Dr. H. V. Copeland Home

Grand Prairie was still settling on a name when this house went up. The Handbook of Texas says the railroad had called the stop Grand Prairie since 1873, while the post office used Dechman or Deckman until 1877. A. M. Dechman had platted the townsite and given the Texas and Pacific alternating lots in exchange for a depot. The story goes that a woman stepping off the train exclaimed, 'What a grand prairie!' The town incorporated in 1902, the year the Hales built the house, and the Interurban began service within a few years.

What the plaque says

Dr. H. V. Copeland Home Dr. H. V. Copeland Home Early Grand Prairie resident Barney P. Hale and his wife Ruth built this home for their family in 1902. The white clapboard residence, which features narrow windows and a high-pitched roof, is typical of early area farmhouses. In 1908 the Hales sold their home to local physician Dr. Horace Victor Copeland (1875 - 1969). A native of the pioneer Watson Community in Tarrant County, now part of the City of Arlington, Dr. Copeland was educated at Barnes University in St. Louis and Fort Worth University, where he graduated with a medical degree in 1901. After practicing medicine in Euless for a year, he moved to Grand Prairie, then a small railroad town of 500 people. Here he served residents of the surrounding rural area, often making calls on horseback. During his local medical career, which spanned more than fifty years, he delivered over 4,000 babies. Dr. Copeland was a prominent community leader and was active in the First Presbyterian Church and the Sam R. Hamilton Masonic Lodge. He and his wife Frances Willard Watson Copeland were the parents of two children, Frances and H. Victor. Following Dr. Copeland's death in 1969 the family home was owned by a grandson, Wayne Noble Doyal. 1982

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 7.9 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 12 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 — 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 13 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

• Ford Cemetery — 3.8 mi
• Cable Tool Rig — 3.9 mi
• Narrow Gauge Railway — 3.9 mi
• Cross Timbers — 4.5 mi