City of Dallas

Dallas in 1860 was a town of 678 people, and the Handbook of Texas counts ninety-seven of them as enslaved African Americans, living alongside French, Belgians, Swiss and Germans, many of them skilled craftsmen who arrived with the breakup of the La Réunion colony. In 1861 Dallas voters chose secession, 741 to 237, and the town became one of eleven quartermaster and commissary posts for the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Army. After the war, freed people flocked to the city in search of jobs.

What the plaque says

City of Dallas City of Dallas Pioneer John Neely Bryan (1810 - 1877) settled on the banks of the Trinity River just west of this site in 1841. A town he called Dallas grew up around his cabin. Chosen as county seat four years after the creation of Dallas County in 1846, the City of Dallas was incorporated in 1856, with Dr. Sam B. Pryor serving as first Mayor. Although John Neely Bryan had anticipated that river navigation would lead to growth for the city, it was the arrival of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in 1872 and the Texas and Pacific Rail Line the following year that helped to establish Dallas as a major commercial center. By 1890, Dallas was the state's most populous city. Wheat and cotton production provided impetus for continued growth. Insurance and banking also contributed to the city's prosperity, and its selection as the site for a regional Federal Reserve Bank in 1914 was an economic milestone. Following the discovery of oil in East Texas in 1930, Dallas banks concentrated on providing financial services for that industry. Noted throughout its history for aggressive civic leaders, Dallas won the right to host the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 0.6 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 0.7 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 0.7 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 1.9 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Crockett, John McClannahan — 0.2 mi
• Nicholas Henry Darnell — 0.2 mi
• Browder Springs — 0.5 mi
• Cherokees in Dallas — 0.5 mi