 Facts at a Glance
Area: 330 sq miles (850 sq km)
Population: 1.1 million
Elevation: 595ft (180m)
State: Texas
Time zone: Central Time (GMT/UTC minus 6 hours)
Telephone area code: 214
 History
In 1839, John Neely Bryan, a Tennessee lawyer with a healthy case of wanderlust, stumbled onto the three forks of the Trinity River, a site he thought had the makings of a good trading post and maybe a town. Bryan eventually built a cabin and sketched out a town. Dallas County was created in 1846, and both city and town were probably named for George Mifflin Dallas, a Pennsylvanian who served as US vice president under James Polk.
Dallas grew slowly for the next 30 years, though not for a lack of trying. From its start, Dallas has had a flair for self promotion, and Bryan saw to it the city was placed on maps before there was much of a town. A group of French artists and intellectuals arrived in the 1850s to establish an artists' colony known as La Réunion just west of the fledgling city. The community did not last, but some of its members stayed, their presence giving Dallas a sophisticated edge on the frontier.
In the 1870s, at a Dallas legislator's suggestion, the state decided Dallas would be the junction for the north-south Missouri, Kansas & Texas rail line and the east-west Texas & Pacific Railroad. The first train arrived in 1872, sparking a boom that ensured Dallas' preeminence as a trade center. Merchants from New York, Chicago, Boston and St Louis invested heavily in the city. By 1920, with cotton prices soaring, land values had climbed to $300 an acre. And when the East Texas Oil Field was struck 100 miles east in 1930, Dallas became the financial center for the oil industry.
In the post-WWII era, Dallas continued to build on its reputation as a citadel of commerce. The 1950s were marked by the rise of pioneering high-tech company Texas Instruments, creators of many advances including the integrated circuit computer chip, the first single-chip microprocessor and the first electronic hand-held calculator.
Dallas' image took a dive when President John F Kennedy was assassinated during a November 1963 visit to the city. Gradually, however, the city reclaimed its Texas swagger with help from a few new chest-thumping sources of civic pride. The Dallas Cowboys won the first of five Super Bowl titles in 1972, and their success on the field - coupled with the popularity of the skimpily attired Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders - helped earn the Cowboys the unofficial title of 'America's Team.'
DFW International Airport opened in 1973, and the city hosted the 1984 Republican National Convention. And then came that little ol' namesake TV show, the top-rated series in the US from 1980 to 1982. The long hot summer of '98 again brought Dallas into the news, with temperatures of at least 100°F (38°C) for 29 consecutive days, widespread crop failures and over 100 deaths.
Dallas' summers are hot and its winters cool, making spring and fall months the best times to visit. Spring and fall are also the peaks of the festival season in Dallas and neighboring towns, offering hearty Texas helpings of art, barbecue, music, rodeo and tall tales.
 Orientation
Dallas is in northeastern Texas, the most central and southly state in the US. Mexico borders Texas' entire southwestern border; the Gulf of Mexico is the state's southeastern border. Dallas is at the convergence of about a dozen major highways and easy to access from all points of the compass. Houston is 245 miles (395km) south via I-45; Austin and San Antonio are respectively 195 and 280 miles (315 and 450km) southwest via I-35.
Although not as sprawling as Los Angeles or even Houston, Dallas covers a lot of ground. The Trinity River flows through the heart of town. I-30 is the major east-west thoroughfare and the primary route to nearby Arlington and Fort Worth. I-20 is the other east-west highway, traveling across the southern reaches of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Downtown Dallas is just east of the junction of I-30 and I-35. Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport is 16 miles (26km) northwest of downtown.
Sixth Floor Museum
Dallas will forever be known as the city where President John F Kennedy was shot, and the sites associated with his death are among Dallas' most visited attractions. If you have time to visit only one, make it the Sixth Floor Museum, a thoughtful, comprehensive tribute to the life, death and legacy of JFK. Located in the former Texas School Book Depository, this museum feels frozen in time, from the go-go days of 1960, when JFK proclaimed in his inaugural address, 'Let the word go forth ... that the torch has been passed to a new generation,' to the tempestuous times that followed.
With that background in place, the museum explains in minute-by-minute detail the events of 22 November 1963. Artifacts include the original layout for the front page of that afternoon's Dallas Times Herald, stills from the famous home movie filmed by Abraham Zapruder, a teletype machine endlessly reprinting the first report of the murder and an FBI model of the assassination site. But the most evocative exhibit is the corner window overlooking Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll and the triple underpass: the same vista suspected gunman Lee Harvey Oswald had on that fateful November day.
Polls have repeatedly shown that less than 15% of Americans believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, making the maverick Conspiracy Museum an intriguing foil to the Sixth Floor Museum. The Conspiracy Museum posits that Kennedy's assassination was a coup d'état to shore up the military-industrial complex that had been gaining strength in the US since WWII, and that the same people and forces that killed Kennedy were later responsible for the deaths of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick friend Mary Jo Kopechne (Ted himself was the real target) and the 269 people aboard Korean Airlines Flight 007, shot down in 1983. The museum also delves into other assassinations from history, including those of American presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley.
Dallas Arts District
In the Dallas Arts District, a 60 acre (24ha) section north of downtown dedicated to the fine and performing arts, you'll find landmarks such as the dramatic IM Pei-designed Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center; the Trammel Crow Center Pavilion, with exhibition and performance spaces; and the Dallas Theater Center. Sometime early in the 21st century, the open space between DMA and the Meyerson Center will be transformed into a sculpture garden showcasing the world's greatest privately held sculpture collection, which will be the crowning touch of an arts district that puts Dallas in the big leagues among US art centers.
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), anchor of the Arts District, is divided into five sections: the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and Contemporary Art. The collection's highlights include Very Ugly by Frida Kahlo, Sleepy Baby by Mary Cassatt, The Icebergs by Frederic Edwin Church, Monet's 1908 Water Lilies and more pieces by Piet Mondrian than any other US museum. A special gallery recreates the French Riviera villa of art patrons Wendy and Emery Reves, originally built in 1927 by the Duke of Westminster for Coco Chanel. The Reves' collection on display includes works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and Manet, as well as by Winston Churchill, a good friend of the couple.
Southeast of downtown Dallas, Fair Park was created in 1936 when Dallas hosted the Texas Centennial Exposition. Today, more than 3 million people attend Fair Park's annual Texas State Fair, one of the largest in the US, in September and October. Aside from being a great place to party, picnic or stretch your legs, Fair Park has a couple of knockout museums: the hands-on Science Place bills itself as 'an amusement park for your brain.' Attractions include robotic dinosaurs, a medical gallery featuring a human brain and real beating heart, plus a planetarium and IMAX theater. The African-American Museum is one of the best museums of its kind, with exhibits richly detailing the art and history of blacks from pre-slavery Africa through today.
Fair Park is full of superb 1930s art deco architecture, but nothing is quite as inspired as the Hall of State, a tribute to all things Texan. The Hall of Heroes pays homage to such luminaries as Stephen F Austin and Sam Houston, while the Great Hall of Texas features a 25ft (8m) state seal and murals depicting Texas history from the 16th century onward.
A renovated warehouse district just three blocks east of downtown, Deep Ellum has long been Dallas' headquarters for live music - first the blues and now rock, jazz, alternative, Latin and country, too. At the turn of the century, the district was the center of Dallas' black community. Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson are just two of the blues artists who made their mark in Deep Ellum during the 1920s and 1930s.
 Off the Beaten Track
Fort Worth
Dallas and its twin, Fort Worth, anchor a region of more than 4.8 million people, the most populous in Texas. Although the cities are only 30 miles (48km) apart, closely linked by growth and geography, they offer two distinct takes on the Texas experience. If Dallas is skyscrapers, Fort Worth is streetscapes: the awesome mural of the Chisholm Trail (the famous cattle trail that once wound from San Antonio, Texas, north to Abilene, Kansas) at Sundance Square, the hitching posts of the Stockyards, the cobblestones of old Camp Bowie Blvd. Fort Worth is proud of its Cowtown nickname, but the livestock industry is just a small part of what's happening here these days.
Fort Worth found fame during the great open-range cattle drives, which lasted from the 1860s to the 1880s. More than 10 million head of cattle trooped through the city during the Chisholm Trail days. When the railroad arrived in 1873, stockyards were established at Fort Worth and many drovers chose to end the trek here. Outlaws Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Longbaugh - better known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - spent a lot of time hiding out in a part of downtown known as Hell's Half Acre; Depression-era hold-up artists Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow also spent time in the city. Most of the mayhem of Fort Worth's wild days, however, came from rank-and-file cowboys who boozed and brawled through town, giving Fort Worth a far different image than that of God-fearing Dallas. The cattle business remained the top industry in Fort Worth through the 1920s, even as major finds in nearby fields turned the city into an important operations center for the oil industry.
For years the heart of Fort Worth, the Stockyards National Historic District remains popular with visitors and residents. What was once the center of the ranching industry is now mostly an entertainment and shopping district, though a bit of cattle business still takes place. Known as 'Wall Street of the West,' the Fort Worth Livestock Exchange includes a museum of photos and memorabilia from the heyday of Fort Worth's cattle industry.
Sundance Square, a 14-block area, is one of the most vibrant downtown districts in Texas. The renaissance started in the early 1980s with the openings of the Worthington Hotel and the Caravan of Dreams nightclub, and it continues with a constant influx of new restaurants, shops, colorful street-level architecture and plenty of public art - most notably the trompe l'oeil Chisholm Trail mural.
Most visitors to Fort Worth arrive at DFW International Airport, 17 miles (27km) east of Fort Worth, but Fort Worth Meacham Airport is a good alternative for in-state travel from Austin, Houston and San Antonio. Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains also service Fort Worth, 30 miles (48km) west of Dallas via I-30. A bus ride between the two takes less than an hour.
One of the oldest and biggest US theme parks, Six Flags Over Texas can be a lot of fun or a wretched drag - it all depends on how crowded the place is when you go. Home to the hot new ride, Mr Freeze - the tallest and fastest roller coaster in Texas - the park's about a 20-minute drive southwest of downtown Dallas.
The green sweep of sun-dappled grass at the Ballpark in Arlington is so beautiful it just might bring tears to your eyes. Opened in 1994, the ballpark is an imposing neo-Romanesque structure designed to include plenty of stone carvings of longhorn steer and the Texas lone star emblem. Home to the Texas Rangers baseball team, the stadium offers tours of the dugout, batting cages and press box, and on non-game days you can also see the clubhouse, with its terrific collection of baseball movie posters, and peek into the big-league ball players' inner sanctum.
From Babe Ruth's jersey to Willie Mays' shoes, the stadium's stellar Legends of the Game Museum includes the largest collection of memorabilia ever loaned by the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum at Cooperstown, New York. Upstairs, a learning center puts a fun baseball spin on math, science, geography and more.
Kitsch addicts and fans of the TV show Dallas will enjoy a pilgrimage to the South Fork Ranch, where the long-running series was filmed. Built by JR Duncan in 1970, the ranch was a working spread for eight years until helicopter-borne Lorimar Productions executives spied it and landed in the front yard. The Duncans were reluctant to allow filming at first; they finally agreed, but only allowed exterior shots, and only in summer. Lorimar built a gigantic set in California to depict the mansion's interior. Later, after the 'Who Shot JR?' craze of 1980, obsessed fans prowled the South Fork grounds night and day. The Duncans decided to sell, and Lorimar began filming interior shots here, too. Today, South Fork is primarily a novelty spot for receptions and parties. Among the clientele are the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, who hold their annual slumber party on the ranch. Parker is 20 miles (32km) northeast of Dallas via Hwy 75.
 Activities
Dallas has more than 50,000 acres (20,000ha) of public parks, most notably Fair Park, White Rock Lake Park northeast of downtown and Bachman Lake just northwest of Love Field. The longest bicycling and hiking trail is the 17 mile (27km) path around White Rock Lake. A 3 mile (5km) trail circles Bachman Lake. Trinity Trails is a network of hiking, biking and equestrian trails covering 35 miles (56km) along the Trinity River, Sycamore Creek and Marine Creek. It can be accessed from most of Fort Worth's major parks, including Heritage Park, where you can rent equipment for canoeing, kayaking or pedal boating. And a trip to Texas wouldn't be complete without at least one attempt at horseback riding. There are places to rent horses on the edge of the Stockyards National Historic District in Fort Worth.
 Events
It doesn't get any bigger than the big Texas State Fair held for a month every fall in Fair Park. The fair is a hundred-year-old institution and features buckets of barbecue, bronco busting rodeo and America's biggest ferris wheel, the Texas Star. The Deep Ellum Arts and Music Festival is a weekend of alternative art and live music on multiple stages throughout the Deep Ellum district; it occurs every April. Artfest, held over the Memorial Day weekend in May, brings visual artists to Fair Park to raise money for Dallas' cultural scene. Aviation buffs can kick the tires of military planes on display during the Dallas Airshow held at Love Field every September.
In 1958, a 24 year old Louisiana native named Van Cliburn became the first American to win the Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow. Today, he lends his name to the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held every four years in Fort Worth. Up to a million people attend Fort Worth's annual three week Southwestern Stock Show and Rodeo held late January through early February. The show marked its 100th anniversary in 1996. The Chisholm Trail Round-Up is another Fort Worth cowboy lovefest, held each June. The Texas Storytelling Festival is a tall-tale competition held at the end of March in Denton, located 36 miles (58km) northwest of Dallas.
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is one of the world's busiest airports, with more than 2000 scheduled flights arriving or leaving daily from an airfield bigger than Manhattan island. Most flights are to other US cities, but there are Canadian, Mexican and European carriers. Love Field, the area's secondary airport, is served almost exclusively by regional US carriers.
 Getting Around
DFW is 16 miles (26km) northwest of Dallas; Love Field is 7 miles (11km) northwest of the city. Buses, shuttles and taxis run between the airports and the city, and car rentals are available.
Dallas is at the convergence of about a dozen major highways, so it's easy to access from all points of the compass. If you're a masochist, you'll count rush-hour driving on Dallas's freeways among life's peak experiences. You can rent a car at one of many agencies in town and at the airports.
Greyhound buses travel between Dallas and Fort Worth (1 hour), Austin (4-6 hours), Houston (5-6 hours), San Antonio (5-7 hours) and El Paso (11-14 hours). Union Station, in Dallas' west end, is the beacon for Amtrak trains. DART is the region's public transportation system, with both buses and light-rail trains serving downtown Dallas and the outlying areas. Cabs congregate at the airports, bus and train depots and hotels.
- The story of the boom years is told in Patricia Evridge Hill's Dallas: The Making of a Modern City.
- Peter Golenbock's Cowboys Have Always Been My Heroes gives the history of 'America's Team' as told by the players and coaches.
- Out of Dallas: 14 Stories, by Jane Roberts Wood, Donna Dysart Gormly and Sally Schrup, is a fine collection of short stories by and/or about Dallasites.
- Sharon Sloan Fiffer paints an intriguing portrait of the Laotian community and Dallas in Imagining America: Paul Thai's Journey from the Killing Fields of Cambodia to Freedom in the U.S.A.
- Dallas (the TV show) gets deconstructed in Ien Ang's Watching 'Dallas': Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination.
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