Dallas County

Nobody knows for certain who Dallas was named for. The 1936 plaque credits Vice President George Mifflin Dallas, and a 1986 plaque at the same plaza says possibly. The Handbook of Texas calls the origin of the name unknown and lists three candidates: the vice president; his brother, Navy Commodore Alexander J. Dallas; and Joseph Dallas, who settled near the new town in 1843. The county was created in 1846, and voters made Dallas the permanent seat in 1850 over Hord's Ridge and Cedar Springs.

What the plaque says

Dallas County Dallas County The unincorporated town of Dallas was designated as a post office by the Republic of Texas in 1843. The County of Dallas was created by the first Legislature of Texas on March 30, 1846 from portions of Robertson and Nacogdoches counties. Both city and county were named in honor of George Mifflin Dallas (1792 - 1864) Pennsylvania Democratic statesman who was elected the eleventh vice-president of the United States on a platform favoring Texas annexation. (West limits Dallas, US Hy 80, State Hy 18)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — steps away
  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 — 0.6 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 — 1.2 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 — 2.5 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.

More markers nearby

• John Neely Bryan, 1810-1877 and Margaret Beeman Bryan, 1825-1919 — steps away
• Alexander Cockrell_Sarah Horton Cockrell — steps away
• Site of First Ferry and Bridge — steps away
• A. H. Belo Corporation — 0.2 mi