. In 1927 the school board approved 

three bus routes, laying the cornerstone 

for Dallas County School’s modern 

transportation division. 

From 1928 on, the county school board 

focused on expanded transportation services 

for the deaf, improved fleet maintenance, 

creation of an audio-visual division, support 

for the Dallas County Community College 

network and public television’s Channel 13. 

The board also began hiring educational 

consultants and psychologists. In the 1930s, 

county trustees took over supervision of the 

Southwest Vocational School, fielded a mobile 

library, and mandated that school districts 

employ only teachers holding at least a 

bachelor’s degree. 

The DCS Media Center came into existence 

in 1938 when Superintendent Joe P. Harris 

suggested that the possibilities of visual 

education be explored. DCS played an integral 

role in launching Dallas public television 

station, Channel 13, with Superintendent 

L. A. Roberts joining seventeen other Dallas 

leaders in signing the station’s incorporation 

papers. The board of trustees later supported 

creation of a countywide junior college 

district, and in 1967 Superintendent Coy 

Tindel led the way in writing a grant that 

provided funding to create what is today 

the Region 10 Education Service Center. 

Today, four separate divisions— 

Transportation, Information Technology, 

Instructional Media Services and 

Psychological Services—work together to 

fulfill Dallas County Schools’ mission to 

strengthen education through service. 

Facilities located throughout the county 

provide an array of services to the fourteen 

school districts served. 


The Information Technology Department 

seeks to bring the world to the desktops of 

teachers, students, parents and community 

members. Several programs that comprise the 

building blocks that help DCS achieve its 

vision are Internet-based solutions for transportation 

and fleet maintenance and digital 

delivery of instructional media titles. Public 

Information also maintains the DCS website 

(www.dcschools.com), which contains a 

variety of information and programs. 

Instructional Media Services offers instant 

access to over 10,000 educational videos 

online at www.powervideos.org. Many titles 

also can be sent to a user’s desktop using a 

digital delivery system. Titles are correlated to 

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) 

objectives with a searchable TEKS Catalog 

link available on the DCS website. 

Psychological Services conducts psychological 

testing, writes psychological reports 

and serves as a resource professional for 

classroom teachers and administrators. Its 

professionals participate in Admission, 

Review and Dismissal Committee meetings 

and provide individual and group counseling. 

The Psychological Services portion of the DCS 

website offers many useful links for parents, 

teachers and administrators. 

The Transportation Department operates 

one of the five largest pupil transportation 

fleets in the nation. More than 1,600 buses 

transport an average of 60,000 students 

to and from school. Buses travel more than 

16 million miles each year to provide regular, 

special education, and extracurricular 

transportation to the students of Dallas 

County. More than 1,500 drivers, monitors, 

and maintenance personnel work in the DCS 

transportation department. 

The Dallas County Schools Board of 

Trustees serves as a support system for the 

organization. These elected officials play a 

role in adopting important rules, regulations 

and policies that govern the operation of 

Dallas County Schools. Members of the Board 

of Trustees are elected to a six-year term of 

office. On a rotating basis, Board seats are 

filled during elections held in May every two 

years. The current members of the Board are: 

President Larry Duncan, Vice President B. J. 

Smith, Jordan R. Blair, Pauline K. Dixon, 

Curtis C. Downs, Ann W. Hubener, Jan 

Woody and Superintendent Rick D. Sorrells. 

Dallas County Schools strives each and 

every day to strengthen education through 

service. Along with sponsoring several 

special events such as the Gloria Shields 

All-American Publications Workshop and the 

Dallas County Spelling Bee, DCS is also at the 

forefront of many cutting edge developments 

such as Global Positioning Systems and 

Radio Frequency Identification for school 

buses and Online Continuing Education for 

educational professionals. 

From a one-room schoolhouse to one of 

the most modern school systems in the 

nation, Dallas County Schools has grown and 

will continue to grow and change to better 

serve the students, parents, teachers and 

community of Dallas County. 


✧ 

SHIPPERS 

WAREHOUSE, 

INC. 

Below: One of Shippers Warehouse’s new 

facilities, 1201 Big Town Boulevard, 

Mesquite, Texas. 

Opposite, top, left: The senior management 

team: Mark Strickland, Graham Swank, 

and Ken Johnson. 

Opposite, top, right: One of Shippers 

Warehouse’s fleet units. 

Opposite, middle: Shippers Warehouse 

Chairman Darby Strickland. 

Opposite, bottom: The interior of the 

Forney Road facility. 

Shippers Warehouse Co., Inc. was established 

in 1901 as a provider of distribution 

services to the cotton industry, and remained 

in only this market niche throughout the first 

fifty years of its existence. In the 1950s, the 

introduction of synthetic fibers into the textile 

industry forced the company to expand its 

services to include the storage and 

distribution of general commodities. Since 

that time, it has grown to be the largest and 

oldest provider of third-party logistics 

distribution services in the southwestern 

United States, operating ten facilities with a 

footprint in excess of 5,000,000 square feet. 

Though founded more than a century ago, 

Shippers Warehouse has experienced minimal 

ownership changes. Founder W. D. Felder put 

the company into the W. D. Felder Trust upon 

his retirement, from which it was purchased 

in 1971 by Richard “Dick” Williams and 

D. T. “Darby” Strickland. Strickland bought 

Williams’ share in the company in 1987, and 

continued to operate and grow the company 

with his family into the twenty-first century. 

In June 2008, Ken Johnson and Graham 

Swank purchased a majority of the company’s 

stock, with the Strickland family continuing 

their participation through a minority share 

position in the company’s stock and 

continued positions on the executive staff 

and Board of Directors. Ken Johnson serves 

as President/CEO, and Graham Swank as 

the Executive Vice President/COO. Darby 

Strickland remains as the company’s 

Chairman Emeritus. 

Shippers Warehouse has experienced 

consistent growth from the performance of 

existing operations, but has also added 

volume and facilities via acquisition, 

purchasing Sunbelt Warehouse in Garland, 

Texas in 1987; Dal-Tex Logistics (Dallas) in 

2001; Empire Terminal Warehouse (Garland) 

in 2005, and Southern Bonded Warehouse in 

Atlanta, Georgia in 2006. 

Shippers Warehouse offers a wide variety 

of services, including supply chain services 

such as warehousing, truckload and LTL 

transportation, inventory control, and packaging. 

The services also include forecasting, 

consulting, quality audits, web-based data 

access, document storage/destruction, kitting, 

display building, returns administration and 

call center management. Shippers Warehouse 

is also involved in light manufacturing, 

transportation auditing, consolidation, small 

package freight administration, local delivery 

and cross-dock services. 

Shippers Warehouse processes in excess of 

20,000 orders and ships in excess of 160 

million pounds (nine million cases) of freight 

per month from eight different locations in 

the Dallas/Fort Worth area. 

Shippers Warehouse operates in multiple 

facilities throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth 

metroplex. Corporate headquarters is located 

at 8901 Forney Road in Dallas and operating 

facilities are located in Garland, Mesquite, 

Grand Prairie, Arlington, Texas, and 

Jonesboro, Georgia. Shippers Warehouse’s 

original facility at 2901 Lamar Boulevard in 

Dallas is still in existence. 

All of Shippers Warehouse facilities are 

food grade and are consistently rated 

excellent and superior by AIB. All facilities 

have monitored fire and security systems. 

Shippers Warehouse is a well established 

regional provider with strong knowledge and 

insight into the economic and political 

infrastructures of the region. 

In addition to more traditional ‘public’ 

warehousing services, Shippers Warehouse 

also manages and operates more than one 

million square feet of prime distribution 

space on a contract basis for large Fortune 

500 customers. This service allows customers 

to focus on their core business, rather 

than having to deal with the intricacies 

of distribution. 


Recognizing that information is a vital 

component of today’s business success, 

Shippers Warehouse has incorporated 

information systems as a strategic part of its 

business approach. Because of the nature of 

the business, public warehousing must be 

flexible, and information must be timely, 

accurate, and available simultaneously 

throughout the organization. 

Shippers Warehouse systems, based on 

an IBM iSeries platform, provide a 

warehouse management system, electronic 

commerce, radio frequency/bar coding, and 

Internet access. 

Contract services offered by Shippers 

Warehouse include facilities management, 

freight management, warehouse management 

systems, key performance indicator reporting, 

Web-based or EDI order receipt and transaction 

transmittal, radio frequency environment, 

and flexible pricing structures based 

upon fluctuating volumes. 

While industry-standard contract operating 

agreements are typically on a ‘cost plus’ 

basis, Shippers Warehouse offers customers 

the option of flexible costs within a contract 

environment. With more than eighty-five 

years of third-party management experience 

among its top three executive positions, 

Shippers Warehouse has the expertise to tailor 

a Contract Service agreement that will fulfill 

the requirements of any customer. 

Shippers Warehouse has also developed a 

transportation savings program (TSP) that can 

have a significant impact on customer’s logistics 

budgets. TSP is an opportunity-based 

program designed to maximize freight savings 

and streamline delivery to customers. This 

allows TSP customers to enjoy large reductions 

in their freight costs over and above the 

largest LTL discounts available in the market. 

Since the program was introduced in 1999, 

Shippers customers have realized an average 

twenty-one percent reduction in freight cost 

for those shipments included in the TSP program. 

As the program has grown, the volumes 

have allowed Shippers Warehouse to negotiate 

even lower truckload delivery rates, resulting 

in even further savings for customers. 

Sales for Shippers have grown steadily in 

recent years and currently stand at $75 

million annually. The firm plans to continue 

its expansion by acquisition or opportunity 

into the Midwest, Northeast, and West Coast 

markets and by seeking additional opportunities 

in packaging, transportation, temporary 

labor services, and supply chain consulting. 

Shippers Warehouse has 400 employees 

who are involved in such worthwhile civic 

endeavors as Meals on Wheels, United Way, 

Down Syndrome Guild, and many others. 

Looking to the future, Shippers Warehouse 

remains committed to its mission of providing 

world-class supply chain services to its 

customers, while maintaining an ethical and 

nurturing environment for its associates that 

includes opportunity for individual growth 

and development. 

For additional information about Shippers 

Warehouse, please check their website at 

www.shipperswarehouse.com. 


ORIENTAL RUG 

CLEANING 

COMPANY, INC. 

✧ 

Below: The offices of Oriental Rug Cleaning 

Company, c. 1930. 

Bottom: H. M. Amirkhan, Sr., at the corner 

of Ervay Street and Corsicana Street, 

c. World War I. 

From founding grandfather, to son, to 

granddaughter, Oriental Rug Cleaning 

Company of Dallas has been the expert in rug 

cleaning and restoration for nearly a century. 

The company specializes in cleaning, 

repairing, and appraising all types of rugs, in 

addition to selling one-of-a-kind semi-antique 

Persian rugs and rug pads. 

The company was founded in 1911 by 

H. Mirza Amirkhan, Sr., an Armenian born 

in Turkey in 1888. H. M. came to the U.S. in 

1909 as a young man, searching for freedom 

and better opportunities. To pay for his passage 

on the S.S. Volturno, he agreed to work as 

an apprentice for a cousin’s rug cleaning and 

repair business in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

In less than a year, H. M. had repaid his 

debt, learned the trade, and decided to start 

his own business. He arrived in Dallas in 

1911 and set up shop at 2105 South Ervay. 

The new company prospered and, in 1919, he 

was able to build his own two-story building 

at 3907 Ross Avenue, where he lived upstairs 

and conducted his business downstairs. A 

second building was added next door in 1926 

and those two structures continue to house 

the Oriental Rug Cleaning Company today. 

A marketing piece, produced around 1918, 

consisted of customer testimonials that 

read like a “who’s who” of Dallas’ oldest and 

most respected families. The list included 

Mrs. Charles Sanger, Mrs. Sam P. Cochran, 

Mrs. Rose Titche, Mrs. Hugh Prather, and 

Mrs. Henry Exall. 

H. M. married Norma Snow in 1922 and 

she worked in the business until her death in 

1973. He became a U.S. citizen in 1923 and 

was a thirty-second degree Mason. 

H. M.’s son, H. Mirza Amirkhan, Jr., 

believes his father’s basic motivation for 

coming to America was a desire for freedom. 

“He was subjected, like many of his people in 

that part of the world, to political and social 

oppression, and he wanted to get away from it 

all, and he did so.” 

H. Mirza Amirkhan, Jr., took over the 

business after completing law school in 

1954, adding his unique and energetic 

personality to the growing business. Under 

his leadership, the Oriental Rug Cleaning 

Company grew in both size and reputation 

and became known as one of the industry 

leaders in Oriental rug cleaning, repairs, 

appraisals and sales. 

Ellen Amirkhan entered the business in 

1980, bringing the communication skills of a 

teacher, the team-work skills of an athlete, 

and an astute sense of good business. 

Ellen, who serves as president of the firm, 

is a graduate of Texas Woman’s University 

with a B.S. degree, and Southern Methodist 

University with a master of liberal arts degree. 

A past-president of the Association of 

Specialists in Cleaning and Restoration 

(ASCR), Ellen develops and teaches Oriental 

rug schools for ASCR, the International 

Society of Appraisers (ISA), and other 

recognized groups across the U.S. and 

England, and is a co-developer of the Master 

Rug Cleaner Program. 


In addition to appraising, she consults 

and serves as an expert witness for the 

legal profession. Ellen holds the designations 

of certified rug specialist from the Association 

of Specialists in Cleaning and Restoration 

(ASCR), certified appraiser of personal 

property with a specialty in oriental 

rugs from the International Society of 

Appraisers (ISA), and certified rug 

appraiser from the Oriental Rug Retailers of 

America (ORRA ). 

Ellen is also the co-author of A 

Comprehensive Guide to Oriental & Specialty 

Rug Cleaning and conducts regular classes 

and seminars on rug cleaning. The book has 

become a basic text for the rug cleaning 

industry and includes 19 chapters and more 

than 900 photographs, maps, and drawings 

detailing the challenges of day-to-day 

commercial rug cleaning and repair. 

“The business has been successful for 

nearly a century because of the family 

tradition of hands-on training and personally 

working with each customer to ensure their 

satisfaction,” she says. 

“Rug cleaning can be very challenging 

because the subject has so many variables 

and manufacturers are continually creating 

new up-scale rugs with their own special set 

of problems.” 

Amirkhan believes there are ten secrets to 

success in a family business: 

• Respect for the past, 

• Passion for your work, 

• Financial responsibility, 

• Customer service, 

• Service to the industry/association 

membership, 

• Superior product knowledge, 

• Ability to change, 

• Work together toward a common goal, 

• Lead by example, and 

• Take care of your employees. 

The company’s mission remains the same 

after nearly one hundred years in business: 

“To get up everyday and be the best we can 

be, do the best job we can.” 

✧ 

Top, left: Ellen Amirkhan co-authored 

A Comprehensive Guide to Oriental & 

Specialty Rug Cleaning with 

Aaron Groseclose. 

Above: Inez, Mirza and Ellen Amirkhan. 

Below: H. M. Amirkhan, Sr. commissioned a 

custom rug woven in China based on the 

official map commemorating Texas pioneers 

for the Texas Centennial Celebration. See 

the history section of this book for the map 

on which the rug is based. 


ECLIPSEMED, 

LTD. 

✧ 

Above: Founder and CEO Tom O'Brien. 

Below: Kevin, Paul, Tom, and Michael 

O'Brien. 

Eclipsemed, Ltd., a leading regional 

distributor of aesthetic lasers and medical 

devices since 1993, has recently come of age 

by assuming a nationwide assignment as the 

exclusive U.S. distributor of EL.EN Group, an 

international cosmetic laser manufacturer. 

Eclipse is also currently in pursuit of other 

national distribution opportunities. 

These relationships are bringing rapid 

growth to this Dallas-based company that has 

established a reputation for identifying 

leading-edge aesthetic medical lasers and 

related devices. Historically, Eclipse has 

supplied these products to physicians in 

Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, 

becoming one of the most successful 

distributors of cosmetic laser equipment in 

the country. 

Company founder and chief executive 

officer, Tom O’Brien, who incorporated 

Eclipsemed in 1993, is joined in the company 

by his two brothers. Paul O’Brien, who has 

been with Eclipse since 1993, serves as chief 

financial officer, while Kevin O’Brien, who 

joined Eclipse in 1998, serves as president. 

Tom founded the company after gaining 

invaluable experience working for a decade 

as a salesman for two medical device 

manufacturers. The Texas native and 1977 

graduate of Texas Tech University began 

his career working for Davol, a subsidiary 

of C. R. Bard, Inc., a major medical 

device manufacturer. 

With a bachelor’s degree in advertising and 

a minor in history, Tom as mentioned, 

decided to enter the field of medical sales. 

His father, also of the same name, who had a 

long and successful sales executive career in 

Dallas with IBM and other companies, had 

passed his salesman genes down to his son. 

So, not long after graduating from college, 

Tom contacted a sales recruiter to help him 

find his first sales job. 

Tom worked with Davol and Bard EMS, 

another subsidiary of C. R. Bard, for five years 

before moving to Sun Medical. It was at Sun 

Medical that Tom honed his skills selling 

laser equipment. In those days at Sun, the 

company focused on the hospital market 

rather than the aesthetic market, but Tom 

learned a lot about how to run a company. He 

eventually decided to start his own company 

distributing high-tech medical devices and 

Eclipse was born. 

Eclipse originally had both a hospital and 

an aesthetic division. It sold its hospital 

division in 2000 to concentrate on the 

fast-growing aesthetic market, a move that 

turned out to be a good one. With a huge 

number of aging baby boomers seeking to 

hang onto their youth, the cosmetic surgery 

industry has skyrocketed in the past decade 

or so. Women—and an increasing number of 

men—seek cosmetic medical procedures, 

often using lasers, to stave off the surface 

effects of aging. Thanks to advances in 

cosmetic medicine, many procedures can be 

performed over a patient’s lunch hour. 

Another factor contributing to the rise 

in the aesthetic market is the frustration 

physicians experience in regard to 

reimbursements from private insurance, 


Medicare, and Medicaid. Not only does it take 

longer to be paid via reimbursements, the 

amount being paid is declining as pressure 

increases to hold down healthcare costs. The 

aesthetic market does not suffer from those 

pressures. It is a cash business used by people 

who can afford the services rendered and pay 

for them out of their own pockets. 

The company’s first major milestone 

occurred in 1996 when it became an exclusive 

regional distributor for an Israeli laser 

manufacturing start-up by a company called 

Energy System Corporation (ESC), later 

known as Lumenis. Although virtually 

unknown at the time, the Lumenis intense 

pulsed light devices (IPL) quickly became the 

industry standard with Eclipse selling more 

than 750 devices exceeding $100,000 each. 

Seemingly, Lumenis came out of nowhere 

to become for a time the most successful 

and largest cosmetic laser manufacturer in 

the world. Eclipse became Lumenis’ most 

successful regional U.S. distributor. 

Thanks to their success with Lumenis, a 

Houston physician recommended Eclipse to 

a new manufacturer of a product called 

ZENO, a home acne device sold through 

physicians and spas. Within a year, Eclipse 

had sold ZENO to more than 1,500 physician 

offices across the country. The successful 

launch of ZENO established Eclipse as an 

attractive pathway for manufacturers 

seeking to bring innovative aesthetic medical 

devices and supplies to the U.S. market. 

The call to distribute countrywide has 

become undeniable. 

Eclipse’s ability to identify leading-edge 

technology before it is understood in the 

marketplace and to bring it to market has 

created a credible reputation for the company. 

After seeing what it had done with ZENO, a 

Canadian company, Pharos Life, sought them 

out to do the same with their product, Tanda, 

a home acne and skin rejuvenation device 

dispensed by physicians. 

The company received national coverage 

on CNN and in the New York Times for 

becoming the first distributor of Thermage, a 

radio frequency device that firms the skin. 

Other successful products include Smart 

Lipo, a laser that uses a tiny light fiber inside 

the body to melt away fat permanently while 

internally tightening the skin. 

As for the future, Eclipse Medical plans to 

diversify into other areas. It recently began 

investing in and consulting with leading-edge 

manufacturers such as Alpha Med-Surge, Inc., 

of Frisco, a company founded by a former 

Eclipse Medical employee, who created an 

LED surgical headlight that generates less heat 

and creates white light that makes clearer the 

wearer’s field of view. 

Investing in things they sell while bringing 

those and other leading-edge devices to the 

marketplace will certainly be the hallmarks of 

Eclipse Medical, Ltd., as it looks optimistically 

toward the future. You can learn more about 

Eclipse Medical at www.eclipsemed.com. 

✧ 

The Eclipse Medical, Ltd. staff. 


HUMPHREY & 

ASSOCIATES, INC. 

✧ 

Above: Humphrey & Associates, Inc., 

founders Jackie and Steve Humphrey, Sr. 

Below: Humphrey & Associates, Inc. has 

been part of the construction team for many 

outstanding landmark buildings such as 

Hunt Oil Company's Dallas Headquarters. 

COURTESY OF RON ST. ANGELO PHOTOGRAPHY. 

Humphrey & Associates, Inc. (H&A) has 

been putting its brand of excellence on projects 

since 1977. The firm’s proficiency in electricalmechanical 

design and implementation has 

earned them placement in the “Top 20 

Specialty Contractors” in the state of Texas by 

Texas Construction magazine many years. 

The company’s extensive experience and 

track record has resulted in repeat business 

from customers over the years. Their diversity 

and commitment to cutting-edge skills, 

training and equipment have been vital to 

their success. Continued success is a 

testimony to their dependability, dedication 

and tenacity to solve the most challenging 

situations. “Our precise goal is being the longterm, 

least-cost provider of MEP services,” 

says Executive Vice President of Finance and 

Internal Operations, Randy Humphrey. 

“Humphrey & Associates’ capabilities 

include both electrical and mechanical designbuild 

expertise and a track record of solving a 

customer’s most complex circumstances,” notes 

Executive Vice President, Field Operations, 

Stephen Humphrey, Jr. 

Founders, Jackie and Steve Humphrey, Sr., 

both native Dallasites, graduated together from 

W. W. Samuell High School in 1959. Steve 

majored in electrical engineering at Arlington 

State College (now UTA). They were married in 

Dallas in July of 1961. Having always worked in 

the construction industry, they established their 

own Dallas Company April 1, 1977. Since then, 

they have worked together, maintaining a family 

atmosphere at H&A; even being joined by their 

children in the business. Their sons are still 

active in managing their operations. Their legacy 

has been to model traditional family values, 

both personally and corporately. 

In 1981 the corporation gifted half the 

stock to the employees through an employee 

stock ownership plan, truly making them the 

“Associates” of the corporation. 

“Initially, we performed only electrical 

contracting and design projects in the 

metroplex,” explains CEO and President Steve 

Humphrey Sr. In 1995 a mechanical group was 

added, offering customers a complete MEP team 

package. By the late 1990s it had opened offices 

in Denton, Fort Worth, and Yantis, Texas. 

H&A is a family-owned business, but it is not 

a small player. The management team considers 

the 350 associates to be its most valuable asset. 

The board of directors and a managing executive 

committee of seven vice presidents and branch 

managers have an average tenure of twenty-six 

years together, a highly unusual benefit in the 

construction industry. Average employment of 

eight years for the rest of the associates, and 

employing several second-generation members 

of long-employed families, staff satisfaction is 

translated into a reliable, highly skilled team. 

“Both electrically and mechanically, we are 

fully qualified for all special systems in data 

and medical centers. Our experience ranges 

from town centers to corporate campuses, from 

food processing to manufacturing, and from 

semi-conductor producing to world-class data 

centers,” Humphrey explains. “Throughout our 

history, highly sensitive retrofit procedures and 


new construction projects have been entrusted 

to our capable hands.” 

H&A is a trained, experienced “Leadership in 

Energy and Environmental Design” (LEED) 

contractor; completing multiple LEED 

buildings constructed per the U.S. Green 

Building Council’s guidelines. 

“Safety and training have traditionally 

been a critical element of Humphrey & 

Associates’ accomplishments,” relates 

Humphrey, who has been active both locally 

and nationally to bring state-of-the-art training 

to merit shop contractors. 

In 1981, H&A became one of the first 

contractors in the United States to implement 

drug screening, testifying in both state and 

national Congressional Hearings for Drug Free 

Work Place laws. “We believe our drug 

screening program has made our workforce one 

of the safest in the industry,” says Humphrey Sr. 

Its safety record certainly upholds that belief 

with a record 3.25 million consecutive work 

hours without a lost-time accident in April 2009 

(accomplished through its direct payroll). 

All field supervisors are required to complete 

H&A’s upgraded OSHA thirty-hour certification, 

and F.O.C.U.S training. F.O.C.U.S is a program 

unique to H&A that empowers and trains 

people to make critical decisions and 

disseminate effective information. Included are 

productivity development; how safety affects the 

company and how each associate has personal 

responsibility to maintain a safe work 

environment. This empowerment benefits both 

H&A and customers. 

Humphrey & Associates places top priority 

in meeting the demands of our high-tech world 

by offering on-site classes as well as 

encouraging participation in management 

courses and four-year Department of Labor 

approved apprenticeships through Independent 

Electrical Contractors (IEC) and Construction 

Education Foundation. 

Humphrey emphasizes that H&A is in the 

game for the long haul, “We have been under 

the same continual ownership and direction 

that we started with in 1977; avoiding the 

upheaval and uncertainties for our employees 

and customers that many specialty contractors 

experienced during the phenomenon of roll ups 

and acquisitions occurring in during the late 

’90s. We have stayed the course empowering, 

training and promoting a specific corporate 

culture for our associates, which is passed on to 

our customers. We try hard to ‘walk the talk’ of 

our Biblically based mission statement, creating 

an environment of integrity and appreciation 

for both our team mates, customers & vendors 

alike. We have been blessed accordingly.” 

From its inception through present times, 

H&A has remained independent, expanding 

its business based on client relationships and 

a reputation built on quality workmanship 

and personal service. 

✧ 

Below: The Humphrey’s having fun on their 

Annual Family Vacation. Here, flyfishing at 

Cow Creek Ranch, Pecos, New Mexico, 

2007. Top row (from left to right): Mary 

and Steve Humphrey, Jr.; Rick and Leah 

(Humphrey) Rennhack; Scottie, Marshall, 

and Randy Humphrey. Middle row: Hunter, 

Corey, Jackie (Mimi), and Grant Humphrey; 

Riley Rennhack; Steve, Sr., (Poppee) and 

Cody Humphrey. Bottom row: Nathanael, 

Grace, and Annie Rennhack; and Samantha 

and Brayden Humphrey. 


CAPITAL 

SENIOR LIVING 

✧ 

Above: Capital’s Board of Directors 

celebrating ten years of being listed on 

the NYSE. 

Below: Capital’s newest independent living 

and assisted living prototype development 

known as The Waterford. 

As one of the country’s largest operators of 

senior living communities, Capital Senior 

Living strives to provide quality living at 

affordable prices for America’s seniors. The 

company’s operating philosophy emphasizes 

a continuum of care which integrates 

independent living, assisted living, and home 

health care services to provide residents the 

opportunity to age in place. 

Capital Senior Living operates sixty-five 

senior living communities in twenty-three 

states with an aggregate capacity of approximately 

9,500 residents. Two additional communities 

are under development and will 

open in the first quarter of 2009. The company 

operates each of its communities through 

an integrated regional service network that 

employs approximately 3,250 in the twentythree 

states, with its corporate headquarters 

in Dallas. 

The company’s status as one of the nation’s 

largest operators of senior living facilities 

started from a personal tragedy. James A. 

Stroud, who co-founded Capital Senior 

Living, had gained experience in the early 

1980s with apartments built for seniors and, 

in the mid-1980s, with congregate care 

facilities. However, all that changed in 1988. 

Stroud’s father suffered a second stroke and 

the discharge planner at the hospital 

explained that he could not return home to 

live by himself. 

What he needed was a facility that could 

match the level of care with his level of need, 

but only skilled nursing was available at 

that time in Amarillo, Texas, near the town 

where he lived. Efforts by Stroud and his 

brother to relocate their father to either Dallas 

or New Mexico were not successful. After a 

number of weeks of badgering, Stroud’s father 

said, “I want to be able to turn on the TV and 

watch the national and local news. When 

they announce high school football scores, 

I want to be familiar with the teams and 

their background.” 

Stroud finally accepted that his father did 

not want to move from his hometown near 

Amarillo to Stroud’s home in Dallas or his 

brother’s home in New Mexico. 

Stroud warned the skilled nursing staff that 

his father would start taking tray service in his 

room, but what he needed was physical 

activity and a wellness program. He lost his 

will to live in the nursing home and started 

taking tray service within the first three 

weeks. Stroud knew that his father’s story was 

repeated multiple times in the lives of friends 

and others throughout the nation. His search 


for an alternative led him to the study of 

congregate care with medical service, which 

today is known as assisted living. This opened 

the door for Stroud to be on the ground floor 

of the nation’s senior living business and 

trade associations. 

The predecessor to Capital Senior Living 

was founded in 1990 and the company grew 

rapidly. The company adopted a philosophy 

of hiring officers and regional managers who 

had started their careers on-site and had at 

least five years of operational experience. The 

company further emphasized employee 

training, empowerment, and a rewarding 

compensation program to attract the best and 

brightest in the senior housing industry. 

Today, the company’s corporate headquarters 

are located in Dallas and seven regional 

centers are operated from west to east 

coast and from Texas to Michigan. Senior 

management’s average years of experience 

in the industry is twenty-three years, and 

operational and marketing regional managers 

average seventeen years. On-site executive 

directors average more than five years. 

Capital Senior Living’s quality personnel 

and operating philosophy enabled it to grow 

quickly in the 1990s. In 1997 the company 

executed a successful initial public offering 

and was listed on the New York Stock 

Exchange. The officers of the company have 

been leaders in establishing a number of 

programs, trade associations, and educational 

programs for the senior housing industry. 

Their accomplishments include being on 

the Founders Council and Leadership 

Council of the Assisted Living Federation 

of America, founding sponsor of the Johns 

Hopkins University Senior Housing and 

Care Program, president of the National 

Association for Senior Living Industry 

Executives, the Owner/Operator Advisory 

Committee of the National Investment 

Center, founder and Board member of 

the Texas Assisted Living Association, 

and founding member and Executive 

Committee member of the American Seniors 

Housing Association. 

Despite its growth and accomplishments, 

Capital Senior Living continues to execute its 

business plan of providing quality living for 

seniors at an affordable price. The dedication 

of the on-site employees supported by the 

extensive corporate resources enhances the 

lives of each resident. 

Capital Senior Living is located at 14160 

Dallas Parkway, Suite 300 in Dallas, Texas and 

on the Internet at www.capitalsenior.com. 

✧ 

Above: The dining room at The Waterford 

at Dayton, Ohio. 

Below: The Wii Bowling Team from The 

Waterford at Fairfield, Ohio. 


BAYLOR 

UNIVERSITY 

MEDICAL 

CENTER AT 

DALLAS 

✧ 

Above: More than three hundred thousand 

patients receive care through Baylor 

University Medical Center at Dallas. The 

hospital is recognized nationally and by 

consumers for excellence in nursing and 

physician care. 

Below: Surgeons on the medical staff at 

Baylor Dallas perform more than twentyfive 

thousand surgeries annually. The 

medical center has been recognized 

nationally for its quality care. 

From humble beginnings more than a 

century ago, Baylor University Medical Center 

at Dallas has grown to become one of the 

largest and most respected medical centers in 

the nation. 

Initial efforts to establish a hospital in 

Dallas began at the turn of the twentieth 

century when Dr. Charles Rosser, founder of 

the Baylor College of Medicine in 1900, saw 

the need for “a teaching hospital of great 

importance” to care for the residents of this 

fast-growing city. Reverend George Truett, 

pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, 

became an early fundraiser for the hospital, 

urging Dallas citizens “to build a great 

humanitarian hospital.” 

Colonel C.C. Slaughter, a devout Baptist 

and wealthy cattleman, contributed the 

initial major gift of $50,000, toward the 

establishment of the hospital and the Baptist 

General Convention of Texas agreed to raise 

additional funds and help support and 

administer the hospital. 

The Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitarium, 

forerunner of Baylor University Medical 

Center, was chartered in 1903 and began 

operation in a fourteen room renovated 

house. Only five years later, the Sanitarium 

opened and moved into a new 250-bed 

facility, described as the most modern 

hospital of its kind in the Southwest. 

A School of Nursing was begun in 1909 

and moved to a new facility on the hospital 

campus in 1919, built with money donated 

by Colonel Slaughter just prior to his death. 

Student nurses originally lived on campus or 

nearby and cared for patients. 

In 1921, Texas Baptist Memorial 

Sanitarium became Baylor Hospital to reflect 

its close relationship with Baylor University. 

The “Baylor Plan,” developed by hospital 

administrators to help citizens afford 

healthcare during the Great Depression, was 

the first pre-paid hospital insurance plan in 

the nation and the predecessor of Blue Cross. 

The hospital was renamed Baylor University 

Hospital in 1936. 

After weathering financial difficulties 

during the depression and World War II and 

the relocation of the medical school to 

Houston, a new hospital facility was built on 

the Dallas campus and dedicated in 1950. 

It was named after Reverend George W. 

Truett. The seven-story, 436-bed “hospital of 

tomorrow” featured air conditioning and telephones 

in all patient rooms and made Baylor 

University Hospital the fifth largest general 

hospital in the U.S. It was about the same 

time that Baylor University Hospital became 

Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, in 

1959, to better reflect the multiple hospitals 

and services on the Dallas campus. 

The hospital continued to expand and add 

new services throughout the latter half of the 

twentieth century and, in 1993, several 

specialties were recognized by U.S. News & 

World Report in its inaugural “Best Hospitals” 

guide, an honor it has received each 

year since. 

Today, Baylor University Medical Center at 

Dallas cares for more than 300,000 people 

each year. With more than a thousand beds, 

1,280 physicians with active privileges, and 

more than 5,500 employees, Baylor Dallas is a 


major patient care, teaching and research 

center for the Southwest and serves as the 

flagship hospital of the Baylor Health 

Care System. 

Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas 

is now home to more than twenty specialty 

centers designed to treat a range of medical 

conditions. Among them are: 

• Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center, 

which treats all forms of cancer with particular 

emphasis on cancers of the breast, 

prostate, lung, colon, and gynecologic cancers, 

as well as hematologic malignances, 

such as leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma. 

The cancer center offers patients 

access to more than 150 national clinical 

trials and innovative cancer treatments. 

• Heart and Vascular Services at Baylor 

Dallas include the Baylor Heart and 

Vascular Institute, and the Baylor Hamilton 

Heart and Vascular Hospital—the first 

North Texas hospital dedicated solely 

the care and treatment of heart and 

vascular patients. The hospital is also 

home to the first nationally certified Left 

Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) program. 

• Baylor Neuroscience Center offers services 

to diagnose and treat virtually all kinds of 

neurological disorders, injury and disease, 

including tumors of the central nervous system 

and skull base, stroke, spine care, and 

seizure disorders. The nationally recognized 

center of excellence is home to the region’s 

first nationally certified stroke program. 

• Baylor Regional Transplant Institute is a 

national leader in solid organ transplantation. 

Since the program’s inception in 

1984, transplant surgeons have performed 

more than 8,000 transplants, including 

liver, kidney, pancreas, heart and lung, 

small bowel, as well as blood and 

marrow transplants. 

• Digestive Disease Services at Baylor Dallas 

provide advanced inpatient and outpatient 

treatment for digestive and liver disorders 

in addition to a full range of diagnostic and 

therapeutic services. The nationally recognized 

program is consistently ranked 

among the nation’s busiest GI programs. 

• James M. and Dorothy D. Collins Women 

and Children’s Center provides obstetric 

and gynecologic services, including 

advanced technology for prenatal diagnostics 

and care; labor and delivery; high-risk 

infant care; genetic counseling; and family 

education. More than 4,100 babies are 

delivered at Baylor Dallas each year. 

• Baylor George Truett James Orthopaedic 

Institute combines clinical care, research 

and patient education to diagnose, treat, 

and provide follow-up care for 

orthopaedic conditions. 

The hospital opened its newly renovated 

Emergency Department in January 2008 with 

more than 70,000 square feet and eighty-five 

rooms, with dedicated areas specifically for 

physician referral and minor emergency care. 

In a recent poll by National Research 

Corporation, residents in the Dallas/Fort 

Worth Metroplex voted Baylor University 

Medical Center the most preferred hospital, 

the hospital with the best image and 

reputation, and ranked the facility as having 

the best doctors and nurses for the eleventh 

consecutive year. 

After more than a century, Baylor University 

Medical Center at Dallas—founded as a 

Christian ministry of healing—continues to 

serve all people through exemplary healthcare, 

education, research and community service. 

✧ 

Above: The 170-acre Dallas campus has 

several treed and reflection areas, such as 

the Interfaith Garden of Prayer in Memory 

of Bradley Wayne, where patients and 

families may seek peace and tranquility 

while away from home. 

Below: As they continually meet the needs of 

patients, Baylor Dallas will open a new and 

expanded outpatient cancer center in 2010 

and a dedicated cancer hospital in 2013. 


✧ 

Above: Carlisle DeHay. 

DEHAY & 

ELLISTON, 

L.L.P. 

DeHay & Elliston, L.L.P., is one of the 

nation’s most renowned litigation firms, 

known for its successes in high-profile jury 

trials. The attorneys at DeHay & Elliston 

share common goals and beliefs about the 

art of trial advocacy and professionalism. 

With a focus on winning jury trials, their 

reputation is based on talent, experience, and 

ethical standards. 

Put simply, DeHay & Elliston wins cases 

for its clients. The firm’s cases range from 

aviation claims to toxic tort matters. Along 

with its legal expertise, DeHay & Elliston’s 

reputation has been built on its ability and 

willingness to try cases. This experience and 

knowledge of the trial advocacy team of 

DeHay & Elliston has elevated the firm to the 

top tier of trial lawyers. 

With attorneys located in Dallas, Houston, 

Los Angeles, California Bay Area, and 

Baltimore, the firm has extensive experience 

in business litigation, professional malpractice, 

toxic tort and products liability cases, 

including catastrophic and wrongful death 

injury cases. Gary D. Elliston also serves as 

national trial counsel for several corporate 

defendants. He has been recognized as a Texas 

Super Lawyer and as one of the Best Lawyers 

in America on multiple occasions. 

Elliston formed DeHay & Elliston with a 

commitment to practice and preserve the 

ethics, professionalism, and high ideals 

demonstrated by J. Carlisle DeHay, Jr. The 

firm’s primary objectives are to provide 

quality and responsive legal services, and to 

develop and maintain a reputation as the 

highest-quality trial law firm. 

DeHay & Elliston owes its historic reputation 

and success to DeHay, a legendary Texas 

trial attorney, whose professional excellence 

and personal integrity continues to inspire the 

firm almost two decades after his death. 

Elliston practiced with DeHay, developing an 

enduring admiration for his mentor’s legal 

skills, integrity, and personal character, while 

fostering a close friendship that endured until 

DeHay’s death on November 15, 1991. 

DeHay’s dedication, honesty, and work ethic 

inspires the firm as it strives to fulfill its mission 

of representing every client with passion, 

respect, and unflagging attention. It was while 

trying asbestos cases with DeHay that Elliston 

noticed a tendency among attorneys to avoid 

cases involving complex historical medical 

topics and saw an opportunity to carve out a 

niche as an expert litigator of medical cases. 

Elliston soon found himself traveling the state 

and nation to try toxic tort cases. 

In 1992, Elliston left DeHay & Blanchard 

to form DeHay & Elliston. Elliston kept his 

partner’s name on the firm as a tribute to his 

mentor and to this day fiercely seeks to protect 

Carlisle DeHay’s legal legacy by fostering 

the highest ethical and professional standards. 


Elliston was an honor graduate of Howard 

Payne University in Brownwood, Texas. He 

attended Southern Methodist University 

School of Law after winning a prestigious 

Hatton W. Sumners Foundation Scholarship. 

After graduating from law school, he joined 

the firm of Gardere, Porter & DeHay. Elliston 

wanted to work with the man who seemed to 

be involved in every high-profile personal 

injury case in Texas. Elliston joined DeHay at 

the perfect time. DeHay was at the peak of his 

legal career, having honed his legal skills and 

reputation in courtrooms across the nation for 

three decades, and yet still had the competitive 

fire needed to take on any courtroom 

challenge. Elliston quickly made his way into 

the courtroom with DeHay and found himself 

trying cases with and against the trial legends 

of the day at an early age. DeHay and Elliston 

tried many of the high-profile cases of the day. 

Elliston has continued his commitment to 

education by serving as an adjunct professor 

at Truett Seminary at Baylor University where 

he teaches a class on Rhetoric and the Art 

of Persuasion. The moot court program at 

Howard Payne University has been renamed 

the Gary D. Elliston Moot Court Program in 

his honor. 

DeHay & Elliston is located at 901 Main 

Street, Suite 3500 in Dallas, Texas and on the 

Internet at www.dehay.com. 

✧ 

Below: Gary Elliston, senior founding 

partner of DeHay & Elliston. 


BUSINESS 

BROKERS 

NETWORK 

✧ 

Above: Founder Gerrald Nance and 

Comptroller Stephanie Nance-Bullington. 

Right: BBN Corporate Headquarters located 

in Dallas, Texas since 1981. 

Business Brokers Network (BBN), the 

nation’s largest network of business brokers, 

began with an idea discussed in 1981. The 

company founder, Gerrald Nance, had dinner 

with a former colleague who was brokering 

businesses in the Chicago area. Gerrald was 

intrigued by the opportunities for business 

brokers discussed during dinner. Upon 

returning to Dallas, he resigned his twentytwo 

year management position with Sears, 

Roebuck & Company and founded Business 

Brokers Network with the help of his aunt, 

Leona, and his daughter, Stephanie Bullington. 

When BBN was founded, 

there were no similar business 

models, so the company 

became a pioneer in developing 

the business brokerage 

industry. Early in the twentyfirst 

century, BBN established 

itself as America’s largest 

network of business brokers. 

It was during this time that 

business brokering evolved 

into a highly regarded and 

recognized service needed by 

business sellers and buyers. 

Two key events related 

to the early growth of BBN: corporate 

downsizing and increased use of the 

Internet by businesses and individuals. 

Corporate downsizing, which started in the 

1990s and continues today, provides many 

former executives of larger corporations 

with a new opportunity to acquire their 

own businesses and gain financial success 

as independent business owners. 

Development of the Internet resulted 

in immediate availability of business 

information that helped business brokering 

expand and become more efficient. 

Business brokers, business sellers and 

buyers could communicate timely 

information frequently and effectively 

via the Internet. In effect, this improved 

communication device facilitated the 

process of business brokering between BBN 

clients and affiliates located nationwide. 

Over the years, BBN has grown to more 

than 475 affiliate offices covering all fifty 

states and Canada. Independently owned 

and operated, each affiliate office uses the BBN 

standardized system for representing business 

sellers and buyers. Each BBN Affiliate Broker is 

able to represent sellers and buyers located 

from coast-to-coast. 

Founder Gerrald Nance and his daughter, 

Stephanie Bullington, manage the daily 

operations of the business. Other key 

individuals helping to shape the future of 

BBN include Ken Beard, Ed Driscoll, and 

Zack Tannery; all of whom are involved in 

recruiting, training and servicing BBN 

Affiliates on a daily basis. 

BBN executives have held leadership 

positions within various business brokerage 

trade associations, contributing greatly to 

their inception, growth, and development. 

Thanks to BBN, business sellers and buyers 

are no longer restricted geographically to 

localized services of business brokers. By 

utilizing the nation’s largest network of business 

brokers, BBN clients have the distinct advantage 

of a nationwide affiliation with highly trained 

and professional business brokers. 


Since it was founded fifty-eight years ago, 

Asel Art Supply has grown from one store in 

Dallas to nine retail locations, a warehouse, 

and a college bookstore, which operates 

under the name Varsity Bookstore in 

Lubbock, Texas. 

The company was founded by Kenny Asel 

in January 1951. A short time later, his 

brother, Herb, joined him in the business. The 

brothers got their start in the business 

working for Devoe Paint shortly before and 

after the end of World War II. 

The first Asel Art Supply location in downtown 

Dallas was in what is now known as 

Thanksgiving Square. A second location was 

opened in the mid 1960s in the current 

location on Cedar Springs Road. That location 

now serves as corporate headquarters. 

The Asel brothers sold the business in 

August 1973 to a group of investors that 

included Calvin Axtell, Bill Cicherski, Don 

Goldman, Pete Goldman and Ted Strauss. 

Cicherski and Axtell continue to serve in their 

positions as CEO and vice-president of sales. 

In 1987 an ESOP trust was formed and 

Asel Art Supply became an employee owned 

business. Many of those original owners are 

still with the company and the average 

number of years of employment for the 

executives and managerial staff is twenty-four 

years. More than half of the employees are 

shareholders in the business. 

The business began to expand in the 

mid-1970s and locations were established in 

San Antonio, Arlington, Fort Worth and 

Austin. A college bookstore in Lubbock, 

which serves Texas Tech University, was 

added during this period. 

Today, Asel Art Supply is a retail business 

composed of nine art supply stores in Dallas, 

Plano, Richardson, Carrollton, Arlington, Fort 

Worth, Austin and two sites in San Antonio. 

Varsity Bookstore is located in Lubbock. A 

warehouse which serves all stores is located in 

the Brookhollow warehouse district of Dallas. 

The firm’s customer base includes fine 

artists, commercial and graphic artists, 

architects, students, and artists of all ages. 

The bookstore primarily attracts the student 

community of Texas Tech, but also serves the 

local art community of Lubbock. 

Asel Art Supply supports local art groups 

with donations to competitions, use of 

meeting room for local painting workshops, 

an art community bulletin board, and other 

such activities. Asel Art also provides custom 

kits and reasonably priced supplies to 

students, their teachers and businesses. 

For more information about Asel 

Art Supply, and to shop online, please see 

www.aselart.com. 

ASEL ART 

SUPPLY 

✧ 

Below: Kenny Asel and employee at the 

first store. 

Bottom: The current Cedar Springs store. 


SHAKE & 

SHINGLE 

SUPPLY, INC. 

Newly returned from a three year teaching 

stint in Bolivia, Robert Ingle needed what he 

thought would be a temporary job and turned 

to roofing, which he had done throughout 

college and graduate school. With no truck, 

no yard, no equipment, no credit, no customers, 

and little capital, a roofing company was born 

when he and then partner Kenny Marchant 

flew to the Pacific Northwest to buy a boxcar 

of wood shingles. Thus was birthed, in 1977, 

a roofing supply that grew to be one of the 

largest suppliers of wood roofing products in 

the nation. 

Initially focused on residential turn-key 

wood roofing for builders of new homes, 

Shake & Shingle Supply grew exponentially 

as the Dallas-Fort Worth area prospered and 

construction boomed. Early customers 

included Jerry Stiles, Goodman Homes, and 

Centex. At the end of the first year Ingle 

bought out his partner, brought his wife 

Kathy into the business to handle sales, and 

over time expanded into other types of 

roofing products to include GAF, ELK, Atlas, 

and TAMKO. As the business matured, the 

wholesale supply side expanded with direct 

sales to lumber dealers and roofing companies. 

Shake & Shingle Supply established a 

reputation for excellent service, fair pricing, 

and quality products and has continued to 

specialize in wood roofing as fewer suppliers 

across the country have the knowledge and 

expertise to sell wood. 

In 1986, the Ingles built and opened their 

current location in Coppell, Texas from which 

the company sells across the south, and in 1990 

added another location in Denver, Colorado. A 

Kansas City location followed in 1992 and 

temporary sales offices to service storm ravaged 

areas have been established in Abilene, San 

Angelo (twice) Amarillo, and Enid, Oklahoma. 

While the favorable economic climate of 

the region was a major factor in the growth 

of the company, Ingle credits his success in 

a difficult industry with his strong work 

ethic, willingness to put in long hours, and 

commitment to be the best. Ingle has been 

and continues to be a very hands on owner 

involved in every aspect of the business. He 

has direct knowledge of his customers, their 

needs, their challenges, and their opportunities. 

It is this working synergy that has kept Shake & 

Shingle Supply successful and profitable for 

over thirty years. 

Please visit www.shakeandshinglesupply.com 

on the Internet for additional information on 

Shake & Shingle Supply. 


Since the late 1920s, the Gittings ® studios 

have been synonymous with exceptional 

portraiture. Starting as a plateboy for the 

Bachrach Studio in Baltimore, Paul Linwood 

Gittings, Sr., one of the greats in American 

photography, founded his photography 

business during the Great Depression by 

purchasing the Dallas and Houston studios of 

the world-renowned Bachrach Portrait Studio, 

the respected Boston-based photography 

studio that had photographed every United 

States president since Abraham Lincoln. 

The Gittings laboratory was a pioneer 

of die transfer prints. In the 1960s, the 

Gittings laboratories were the first to use 

machines from that would develop into the 

“one hour processing.” 

Gittings sold his business in 1987 to Paul 

Skipworth and died in 1989 at the age of 

eighty-nine. The business then was again sold 

in 1998 to Greg Lorfing. 

The Dallas Gittings Studio started in the 

Stoneleigh Hotel Penthouse in the 1930s 

moved to Neiman Marcus downtown in the 

1960s and to Lovers Lane in 1988, and as of 

its eightieth anniversary is located at the 

Village on the Green across from the Galleria 

where it continues its legacy of “capturing 

cherishing moments.” 

A well-known Southern institution, 

Gittings is the “photographer of choice” 

for Texas business leaders, celebrities and 

upscale consumers and its portraits have 

been an institution throughout the South 

since its formation. Like Gittings, the 

Gittings’ staff has photographed many of the 

best known people in Texas and across the 

nation. In fact, Gittings’ clientele resembles a 

“Who’s Who List.” Just a few of these notable 

people are Presidents Johnson, Nixon, 

Ford, Reagan, Bush, Sr., George W. Bush and 

Clinton. They have photographed actors 

Sophia Loren, Princess Grace Kelly, John 

Wayne, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, and Brooke 

Shields. Sports figures Don Meredith, Tom 

Landry, Roger Staubach, Mike Modano, 

Emmitt Smith, Jerry Jones, Byron Nelson, 

and Mickey Mantle are also notable clients. 

Their executive gallery includes board 

members and founders of EDS, Texas 

Instruments, Exxon, Texaco, Pennzoil, 

JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, American Airlines, 

and many Fortune 500 companies. 

Gittings is located at 5301 Alpha Road, 

Suite 52 in Dallas and on the Internet at 

www.gittings.com. 

GITTINGS ® 


A. C. HORN 

& CO. 

Each time you reach for a bag of tortilla 

chips or a tin of caramel coated popcorn or a 

jar of peanut butter, you may have the A.C. 

Horn & Co. to thank! Doug Horn, president 

of A.C. Horn Metal Fabricating Company, 

proudly carries on its three-generation family 

business, having celebrated its centennial in 

2007. Throughout these hundred plus years, 

the business has continually adapted to the 

metal fabricating needs of the time and today 

supplies local, national and global markets. 

Adaptability marks the successful history 

of A.C. Horn & Co. Founded in 1907 under 

the guidance of Albert C. “Butch” Horn, the 

tin shop prospered with familiar Dallas clients 

such as Mrs. Baird’s Bread, the Dallas Morning 

News, Neiman Marcus, and Sanger Brothers, 

by making gutters, downspouts, metal roofs, 

and other specialties. Following the death of 

Butch in 1946, his son A.C. “Ace” Horn 

transformed the tin shop into a precision 

metal fabricator and high-quality equipment 

manufacturer. During Ace’s stewardship, the 

company expanded by supplying a number 

of construction related projects such as 

Trammell Crow industrial buildings, the 

Safeway Distribution Center in Garland, the 

Southland Life Building, and the then 

Republic Bank Tower. Ace also moved the 

company into custom precision fabrication 

of metal parts for numerous clients in the 

manufacturing industry. 

Doug Horn attributes their present success 

not only to the company’s adaptability but 

also to its relationship-driven philosophy. 

Doug says, “Our business is built upon 

relationships. We try to help our customers 

solve their problems. We are continually 

improving our product lines to help our 

clients become more efficient and profitable. 

If problems arise, we stick by our customers 

until they are satisfied.” 

Today the domestic and international food 

processing equipment company provides 

product lines including nut roasters and 

peanut butter mills, nut blanchers and granulators, 

poultry breading systems, Stoneless 

Masa Mills for tortillas and chips, popcorn 

poppers and caramel coating systems, along 

with packaging conveyor systems. 

A.C. Horn also fabricates special order 

metal parts for clients ranging from medical to 

laundry to printing and numerous other 

manufacturing industries. While welding, 

punching, laser cutting, bending, machining 

and powder coating are among the many 

skilled functions of one of Dallas' largest 

metal job shops, their added value is their 

ability to advise and consult with the design 

and engineering of their customers' parts. 

A.C. Horn & Co. is a model of a company 

living by its mission statement: “A.C. Horn & 

Co. strives to achieve the highest standards 

of Excellence and Integrity with our family 

of customers, vendors, and employees. Our 

commitment to these principles will assure 

our long term growth, profitability and 

overall quality of life.” 

Symbolic of its longevity, the original blue 

and white HORN sign still graces the present 

65,000 square foot building at 1269 Majesty, 

near downtown Dallas and on the Internet at 

www.achornco.com. 


FIRST BAPTIST 

DALLAS 

First Baptist Dallas was founded in 1868 

with eleven members, building its first 

structure on the corner of Akard and 

Patterson Streets in downtown Dallas. The 

historic sanctuary was erected in 1890 and 

remains the anchor of the campus that 

today encompasses several city blocks, 

including the original site. First Baptist Dallas 

is based on a rich history of urban Christian 

community development. 

First Baptist Dallas grew in spite of its 

beginnings in a reckless frontier town in the 

1800s. When W. L. Williams and his wife, 

Lucinda, moved to Dallas and saw no Baptist 

church, they were moved with determination 

along with nine others and met in the 

Masonic Lodge at Lamar and Ross. On July 

30, 1868, First Baptist Dallas was born. 

The church moved to its present location 

at San Jacinto and Ervay Streets with 

$500 raised by the women of the 

congregation—the seed money to begin 

building. Offerings eventually increased to 

$6,000 for the first building, the sanctuary 

that stands proudly today. 

Through the years, facilities have been 

built and purchased to extend the church 

campus to several buildings on six city 

blocks. The Spurgeon Harris Building used to 

house the Internal Revenue Service and the 

Ruth Ray Hunt Youth Building was purchased 

from the Salvation Army. Today the Criswell 

Center, completed in 2006, welcomes all to 

the church campus. 

First Baptist Dallas flourished in the 

twentieth century under the leadership of just 

two pastors, Dr. George W. Truett and 

Dr. W. A. Criswell. Evidence of the church’s 

sustained commitment to the city of Dallas 

can be found in its dedication to remain in the 

downtown campus. With the legacy of the 

past and a passion for the future, First Baptist 

Dallas continues to carry on the same 

commitment under the direction of Dr. Robert 

Jeffress, pastor of the 12,000-member church 

since 2007. 

First Baptist Dallas is a church of all 

generations, backgrounds, and life stages 

committed to applying God’s Word to every 

aspect of life. We are a downtown community 

church where people from all over the 

Metroplex come to worship, learn, share 

and serve. 

First Baptist Dallas is located at 1707 

San Jacinto in Dallas and on the Internet at 

www.firstdallas.org. 


INTERIOR 

RESOURCES 

Interior Resources began in October 1975 

when Jack and Merikay Green used their Buick 

Regal as collateral to borrow $2,500 and begin 

their own business. The company started as a 

commercial flooring supplier. 

Their desire to build a successful business 

led them to establish solid relationships 

with designers. Their commercial carpet 

company evolved into a ‘to the trade only’ 

showroom offering exceptional products to 

designers and their elite clientele, both locally 

and internationally. 

Today, their thirteen-thousand-square-foot 

showroom allows Interior Resources to 

display an enormous product selection. Their 

emphasis on exclusive carpet and rug lines of 

the highest qualities available helps designers 

feel comfortable with their purchases. 

Installation of these fine quality products 

by their professional installers achieves the 

company’s goal of satisfying the most 

discerning clientele. 

Custom carpeting and rugs have been a 

large part of Interior Resources’ success. They 

are now designing their 

own patterns with an 

on-staff rendering artist. 

From relationships built 

in China and Nepal, as 

well as the United States, 

Interior Resources is 

importing these custom 

designs directly from 

the manufacturers. This 

progress in their 

business has lead to their 

commitment to the 

RugMark Foundation, 

which supports the education and housing for 

children found working in the weaving mills 

in Tibet. 

Now, a percentage of every hand knotted rug 

purchased in the showroom goes to supporting 

this child-free labor effort. It is wonderful to be 

able to give back to the industry that has 

helped Interior Resources’ success. 

Their local workroom has also contributed 

greatly to the success of the company. Their 

ability to create custom sized broadloom 

rugs by hand-sewing carpeting and borders 

together allows designers flexibility in 

their rug sizes. Also, Interior Resources is 

especially known for creating fabulous 

custom stairways by templating and 

constructing runners for very complicated 

projects, whether the materials are carpeting 

or custom handmade products. 

The sales staff is highly educated and 

experienced to ensure the best customer 

service for designers. All of the employees 

have worked for Interior Resources for more 

than ten years. They are especially proud of 

Dan Morgan and Jo Thompson, who have 

both worked with the company for nearly 

thirty years each. Jack and Merikay’s daughter, 

Paige Sowden, is the rug buyer, as well as 

manager of the showroom’s custom 

department. Recently, their son, Evan Green, 

joined the company to help the direct 

marketing efforts and national accounts. 

Interior Resources is located in the Dallas 

Design District at 1620 Oak Lawn Avenue. 

The company has thirty employees, including 

show-room staff, a rendering artist, sales 

personnel, financial staff, workroom staff, 

and installers. 


The difference between life and death 

for someone who is critically injured or ill comes 

down to time. A delay of a few minutes—or 

even seconds—in receiving medical treatment 

can mean the difference between fulfilling a life’s 

promise and a legacy that ends in tragedy. 

Since 1979, CareFlite ® helicopter, fixed wing, 

ground ambulance and 911/EMS service has 

helped thousands of Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, 

North Texas and Southern Oklahoma residents 

fulfill their life’s promise by dramatically reducing 

the time it takes trauma patients to receive 

the life-saving medical attention they need. 

People like Ray Hubbartt of Alvarado, Texas, 

who, on October 25, 2006, suffered a massive 

heart attack and, believing he was about to die, 

called his son to say goodbye. Ray and his 

wife, Gail, who lived in a rural area south of 

Alvarado, thought they were too far from medical 

care for Ray to survive the trip to a hospital. 

Thanks to their son’s advice, they called 911 

and within minutes CareFlite ® responded. 

Ray might not have survived had CareFlite ® 

not responded so quickly. Not only did 

CareFlite ® transport him to an area hospital, 

EMS workers aboard the helicopter administered 

an EKG, started an IV, and gave him 

emergency medications to stabilize him until 

he reached a hospital. 

Prior to 1979, people like Ray had to travel 

by ground ambulance, often through roads 

choked with traffic, preventing them from 

reaching the care they needed in time. Many 

patients died on the way or suffered irreversible 

damage. On October 1, 1979, visionary leaders 

at Methodist Dallas Medical Center and 

Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital started 

CareFlite ® . CareFlite ® is the oldest joint use air 

medical program in the United States. 

CareFlite ® began with a single helicopter 

that transported twenty patients each month. 

In 1980, it began a ground ambulance division 

to support the helicopters and to provide emergency 

and non-emergency ambulance transportation 

to patients in area hospitals. Today, 

CareFlite operates six air and ten ground 

ambulance bases throughout North Texas and 

is sponsored by Baylor Health Care, JPS Health 

Network, Methodist Health System, Parkland 

Health and Hospital and Texas Health Resources 

(Harris Methodist, Arlington Memorial and 

Presbyterian Hospitals). 

Patients like Robert Cluck MD., a physician 

and mayor of Arlington, Texas, who purchased 

a Harley-Davidson motorcycle to celebrate 

his fifty-fifth birthday. His second time out, 

Robert clipped a guardrail on a rural road and 

slid down a hill, almost severing his arm. Two 

things saved his life that day: the fact that he 

was traveling with friends and the speedy 

arrival of a CareFlite ® helicopter, which transported 

him to Baylor University Medical 

Center. Cluck believes that, because of damage 

to his arm and other injuries, he would not 

have survived had it not been for CareFlite ® . 

Throughout its thirty-year history, CareFlite ® 

has transported more than 80,000 patients by 

air and more than 400,000 by ground 

ambulance, providing millions of dollars in 

uncompensated care and, more importantly, 

helping residents fulfill life’s promise. 

For additional information on CareFlite ® , 

visit www.careflite.org. 

CAREFLITE ® 

✧ 

Above: CareFlite ® landing at the scene of an 

MVA in Hood County. 

Below: CareFlite ® operates ground 

ambulances, helicopter EMS and fixed wing 

air ambulance from sixteen bases across 

North Texas. 


WINFREE 

ACADEMY 

CHARTER 

SCHOOLS 

✧ 

Above: Founder and Superintendent 

Melody Chalkley. 

Below: Winfree students at work. 

Melody Chalkley had a special knack for 

working with the at-risk students that passed 

through her history class in the early to mid 

1990s. This twenty year teaching veteran 

did so well with them, in fact, that her 

classroom became a refuge for students 

struggling to succeed in the traditional public 

school system. 

After watching these students struggle over 

and over again, Melody realized that the 

public school system struggled to help these 

students. She also realized they had nowhere 

else to go, so she decided to apply her skills 

and determination to do something to help. 

Melody quit her job as a public school teacher 

in 1996 and opened a small, private school a 

year later where, as the school’s only teacher, 

she worked with a handful of students. In less 

than two years, she received what was then 

the largest charter cap in state history, and 

Winfree Academy Charter Schools was born. 

Winfree Academy, which serves high 

school students from age fourteen to twentyfive, 

was formed to provide a unique 

educational setting to meet the individual 

needs of promising youth who were either 

not succeeding or did not feel as though 

they were succeeding in a traditional school 

environment. Today’s youth often find 

themselves facing difficult obstacles that 

create difficult barriers standing in the way 

of successful high school completion. Winfree 

works to eliminate barriers and provide an 

individualized academic plan for each student 

to ensure success within a caring and 

nurturing atmosphere. Winfree Academy’s 

mission statement is “to create a supportive, 

safe environment that motivates, educates, 

and trains students so they can graduate 

from high school prepared with the skills 

and abilities needed for higher education, 

employment and life.” 

Winfree Academy is designed to help 

at-risk students navigate the educational and 

personal landmines that derail many of them. 

In response to the growing substance abuse 

problem, Winfree initiated its Courage 

Program that, in 2007, won the Today 

Foundation award as the top anti-drug 

program in Texas. Teen mothers, who 

otherwise would be forced to drop out, attend 

school in a special nursery classroom, where 

they work toward graduation with their 

babies alongside them. Working with students 

to help them solve personal problems also 

plays an important role in the students’ 

academic success. Because of Winfree’s 

unique design and this founder’s vision, the 

program is a success for students who want to 

graduate early and move quickly into college 

as well as students who have simply found 

themselves further and further behind. 

Thanks to innovative programs and 

specially trained educators, Winfree has 

grown to include campuses in Denton, 

Grapevine, Irving, Lewisville, Richardson 

and North Richland Hills with plans for 

expansion. Both its staffing abilities and 

program capabilities have grown along with 

the number of students attending the schools. 

Most importantly, Winfree Academy has 

graduated thousands of students who 

otherwise might have dropped out. Winfree’s 

history proves that it will not stagnate and 

will constantly push itself to grow and find 

better ways to serve the needs of its students. 

Additional information is available on 

Winfree Academy Charter Schools on the 

Internet at www.winfreeacedemy.com. 


The Staubach Company, a national 

and international commercial real 

estate firm, embraced the values of its 

founder Roger Staubach. Roger was a 

football hero at the Naval Academy 

where he won the coveted Heisman 

Trophy. He entered the professional 

arena as quarterback for the Dallas 

Cowboys, a team he would lead to 

four Super Bowls. However, married 

with small children and needing a job 

in the off-season, he became a protégé 

of Henry S. Miller, one of Dallas’ 

premiere real estate leaders. In 1977, 

Staubach formed his own real estate 

company to represent the needs of 

users of commercial real estate, while 

instilling the company with his 

values of teamwork, leadership, and 

personal integrity. 

The Staubach Company flourished 

in Dallas, expanding services to meet the everchanging 

requirements of corporate real estate 

users. In the 1980s, Inc magazine recognized 

The Staubach Company as one of the 500 

fastest-growing firms in the United States. 

Staubach’s service platform continued to grow 

and expand, and areas of expertise included 

site selection, acquisition and disposition, 

financing, design and construction consulting, 

and other outsourcing services. The 

nineties brought about expansion into 

Canada, Europe and Asia. With its unconditional 

guarantee of value, Staubach and his 

company acquired an outstanding reputation 

for delivering exceptional quality throughout 

the entire transaction process. The company’s 

numerous recognitions included one 

of Dallas’ “Best Places to Work” and 

one of Commercial Property News’ 

“Most Powerful Brokerage Firms.” 

The Staubach Company grew into a 

$500 million operation with national 

and international assets. In July of 

2008, The Staubach Company merged 

with Jones Lang LaSalle, a global 

financial and professional services 

firm specializing in real estate with 

2007 global revenue of $2.7 billion 

and approximately 180 corporate 

offices in sixty countries. Roger 

Staubach is now Executive Chairman 

for the Americas. 

The newly combined Staubach 

and Jones Lang LaSalle groups will 

continue to have a very strong Dallas 

presence and will move to their new 

Preston Center office building in the 

spring of 2009. 

THE STAUBACH 

COMPANY 

✧ 

Founder Roger Staubach and former 

quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. 


FRED L. LAKE 

& CO. INC. 

The year was 1889 and Fred L. Lake was 

out of a job and down to his last half-dollar. 

Looking for a way to make some money, Lake 

traded an old Swiss watch to the son of the 

owner of the Dallas Times-Herald for a rubber 

stamp outfit. 

Lake managed to rent a small office in 

an old frame building on Commerce Street 

and began to solicit orders for a new 

company he called the Dallas Engraving & 

Manufacturing Company. 

After walking the streets all day gathering 

orders, Lake would return to the small office 

and work far into the night manufacturing the 

rubber stamps so he could deliver them 

promptly the next morning. 

The small one-man company grew and, by 

1924, was strong enough to attract the attention 

of a local newspaper. The newspaper 

wrote a flattering article that said, in part, 

“Rubber stamps for the banks and larger business 

houses constitute the chief product of the 

company, although its other products are in 

continuous demand. There is hardly a business 

house in Dallas that has not used the 

rubber stamps made by the Lake company.” 

Fred Lake passed away in 1934 and his 

son, J.W. “Johnny” Lake, managed the 

business until his death in the 1950s. His 

wife, Martha Shuffield, ran the business for a 

time until it was acquired by Robert “Bob” 

Shuffield, who ran the stamp operation in 

conjunction with his CPA practice. 

Fred Lake passed on a legacy of excellence 

and creativity that is still very much alive in 

today’s business. The company was owned 

and operated by the Lake family until the 

late 1980s, and was purchased in 1992 by 

David Atwell with the goal of revitalizing 

the business. 

Atwell was so impressed by the company’s 

incredible reputation that he decided to keep 

the name Fred L. Lake & Co. Atwell and 

the company were honored by the Dallas 

Historical Society in 2002 with its 

“Cornerstone Company” designation. 

Today, Fred L. Lake & Co. is located at 

2317 Farrington Street and provides a wide 

range of custom rubber stamps, self-inking 

and pre-inked stamps, date stamps, 

numbering stamps, inspection stamps, 

corporate seals, stock certificates, name plates 

and badges, and embossing seals. 

The aim of Fred L. Lake & Co. is to turn 

each customer into an advocate for the 

company through individualized attention, 

customer service, order accuracy and 

timeliness. The company seeks to win and 

retain long-term customer relationships by 

providing unmatched customer service and 

the very best and latest products available in 

the marketplace. 

The keys to the firm’s longevity and 

success are simple: Sound business 

practices and a philosophy centered around 

customer satisfaction. 

For more information about Fred L. Lake 

& Co., you can visit our website at 

www.fredlake.com. 


STRASBURGER & 

PRICE, L.L.P. 

In 1939 several young, entrepreneurial 

lawyers founded the law firm now known as 

Strasburger & Price, LLP. The firm’s first office 

was located in the historic Magnolia Building 

under the red Pegasus, a symbol of Dallas. 

Over time, others continued the firm’s 

traditions, and shaped it into a full-service, 

client-focused firm for Texas businesses. 

Today, the more than 180 attorneys of 

Strasburger & Price serve as trusted legal 

advisors to local, regional, national and international 

public and privately held companies. 

Henry Strasburger and Hobart Price, 

University of Texas School of Law classmates 

who went to work for another Dallas law firm 

after graduating in 1921, struck out on their 

own with three other attorneys to form 

Strasburger, Price, Holland, Kelton & Miller 

in 1939. They adhered to a philosophy that 

included a code of integrity in all actions, fair 

dealing with opposing counsel, and courtesy 

to all other parties. Strasburger’s theatrical 

courtroom style is legendary and complemented 

Price’s uncanny ability to instantly 

cite legal precedent. Phil Kelton, a graduate of 

Harvard Law School, created the firm’s 

business practice in the 1950s. Mark Martin, 

who joined the firm in 1939 as the lone 

associate, developed a national reputation 

defending lawsuits and built the firm’s 

litigation practice into the largest in Texas 

during the 1950s. By 1977, Strasburger & 

Price had forty-seven attorneys. The firm 

continued to grow between 1990 and 2001 as 

it opened offices and added attorneys in 

Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Mexico City 

and Washington, D.C. To capitalize on growth 

north of Dallas, Strasburger & Price opened a 

Collin County office in 2004. In 2007 the 

firm opened a New York City office to better 

serve its international and specialty clients. 

The firm’s attorneys have established a 

legacy of leadership in the legal profession. 

Strasburger attorneys have served as 

presidents of the Dallas and Austin Bar 

Associations, as State Bar of Texas directors, 

and as officers of the Texas Association 

of Defense Counsel and International 

Association of Defense Counsel. Two partners, 

Mark Martin and Robert Thomas, former 

presidents of the Dallas Bar Association, were 

integral in the acquisition and development of 

the Belo Mansion as its headquarters. 

Dedicated to the communities in which 

it practices, Strasburger & Price supports 

countless charitable and community organizations. 

The firm encourages all employees to 

donate their time and talents to community 

organizations such as: Susan G. Komen for 

the Cure, United Way, March of Dimes, 

MediSend and many others. 

As it has since its founding, Strasburger & 

Price remains committed to its clients, the 

legal profession, and the community at large. 

✧ 

Strasburger & Price employees at the 

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Victory 

Park station. Bob Strauss, a partner in the 

real estate practice, is currently Vice-Chair 

of the DART board of directors. 


SPONSORS 

A. C. Horn & Co. ...............................................................................................................................................................................158 

Aaron Family Jewish Center................................................................................................................................................................113 

American Health Benefits....................................................................................................................................................................130 

Asel Art Supply...................................................................................................................................................................................155 

Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas..........................................................................................................................................150 

Business Brokers Network...................................................................................................................................................................154 

Capital Senior Living ..........................................................................................................................................................................148 

CareFlite ® ...........................................................................................................................................................................................161 

Cavanaugh Flight Museum .................................................................................................................................................................113 

Cedar Hill Economic Development Corporation .................................................................................................................................126 

Central Hardwoods, Inc......................................................................................................................................................................121 

Dallas County Community College District.........................................................................................................................................128 

Dallas County Schools ........................................................................................................................................................................138 

DAVACO ............................................................................................................................................................................................114 

DeHay & Elliston, L.L.P. .....................................................................................................................................................................152 

Ebby Halliday .....................................................................................................................................................................................118 

Eclipsemed, Ltd..................................................................................................................................................................................144 

First Baptist Dallas..............................................................................................................................................................................159 

Fred L. Lake & Co. Inc.......................................................................................................................................................................164 

Freed’s Furniture.................................................................................................................................................................................136 

Gittings ® .............................................................................................................................................................................................157 

Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce ................................................................................................................................................113 

Humphrey & Associates, Inc. .............................................................................................................................................................146 

Hydrotex ® ...........................................................................................................................................................................................132 

Interior Resources...............................................................................................................................................................................160 

Oriental Rug Cleaning Company, Inc. .................................................................................................................................................142 

Padgett Printing ..................................................................................................................................................................................124 

Shake & Shingle Supply, Inc...............................................................................................................................................................156 

Shippers Warehouse, Inc. ...................................................................................................................................................................140 

Southwest Airlines ..............................................................................................................................................................................113 

Sparkman Hillcrest Funeral Home and Memorial Park........................................................................................................................134 

The Staubach Company ......................................................................................................................................................................163 

Strasburger & Price, L.L.P. ..................................................................................................................................................................165 

Thompson & Knight...........................................................................................................................................................................122 

Winfree Academy Charter Schools ......................................................................................................................................................162 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

D AVID 

E. PERRYMAN 

David E. Perryman was born and raised in Dallas, where he attended Greenhill School from preschool through the twelfth grade. A 

former executive speechwriter at EDS and assistant dean of marketing and communications at SMU’s Cox School of Business, he is 

currently director of alumni relations for the School of Medicine at the UT Health Science Center–San Antonio. He has published one 

book, From Humble Beginnings: The First Fifty Years of Greenhill School, along with articles in Newsweek, the Dallas Business Journal, and 

DCEO magazine. He is also author of In the Shade of the Past, a novel, and The Age of Imagination: Growing Up BC, a memoir about growing 

up before computers. Perryman earned a B.A. in English from Wesleyan University and an M.A. in English and creative writing from SMU. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ✧ 167

For more information about the following publications or about publishing your own book, please call 

Historical Publishing Network at 800-749-9790 or visit www.lammertinc.com. 

Black Gold: The Story of Texas Oil & Gas 

Garland: A Contemporary History 

Historic Abilene: An Illustrated History 

Historic Alamance County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Albuquerque: An Illustrated History 

Historic Amarillo: An Illustrated History 

Historic Anchorage: An Illustrated History 

Historic Austin: An Illustrated History 

Historic Baldwin County: A Bicentennial History 

Historic Baton Rouge: An Illustrated History 

Historic Beaufort County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Beaumont: An Illustrated History 

Historic Bexar County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Birmingham: An Illustrated History 

Historic Brazoria County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Charlotte: 

An Illustrated History of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County 

Historic Cheyenne: A History of the Magic City 

Historic Clayton County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Comal County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Corpus Christi: An Illustrated History 

Historic DeKalb County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Denton County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Edmond: An Illustrated History 

Historic El Paso: An Illustrated History 

Historic Erie County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fayette County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fairbanks: An Illustrated History 

Historic Gainesville & Hall County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Gregg County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hampton Roads: Where America Began 

Historic Hancock County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Henry County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hood County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Houston: An Illustrated History 

Historic Illinois: An Illustrated History 

Historic Kern County: 

An Illustrated History of Bakersfield and Kern County 

Historic Lafayette: 

An Illustrated History of Lafayette & Lafayette Parish 

Historic Laredo: 

An Illustrated History of Laredo & Webb County 

Historic Lee County: The Story of Fort Myers & Lee County 

Historic Louisiana: An Illustrated History 

Historic Midland: An Illustrated History 

Historic Montgomery County: 

An Illustrated History of Montgomery County, Texas 

Historic Ocala: The Story of Ocala & Marion County 

Historic Oklahoma: An Illustrated History 

Historic Oklahoma County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Omaha: 

An Illustrated History of Omaha and Douglas County 

Historic Orange County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Ouachita Parish: An Illustrated History 

Historic Paris and Lamar County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pasadena: An Illustrated History 

Historic Passaic County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pennsylvania An Illustrated History 

Historic Philadelphia: An Illustrated History 

Historic Prescott: 

An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County 

Historic Richardson: An Illustrated History 

Historic Rio Grande Valley: An Illustrated History 

Historic Scottsdale: A Life from the Land 

Historic Shelby County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Shreveport-Bossier: 

An Illustrated History of Shreveport & Bossier City 

Historic South Carolina: An Illustrated History 

Historic Smith County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Temple: An Illustrated History 

Historic Texas: An Illustrated History 

Historic Victoria: An Illustrated History 

Historic Tulsa: An Illustrated History 

Historic Williamson County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Wilmington & The Lower Cape Fear: 

An Illustrated History 

Historic York County: An Illustrated History 

Iron, Wood & Water: An Illustrated History of Lake Oswego 

Jefferson Parish: Rich Heritage, Promising Future 

Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community 

Old Orange County Courthouse: A Centennial History 

Plano: An Illustrated Chronicle 

The New Frontier: 

A Contemporary History of Fort Worth & Tarrant County 

The San Gabriel Valley: A 21st Century Portrait 

The Spirit of Collin County 

Valley Places, Valley Faces 

Water, Rails & Oil: Historic Mid & South Jefferson County 


LEADERSHIP 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPONSORS 

ISBN 9781935377061

Big B in Big D: A History of Business in Dallas County

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