Jordan-Bowles House

No one is sure when this house went up. The plaque says about 1860, but a City of Grand Prairie landmark study notes a deed to David Jordan dated December 29, 1859, and cites researcher Eugene George suggesting a date before 1850 or after 1859. It was a double house, two main rooms divided by an open hall, built of bois d'arc, oak, cedar and cypress. The study calls the stage stand and store probable, not documented, and mentions no Sam Bass holdup. Victor Bowles bought the property in 1886, a second city study says.

What the plaque says

Jordan-Bowles House Built about 1860 of hand-hewn logs from bottomland of Trinity River. The builder, David Jordan (1808 -79), came to Texas about 1859, moving his household by wagon from Tennessee. A farmer, he also kept a store and a stage stand on the Dallas-Fort Worth Road. At that time Indian raids were frequent, and the outlaw gang of Sam Bass was suspected of committing an 1870 hold-up here. In 1886 Victor Bowles bought property, which remained in his family for 65 years. Miss Minnie Bowles remodeled house in 1948 and in 1951 donated it to city. Now museum and meeting place. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 8.5 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 — 9.1 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 — 9.7 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.

More markers nearby

• Jordan-Hight Family Cemetery — 0.2 mi
• Dr. H. V. Copeland Home — 2.6 mi
• Eagle Ford Community — 3.6 mi
• First Baptist Church of Irving — 3.9 mi