City of Mesquite

Mesquite's postwar fame came from fairs, rodeos and malls. The Mesquite Fair ran from 1922 until 1959, when it merged into the Dallas County Fair. Charlie McNally launched the Mesquite Rodeo in 1946, and Neal Gay and Jim Shoulders bought it in 1957. Big Town mall opened in 1959 as what the Dallas Morning News called the first enclosed, air-conditioned mall in Texas, and Town East Mall followed in 1971. A drive-through safari, the World of Animals, opened in 1970 and closed a few years later. North Mesquite High School opened in 1969 to handle the growth.

What the plaque says

City of Mesquite In May 1873, Texas & Pacific Railroad engineer A.R. Alcott platted a new depot town named Mesquite. The post office opened the following year. The community developed along the rail line, with businesses initially facing Front Street. As the town grew, business owners turned their front doors to Main Street in an effort to create a Town Square. Voters incorporated Mesquite in 1887. In 1903, following a legal challenge, the city re-incorporated with new boundaries. Mesquite, which began with an Agrarian economy, grew rapidly in the second half of the 20th century as a Dallas suburb. The school district, established in 1901, is a draw for new residents, and the city continues to grow. (2004)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fair Park — 9.3 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 9.5 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 11 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 — 12 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.

More markers nearby

• Sam Bass Train Robbery — steps away
• First Methodist Church of Mesquite — steps away
• Site of Galloway Farmstead — 2.9 mi
• Site of Scyene Meeting Place — 3.3 mi