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

Thank you for your interest in this HPNbooks publication. For more information about other
HPNbooks publications, or information about producing your own book with us, please visit www.hpnbooks.com.

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
4 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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
6 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
8 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

✧
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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,
10 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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
12 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
Citizens of Dallas enjoyed picnics on the H. A. Harvey,
Jr. steamboat during their leisurely voyages up and down
the Trinity River.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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
14 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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,
16 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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
18 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
20 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

✧
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
Huey & Philp Hardware was one of the city’s early
retail icons.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
22 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
The Sanger Bros. monthly magazine was one of the
innovative ways the company advertised products and
differentiated itself from the competition.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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
24 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
26 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

✧
Wagons containing the fall’s cotton harvest lined up on Elm Street near Poydras, 1900. (Dallas Then & Now)
COURTESY OF HAMILTON’S HISTORIC DALLAS/BRAD HAMILTON.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
28 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

✧
The city’s early electric streetcars vied with mule-drawn carts for space on the dusty streets of Dallas.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
Posters offered Dallas citizens instructions about how to get off streetcars safely.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
30 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

$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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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
32 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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)
COURTESY OF HAMILTON’S HISTORIC DALLAS/BRAD HAMILTON.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
34 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

✧
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
36 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
✧
Wharton Motors at 704 Main Street was one of the early
dealerships established in town to meet the growing
demand for automobiles.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
38 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
40 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
42 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
46 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

✧
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
48 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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
in 1920. 12
✧
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
The Washington Theater was another theater that
emerged along Elm Street as citizens’ interest in
vaudeville shifted to motion pictures.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
50 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
✧
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
AFRICAN- AMERICAN
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
52 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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
54 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
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
56 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

✧
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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
58 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
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,
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
60 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
COURTESY OF THE DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
✧
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)
COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIONS OF THE TEXAS/DALLAS HISTORY AND
ARCHIVES DIVISION, DALLAS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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.
62 ✧ B IG B IN BIG D

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