City of Irving

Irving stayed a farm town for its first four decades, then changed almost overnight. The Handbook of Texas says it had 2,615 people in 1950 and 45,895 by 1960, as farmland went to builders meeting the postwar housing shortage, and 100,996 by 1970. Before that, growers worked small truck farms and raised dairy cattle and poultry. The Handbook calls a trucking terminal built in 1964 the world's largest. The University of Dallas was founded in 1956, and the Dallas Cowboys played at Texas Stadium from 1971 to 2008, bringing the city its first national recognition.

What the plaque says

City of Irving Permanent settlement in this part of Dallas County began before the Civil War with the establishment of small farming communities and supply centers. In the early years of the 20th century, while working on the construction of the Rock Island Railroad extension from Fort Worth to Dallas, two members of the survey party--its chief, J. O. Schulze, and a surveyor, Otis Brown--purchased just over 80 acres of land from pioneer farmer H. W. Britain. Soon they had platted a townsite, which they named Irving. On December 19, 1903, Schulze and Brown held a barbecue and auction for the sale of town lots. The first issue of the Irving "Index" was distributed to those in attendance. Approximately 40 lots were sold, and construction of buildings soon began. The post office, which had been located at Kit, moved to Irving in 1904. Co-founder Otis Brown served as Irving's first mayor after the town was incorporated in 1914. Over the years Irving grew to be a modest suburb of Dallas. With the construction of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, Texas Stadium, and the Las Colinas Business Park, Irving experienced major economic growth during the last quarter of the 20th century. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 8.9 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.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 9.2 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 10 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.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 11 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

• First Baptist Church of Irving — 0.6 mi
• Daniel Webster Gilbert, M. D. — 2.2 mi
• Jordan-Hight Family Cemetery — 3.9 mi
• California Crossing — 4.0 mi