The following information was provided to us by Gil R. Glover's "Dallas View" website.

For additional Dallas Trivia Facts and Information, please visit the "Dallas View" website.
  • The story of Dallas may well be told in two images. William B. Miller migrated from Missouri to the Dallas area in 1846...here is Miller's first cabin. Miller farmed, operated a Trinity River ferry, opened a school, and built an early church in what is now the East Oak Cliff area of Dallas. A few decades later he built Millermore Mansion. Both structures have been moved to Old City Park in Dallas.
  • On average, Dallas is more windy than Chicago - "The Windy City." Chicago's annualized average wind speed is10.4 mph. Dallas averages 10.7 mph for the full year, and has higher wind speed averages in eight of the 12 calendar months.
  • A POW camp was operated at White Rock Lake in Dallas between November 1944 and October 1945. "Camp White Rock Lake" housed about 300 German POWs reportedly captured from General Rommel's Afrika Corps. The POWs were "imprisoned" in a collection of old CCC barracks at Winfrey Point on the lake.
  • Can $246 million and 15 years of work turn an undeveloped river basin into a sparkling chain of flood proof lakes, parks, and hiking trails? On May 2, 1998, Dallas voters approved a massive bond issue to learn what might be done with the mostly lazy but sometimes crazy Trinity River. That's a lot of mud and money to fight over.
  • Dallas' first telephone exchange was opened in 1881 with a capacity of 1200 hand cranked phone connections. Electricity was not available until the following year.
  • A Dallas housewife, Mary Tillery, won the largest quarter slot jackpot in U.S. history in August 1998. After playing less than $20.00 on a progressive jackpot machine at the Flamingo Hilton in Reno, Nevada, Mary got three ducks on the payline which earned her $3,958,376.10.
  • In 1896, the first Dallas golf course was laid out in a cow pasture at Haskell Avenue and Keating Street. This may also be when ball cleaning machines were invented. The course was designed by two Dallasans who had picked up the game while visiting England.
  • Long before the TV series Walker, Texas Ranger began filming in Dallas, a Texas Ranger was on permanent duty at Dallas' Love Field Airport. In 1961, Mr. and Mrs. Earle Wyatt made a gift of a large bronze statue bearing the inscription "One Riot, One Ranger" for display in the airport's new terminal. Famed, Texas born sculptress Waldine Tauch created the piece. The inscription refers to an incident in which a single Texas Ranger was dispatched to quell a riot. On disembarking alone from the train, to the dismay of local authorities, the solo Ranger explained calmly, "One riot...one Ranger."
  • The original Chili's restaurant was opened in Dallas in an old Inter Urban electric rail depot building on Greenville Avenue at Meadow. Chili's is still operating at the same site, although the building was moved back or rebuilt further back from Greenville when it was widened. The Inter Urban line, which connected Dallas to McKinney, Sherman, and Denison, was abandoned. The new DART line is headed north along the Greenville Avenue corridor, and will pass very near the Chili's site.
  • In 1879, with a population of about 10,000 and a very rapid growth rate, Dallas was chosen as the site for the Northern District of Texas Federal Court.
  • Developer Raymond D. Nasher is building a $32 million dollar sculpture garden in the downtown Dallas arts district to display his extensive collection of large modern pieces on a rotating basis. The two acre garden will be situated adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art and just north of the Trammell Crow Center which also features a sculpture garden.
  • The eternal mysteries of love, marriage and divorce were noted quite early in Dallas. In 1846, Charlotte M. Dalton successfully sued Joseph Dalton for the first divorce ever granted by a Dallas County court. Ms. Dalton paid all court costs, and a few hours later married Henderson Crouch, the foreman of the jury that had just heard her case.
  • Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) light rail trains travel in a 3.75 mile tunnel at speeds up to 65 mph between downtown Dallas and Mockingbird Lane. The tunnel is 60 to 120 feet below Central Expressway.
  • As landmarks go, is this a good trade-off? On January 22, 1997, the news in Dallas included both the closing of the H.L. Green department store in downtown Dallas and the completion of a 67.5 foot statue of a giraffe at the Dallas Zoo. The H. L. Green store, located in the historic Wilson Building, had been a shopping stop and meeting place for downtown workers and residents for six decades. The Wilson Building will likely be converted to prime residential space. The giraffe?...well, it should be quite a draw for the Dallas Zoo. It is now the tallest statue of anything in Texas, a full 15 feet taller than "Big Tex" displayed annually at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas.
  • That big green "neon" building that dominates the Dallas skyline at night...is actually lighted by argon. Neon doesn't render that green color. The building is the home of Nations Bank, which was Interfirst, which was...never mind, let's just call it the Argon Tower.
  • The "flying red horse" that has been a Dallas icon for decades is neon lit. The mythological Pegasus image was added atop the Magnolia Petroleum Company building in 1934 when Dallas hosted the American Petroleum Institute convention. The rotating sign is actually two neon horses welded together around a motor assembly which drives the entire structure around a circular track. Long before the more modern buildings, the flying red horse was visible for many miles in all directions. Many long-time Dallasans revere it as THE symbol of Dallas. (Photo by Martin Vandiver.)
  • Dallas had suburbs before it had real urbs. John Neely Bryan, the city's founder, filed a survey which turned out not to be the first one on record for parts of the same section of land. The two surveys differed in claims to acreage and proposed town layouts. Some odd street intersections in downtown Dallas resulted. For example, Thanksgiving Square is actually a triangle bounded by only three streets.
  • Dallas was the host city for two Confederate Veterans reunions, first in 1902 and again in 1925. A Confederate Memorial still stands near the Dallas Convention Center in the Pioneer Park Cemetery. The top figure is a Johnny Reb soldier, and the corner statues are Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Albert Johnston.
  • Dallas is situated a little above 32 degrees north latitude and at about 96 degrees west longitude. A plane trip around the world at Dallas' latitude would take you over Charleston, S.C.; the northern tip of the Bermuda Triangle; Marrakash, Morocco; Tripoli, Libya; the mouth of the Nile on the Mediterranean; Damascus, Syria; Nagasaki, Japan; and San Diego, CA.
  • On a visit to Dallas, Will Rogers was asked what he thought should be done with the Trinity River. "Pave it," he replied. Decades later, the newest set of Trinity River development plans include a new freeway through the length of the Trinity River bottoms in Dallas County.
  • If you just must have hospital care...the view of the Dallas skyline from Methodist Medical Center in north Oak Cliff is incredible, maybe even therapeutic. The shot provided here, looking northeast from the facility, is courtesy of the Methodist Medical Center PR staff.
  • More than 100,000 Muslims live in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, with virtually every race, ethnic group and country in the world represented in the local Muslim population.
  • Melba, Joy, Rialto, Capri, Strand, Majestic, Tower, Palace, Capitol...record labels? Cigarette brands? No, these were large, single screen movie houses that once occupied the Movie Row stretch of Elm Street. Only the Majestic remains, operating now as a performance hall. The Majestic's interior is something no Dallas resident or visitor should miss. (Photo by Dan Hatzenbuehler) It will make you yearn for the good old days, even if you are too young or too old to remember them.
  • About one-third of Dallas' population resides south of the Trinity River and IH30. This mapping designation would include all of Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove, plus lesser known communities that were incorporated into Dallas over the years like Arcadia Park, Fruiliale, Urbandale, Kleberg, Pleasant Mound, and Lisbon.
  • The City of Dallas water supply system can deliver 700 million gallons of water daily through mains ranging from 2"to 96' in diameter. In the incredibly hot, dry 1998 summer, peak usage approached 700 million gallons on several days.
  • In 1929, at the height of Prohibition, Dallas "speakeasy" establishments did huge business. Following publication of an article in Collier magazine which estimated the number of these clubs at more than 100, the Dallas Sheriff tried to enforce "dry laws" by seizing and dumping about 5,000 gallons of bootleg whiskey into the street gutters. Some fool threw a lighted match into the stream of booze, causing a fire that burned up 20 cars and threatened to destroy downtown Dallas.
  • Early Dallas settlers enjoyed plenty of wild game, and saw plenty of wild horses which were a menace to the fragile early settlement and its crops. These wild "Mustang" horses were descendants of those brought to America by early Spanish explorers. The Mustangs of Las Colinas sculpture in Las Colinas, near Irving, can often appear to be moving, especially from certain angles and in certain aspects of light. There must be so many ghosts of wild horses in the Dallas area...maybe the sculpted Mustangs are moving.
  • The cattle drive sculpture in downtown Dallas is far less historically significant. Dallas was never a major trail drive link or rail head...that would be Fort Worth and points west. Some locals argue the sculpture was funded by a Dallas developer to temporarily prevent others from developing the site. Regardless, tourists love the steers roaming through the downtown park.
  • Woodrow Wilson High School in East Dallas has graduated two Heisman trophy winners; Davey O'Brien, Heisman winner at TCU in 1938, and Tim Brown, Heisman winner at Notre Dame in 1987. Brown is currently a star receiver for the Oakland Raiders.
  • Dallas' Fair Park was converted into Camp Dick, an army recruitment and induction camp, during WWI.
  • Dallasans have displayed a voracious appetite for books over the past several decades. For several years in the 50s and 60s, Cokesbury's Bookstore in downtown Dallas sold more books than any other retail bookstore in America, including the largest stores in New York, Chicago, and Boston.
  • The first convenience store in the world was born at Twelfth St. and Edgefield Ave. in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas in 1927 when John J. "Uncle Johnny" Green began stocking bread, milk, eggs, and a few other essentials at his ice dock operation. The ice dock was one of several owned by the Southland Ice Company - later the Southland Corporation - which eventually developed and promoted the "7-11" convenience store chain. (Photo from Southland Corp.)
  • In an average year, Dallas has 191 days of sunshine, 107 of which are rated "clear." The other 174 days are cloudy, 92 of them producing rain, sleet or snow.
  • Why is there both a street and a park called "California Crossing" in northwest Dallas? The 1849 California gold rush brought droves of fortune seekers through the growing community of Dallas. Upon leaving town in well loaded wagons, the travelers had to cross the Trinity River to move on westward. A spot north of town offered both an easy crossing and a detour of several other tributaries lying due west of Dallas. This route was so well traveled it became known as "the California crossing," pictured here as it looks today...the 49ers would have loved the bridge.
  • Dallas founder John Neely Bryan's original dwelling, little more than a mud hut, probably stood within yards of the spot where President John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963.
  • In the early days of Texas, Dallas was considered more an eastern or northern city than a Texas city by many in the southern, central and western reaches of the Lone Star State. This resulted less from pretension on the part of Dallasans than from the impact of migration patterns and the sheer size of Texas. Migration was mainly east to west, so Dallas was being populated by people moving west across the southern tier of states and southwest from the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi river valleys. Dallas is actually closer to St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, and New Orleans, than it is to the far west Texas city of El Paso, and is much nearer Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana than to either Houston or San Antonio.
  • The City of Dallas deploys 3,049 police officers. The Dallas Police Department was organized in 1881 when Union troops controlling the city finally departed. Here are two of the city's finest from the 1880s, courtesy of the Dallas Police Dept. home page where several historical images are available - see link listing.
  • Dallas has always seemed to understand that money follows money. Even the most superficial brochures about Dallas are likely to describe the city as a "banking and financial center." In 1914, Dallas was the smallest city in the country designated a site for a Federal Reserve Bank branch. Civic leaders lobbied tirelessly to get the branch, which more than doubled the city's capital assets. Here's the recently completed new Federal Reserve Bank complex on the north side of downtown Dallas.
  • Before Jack Johnson's reign as boxing's Heavyweight Champion from 1908-1915, he worked as a dishwasher in a cafe on Main St. in downtown Dallas in 1900.
  • Love Field, the in-city Dallas airport that is now home base for Southwest Airlines, was opened in 1917 as a WWI military training field for army aviation units. The city of Dallas then bought Love Field from the military in 1927. However, private money was sunk into the initial development of Love Field before the U.S. military actually had a need for it. Dallas developers always did know how to read the tea leaves.
  • WRR-FM, the only city owned classical music station in the country, began its broadcast life as a Dallas Fire Department dispatching station in the early 1920s.
  • The infamous outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker first paired up in Dallas where both worked during the early depression years. Clyde once worked in a mirror shop on Swiss Avenue in Dallas - probably United Glass and Mirror Company, the only such business listed on Swiss Avenue in the 1932 Dallas "yellow pages." (1932 directory contributed to Dallas View by Sharon Ogan.)
  • Dallas women have always been peerless, and apparently fearless, in their pursuit of style. Another ad from the 1932 Dallas "yellow pages" illustrates "croquinole" , a permanent hair waving technique involving serious heating rods.
  • While the Trinity River meanders through the heart of Dallas, drivers are just as likely to cross White Rock Creek at various points throughout the city without even realizing it. WRC has significant watershed areas that have shaped the development of many communities, parks, and business areas in north and east Dallas. It is also the wet/dry boundary for alcohol sales from about Walnut Hill southeast to C.F. Hahn Fwy. Major crossings in Dallas north of White Rock Lake include, Hillcrest, LBJ Fwy., Forest Ln., Royal, N. Central Expwy., Greenville, Walnut Hill, Fair Oaks, Abrams, Skillman, and E. Northwest Hwy. After being reconstituted in the multi-tiered spillway of White Rock Lake's dam, WRC glides southward to pass under major roadways that include Samuell Blvd., IH30, Military Pkwy., Scyene Rd., and C.F. Hahn Fwy. before emptying into the Trinity River. It would be useful - and cheap enough - for
    the city to mark all these WRC crossings.
  • Some think East Dallas is almost a different city from the rest of Dallas...the oldest parts of it used to be. The City of East Dallas, encompassing over 1400 acres of land, was incorporated in 1882. It was annexed into Dallas in 1889. Take a look at these two beautifully maintained Queen Anne style homes in the historic East Dallas Munger Place neighborhood.
  • Dallas' first professional baseball team was fielded in 1886 as an entry in the Texas League. Not the Rangers, or Spurs, or Eagles, or Rebels...those all came later. We're talking about the 1888 pennant winning Dallas Hams.
  • It is common knowledge that the elaborately ornate Adolphus Hotel, completed in 1915 and still operating in downtown Dallas, was built by Adolphus Busch of the St. Louis beer brewing family. Not as well known is the fact that the Adolphus was the second grand hotel the Busch's built in Dallas. Their first was the Oriental Hotel, completed in 1893 at the corner of Commerce and Akard streets. It sported an Arabesque dome and a luxurious interior which included a Turkish bath. President Teddy Roosevelt stayed at the Oriental in 1905. It was demolished in 1924 to make way for the new Baker Hotel.
  • The Houston Street Viaduct, pictured here in the mid-twenties, still connects downtown Dallas near Reunion Arena to Oak Cliff. This structure was the world's longest concrete bridge at 5,106 feet when it opened for traffic in February, 1922. Built at a total cost of $675,000, this critical span over the Trinity River was one of the best bargains in the history of Dallas' growth and expansion. Traffic still flows one way to Oak Cliff via this link, but now returns to downtown via the newer Jefferson Bridge. The return trip via the Jefferson Bridge provides the skyline view that was used on the opening sequence of the TV show Dallas .
  • Brazil, Canada, Italy, Great Britain, Mexico, El Salvador, Malta, Monaco, and Belgium all maintain Consulates General or Consulate representatives in Dallas. Several other countries, including Israel, Korea, The Bahamas, and The Netherlands have trade, investment, or tourist offices in Dallas.
  • Dallas' topography is flat compared to many other cities, but the terrain is actually low rolling prairie grasslands and narrow, forested valleys formed by the Trinity River and its tributaries, especially White Rock Creek. The elevation in Dallas county ranges from 430 to 750 feet. Here's a Dallas View of the Trinity River Valley where it is joined by White Rock Creek in southeast Dallas that will surprise a lot of people, even some Dallasans. Scyene Rd. runs just below the hill from which this shot was taken.
  • Central Expressway took its name from the old Houston & Texas Central Railroad route through Dallas.
  • Dallas' Fair Park houses the country's largest collection of art deco architecture public buildings in any single location. This entire grouping of massive structures was built for the 1936 Texas Centennial celebration.
  • Bankers are less complicated civic honorees than aviation pioneers. Case in point, Skillman Street, which has long been a major traffic artery and a point of reference for destinations in east and northeast Dallas. But Skillman Street was originally named Lindbergh Boulevard in honor of Charles A. Lindbergh, who made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic in 1927. Lindbergh also visited Dallas the same year in his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis. But his politics did not sit well with Dallasans. As WWII loomed, Lindbergh expressed sympathy for the German people and urged U.S. neutrality. In the late 30s, Lindbergh Boulevard was re-named Skillman Street in honor of W. F. Skillman, a Dallas banker. Lindbergh, of course, went on to fly 50 combat missions in WWII...for the U.S.A.
  • Dallas was founded in 1841, while Texas was still a Republic. Four years later, Dallas residents voted 29 to 3 in favor of Texas' annexation by the United States.
  • Who the hell was Harry Hines? And why did they name that big ol' wild, crazy Dallas street after him? Harry may or may not have had anything to do with the wildness on Harry Hines Blvd., but he was a successful Dallas oilman, what else? Hines also was Texas Highway Commission Chairman from 1935 to 1941.
  • The North Texas area had such limited involvement in Civil War fighting that plantation owners in the Old South states sent slaves to Dallas for "safe keeping" in the face of advancing Union armies. After the war, freed slaves populated several "freedman towns" in and around Dallas, including the well known "Deep Ellum" area of downtown Dallas, the "Little Egypt" area near the current intersection of Abrams and Northwest Highway, and communities in the Lisbon area to the south and Plano to the north.
  • Gunfighter, gambler and guzzler Doc Holliday practiced dentistry in Dallas during the 1870s before heading further west to find lasting fame at the OK Corral.
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