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Introduction
Dallas (Texas), city in
north central Texas. Located on
the Trinity River, Dallas is the
seat of Dallas County and also
lies partly in Collin, Denton,
and Kaufman counties. The second
largest city in Texas (after
Houston) and the eighth largest
city in the United States at the
time of the 2000 census, Dallas
is the center of the largest
consolidated metropolitan area
in the state. Historically,
Dallas has been the
transportation and marketing
center for the north Texas area.
It has evolved into a major
center of finance, commerce,
trade, and manufacturing for the
southwestern United States and
Mexico. The terrain is mostly
flat and drains into the Trinity
River. The climate is
continental, with hot summers
and moderately cold winters. The
city was probably named for
George Mifflin Dallas, vice
president of the United States
(1845-1849), although the exact
origin of the name is
undetermined and historians have
also suggested his brother,
Commodore Alexander J. Dallas of
the United States Navy, and
Joseph Dallas, who settled in
the area in 1842, as possible
namesakes for the city.
Dallas
and Its Metropolitan
Area
The city of Dallas
extends over a land area
of 885.5 sq km (341.9 sq
mi). The Dallas
metropolitan area is
made up of the counties
of Collin, Dallas,
Denton, Ellis,
Henderson, Hunt,
Kaufman, and Rockwall.
In addition to Dallas,
cities with more than
100,000 in population in
the area are Garland,
Irving, Mesquite, and
Plano. Dallas is also
part of the Dallas/Fort
Worth Consolidated
Metropolitan Statistical
Area, also known as the
Metroplex. In addition
to Dallas and Fort
Worth, the Metroplex
includes Arlington and
more than 80 other towns
and communities.
The city of Dallas
has sprawled into
nearby counties,
growing primarily to
the north and west.
The downtown is
known for its
distinctive
contemporary
architecture. Near
the commercial
center of the city
is the West End
Historic District, a
group of
19th-century
warehouses converted
into shops and
restaurants. Also
nearby is the Deep
Ellum (Elm) area,
which was a thriving
center of businesses
owned by black
Americans from the
time of the Civil
War (1861-1865)
until the 1930s.
This neighborhood
now contains clubs,
restaurants, and
galleries.
The city’s
historic sites
include Fair
Park, the
largest art deco
art and
architecture
district in the
world and a
National
Historic
Landmark,
located east of
downtown; and
Dealey Plaza,
the site of the
assassination in
1963 of
President John
F. Kennedy and a
National
Historic
Landmark
District,
located
downtown. Other
sites are the
John F. Kennedy
Memorial,
designed by
American
architect Philip
C. Johnson; the
former county
courthouse,
designed in the
Romanesque
architectural
style; the
present
courthouse and
downtown
library,
designed by
Chinese American
architect I. M.
Pei; the Sixth
Floor of the
former Texas
School Book
Depository, from
which Lee Harvey
Oswald allegedly
shot Kennedy;
and Old City
Park, the site
of Dallas’s
oldest public
park and now a
museum of the
architectural
and cultural
history of the
city and region.
Economy
The
Dallas
area
suffered
an
economic
downturn
in the
1980s,
but it
rebounded
in the
1990s,
posting
the
strongest
employment
growth
in the
state in
1994.
The city
has a
diversified
economic
base.
Service
industries,
including
trade,
make up
the
city’s
most
important
economic
sector,
followed
by
manufacturing.
Dallas
remains
an
important
distribution,
financial,
and
insurance
center
of the
Southwest.
It is
the site
of a
district
Federal
Reserve
bank and
the
headquarters
of a
number
of
federal
regional
offices
and
large
insurance
and oil
companies.
Among
the
area’s
most
important
manufactures
are
technology-related
products,
including
computers,
biomedical
products,
and
electronics.
Dallas
has the
largest
concentration
of trade
facilities
in the
South
and
Southwest.
Its
location
in the
north
central
part of
the
state
and its
dense
network
of
railroads
and
highways
enable
it to
serve as
the
shipping
center
for the
agricultural
and
mineral
products
of the
surrounding
region,
including
cotton,
cereals,
livestock,
fruit,
petroleum,
and
natural
gas.
The
passage
of
the
North
American
Free
Trade
Agreement
(NAFTA)
in
1994
was
expected
to
bring
increased
trade
with
Mexico.
Scheduled
air
service
is
through
two
airports,
including
the
Dallas-Fort
Worth
International
Airport,
which
is
one
of
the
busiest
in
the
United
States.
Population
Dallas’s population was 1,006,877 in 1990; by 2000 it had reached 1,188,580. According to the 2000 census, whites constitute 50.8 percent of the population of Dallas; blacks, 25.9 percent; Asians, 2.7 percent; and Native Americans, 0.5 percent. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders numbered 590. People of mixed heritage or not reporting race were 20 percent of the population; Hispanics, who may be of any race, represent 35.6 percent.
The dominant demographic factor in Dallas, as in the state as a whole, has been the rapid growth of the Hispanic population. The Dallas metropolitan area grew from 2,055,000 in 1980 to 3,519,176 in 2000, with the number of Hispanics nearly tripling to 21.5 percent of the 2000 population. Whites, at 69.5 percent, and blacks, at 13.8 percent, are the two largest racial groups in the metropolitan region.
Education and Culture
Dallas has long prided itself on being the center of culture in northern Texas. Institutions of higher learning include Southern Methodist University (founded in 1911); Paul Quinn College (1872), a historically black private institution that moved from Waco in 1990; the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (1943); Baylor College of Dentistry (1905); Baylor School of Nursing (1909); Dallas Baptist University (1965); Dallas Christian College (1950); Dallas Theological Seminary (1924); and several campuses of Dallas County Community College (1965). Located in the surrounding metropolitan area are more than a dozen other universities and colleges, including the University of Texas at Dallas (1969), in Richardson, the University of Dallas (1956), in Irving, and the University of North Texas (1890), in Denton.
Dallas is the home of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (founded in 1900) and the Dallas Opera (1957). The symphony performs in the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, designed by I. M. Pei. The building is in the Dallas Arts District, also the location of the Dallas Museum of Art (1984), which was designed by American architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Among the numerous other museums in the city are the Dallas Museum of Natural History (1936) and the African American Museum (1974), both in Fair Park.
Besides the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, other cultural organizations in the city include the Dallas Jazz Orchestra, the Classical Guitar Society, the Dallas Shakespeare Festival, the Dallas Chamber Orchestra, and the Dallas Black Dance Theater. The Dallas Theater Center was founded in 1955 and contains two venues: The Kalita Humphreys Theater, which is housed in a building designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Arts District Theater. Other important theatrical venues include Theater Three, Teatro Dallas, and the Dallas Children’s Theater. The Starplex Amphitheatre is the site of concerts.
Recreation
Dallas contains more than 400 parks that cover a total of about 20,000 hectares (about 50,000 acres). Notable parks include Marsalis Park, which contains the Dallas Zoo, and the parks surrounding White Rock Lake, Bachman Lake, and Lake Cliff. City-owned greenbelts parallel White Rock Creek, Turtle Creek, and the Trinity River. Fair Park contains a number of museums, the city aquarium, and the Cotton Bowl stadium (the site of the annual Cotton Bowl college football game), as well as the fairgrounds and exposition halls that are the site of the annual State Fair of Texas. The Dallas Cowboys professional football team plays at Texas Stadium in Irving; the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team and the Dallas Stars professional hockey team play at the American Airlines Center; and the Texas Rangers major league baseball team plays at the nearby Ballpark in Arlington.
Government
Dallas’s council-manager form of government consists of a 14-person council elected from single districts for two-year terms, a mayor elected in citywide elections for a four-year term, and a manager hired by the council to administer the government.
History
French traders had contact with the Anadarko people in the area around Dallas in the 1700s. In 1841 John Neely Bryan founded a trading post on the east bank of the Trinity River, near the junction of two Native American trails. Bryan was unaware that he had settled on land granted by the Texas republic to an immigration company, but he eventually legalized his claim. The extensive promotion efforts of the company brought settlers to the area, and in 1844 a townsite was laid out. The town was incorporated in 1856, and in the late 1850s, the collapse of a nearby cooperative community, La Réunion, augmented the population and added skilled European craftspeople to the workforce. In March 1861 Texas seceded from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Dallas served as a supply and storage post for the state. After the war ended, freed slaves flocked to Texas and founded a freedmen’s town on the outskirts of Dallas. By 1870, the year Texas was readmitted to the Union, Dallas had a population of about 3,000.
Dallas grew steadily for the next 30 years. The successful lobbying for two railroads, the Houston and Texas Central in 1872 and the Texas and Pacific in 1873, initiated this growth. As a rail crossroads, Dallas became a regional transport center for products headed to Northern and Eastern manufacturing centers. Cotton became the principal source of income, but the city also attracted merchants and banking and insurance companies eager to exploit available transportation and communication facilities. Throughout this period, business and political leaders forged close ties, thus shaping the character of the city and guiding its economic direction. By 1890 Dallas had 38,067 residents and was the largest city in the state.
The Panic of 1893, a national economic crisis, slowed the city’s business development. Dallas recovered with the increase in agricultural prices in the early 20th century, and doubled its size with the annexation of Oak Cliff and other areas. In the century’s second decade, Dallas began implementing an urban design plan created by George Kessler, a city engineer. The Kessler Plan connected Oak Cliff and Dallas, established greenbelts, and attempted to chart and direct urban growth. Control of the Trinity River also took a high priority. The city built levees and steel viaducts, and in a massive engineering project, the river channel was moved, straightened, and confined for flood control. The Great Depression of the 1930s had a severe impact on Dallas, but the crisis was partially alleviated by the discovery of the East Texas oil fields, which made Dallas a center of the petroleum business. Oil and the booming defense industry during World War II (1939-1945) stimulated growth and helped Dallas to diversify its economy.
Dallas won a reputation as a politically ultraconservative city in the 1950s. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza was a shock to the residents of Dallas and moderated somewhat the city’s politics. Nevertheless segregation continued in the city, and the flight of white residents from the inner city intensified racial animosities. The city prospered economically with the rising oil prices of the 1970s and the resulting construction boom. The collapse of oil prices in the 1980s, the failure of many local savings and loan institutions, and the resulting collapse in real estate prices caused the city to tumble into an economic depression. Dallas civic leaders launched an economic program that included renovating part of the downtown area and attracting new industries. The city leadership also worked hard at smoothing racial tensions, which remained despite sizable growth in minority populations and improved sensitivity on the part of white leaders. Although Dallas was one of the last major cities to recover from Texas’s mid-1980s economic collapse, the strength of its basic economy, its geographic location, and the recovery of the state economy ultimately combined to slow the economic decline in the Dallas region. Dallas Photo Gallery
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