City of Rowlett

Rowlett stayed small for decades. The Handbook of Texas gives it a population of 200 by 1892 and 350 by 1896, falling back to 200 by 1914, with electrical service arriving in 1924. In 1952 it incorporated with 250 people and ten businesses after eighty-four citizens voted unanimously. Everything changed when Lake Ray Hubbard was finished in 1971. A building boom took the town past 1,600 people by 1973, and by 1990 it had grown to 23,260. The lake now borders it on three sides, giving Rowlett more than thirty miles of shoreline.

What the plaque says

City of Rowlett Rowlett was first known as Morris, the name given to the post office that was established here in 1880. Austin Morris served as the first postmaster. In 1889, three years after the Greenville & Dallas Railroad (later the MK&T) was built through town, the post office's name was changed to Rowlett. Although the origin of the name is not clear, it may have come from Daniel Owen Rowlett, an early Texas settler who was a surveyor for Mercer's Colony. By the turn of the century, Rowlett had two doctors, a cotton gin, three general stores, a barber shop, blacksmith shop, two churches, a depot, and the post office. Additionally, by 1912 it boasted a bank, a telephone exchange, and a two-story school building. Many more businesses, including a newspaper (the "Rowlett News"), had begun in the town by 1937. The citizens of Rowlett voted to incorporate in 1952, and growth has continued throughout the 20th century. Lake Ray Hubbard, Dallas' chief source of water, was completed in 1971 and borders Rowlett on its east, south, and west sides. The history of the northeastern Dallas County town is a good reflection of the settlement patterns in this part of the state. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 6.9 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 14 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 — 14 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 — 16 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.

More markers nearby

• Sacred Heart Catholic Church of Rowlett — 2.3 mi
• Garland Lodge No. 441, A.F. & A.M. — 3.9 mi
• Garland — 4.4 mi
• First Christian Church of Garland — 4.5 mi