Richardson

After incorporating on June 22, 1925, Richardson chose a commission form of government and elected Tom McKamy its first mayor. The town built a public waterworks with a deep artesian well, a water tower and sanitary sewers, and formed a volunteer fire department in 1926. All city streets were paved in the late 1940s. In 1956 voters approved a home rule charter and a council-manager system, and new zoning created industrial parks. Rising tax revenue later paid for a police department, a new city hall, a post office and a library, according to the Handbook of Texas.

What the plaque says

Richardson The town of Richardson can trace its beginning to an earlier community in this area named Breckenridge. Founded in the 1840s by settlers from Kentucky, Tennessee, and other southern states, Breckenridge was located south of present Richardson. In 1873 the Houston and Texas Central Railroad was built through Dallas County, bypassing the town of Breckenridge. The citizens moved north to the rail line and named their new town in honor of railroad contractor E. H. Richardson. Land for a townsite was donated by William J. Wheeler and Bernard Reilly. The new town grew quickly. With its main street facing the railroad tracks, it soon boasted homes, businesses, churches, and schools. By the 1890s Richardson was an important shipping point for area grain and cotton. The town was incorporated in 1925 and Thomas F. McKamy was elected Mayor. The 1930 U. S. Census showed a population of 629. Following World War II, the town's economic base changed from agriculture to electronics and manufacturing. Experiencing rapid growth after the 1950s, Richardson's population had passed 75,000 by 1990. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fair Park — 12 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.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 13 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.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 13 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.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church Richardson — 0.3 mi
• First Baptist Church of Richardson — 0.3 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Richardson — 0.7 mi
• Blewett Cemetery — 0.7 mi