Dallas History

The chapter on Dallas history is never excluded from any of the Dallas travel guides. If the history of Dallas in Texas is fascinating, it is partly because a part of it is shrouded in mystery. Of course, it is universally acknowledged that Dallas was founded by John Neely Bryan, a lawyer-turned-businessman who had set up the first log cabin there, the first and solitary evidence of habitation, in 1841. No Dallas travel package is complete without exploring Dallas history!

John Neely Bryan had plans to navigate the Trinity River for commercial purposes, however, remained unfulfilled. It is not denied, either, that he had come up with the name "Dallas". But who had he named it after? Historians are not agreed on that point. One school of thought avers that Bryan had named it after the then Vice-President of the United States George Mifflin Dallas; another argues that he named it after his "friend, Dallas" whose identity is yet to be established.

Turing the pages of History - Dallas

http://www.dallashistory.org/history/dallas/dallas_history.htm

The contribution of the Beeman family cannot be overlooked, either; after all, William Beeman is known to have covered more than 100 miles on horseback to fetch a court order for the establishment of the Dallas County. Similarly, the Cockerel family that moved in 1847 to Dallas played its own role too. Then there was the Reunion Colony, founded by French artists and musicians imbued with utilitarian idealism; if Dallas is today as vibrant culturally as commercially, the credit should go mainly to them.

Dallas History for Visitors

http://www.visitdallas.com/visitors/about_dallas/history/

Then the Ku Klux Klan surfaced in Dallas, and had a meteoric rise in popularity in 1920 following World War 1, before people rejected racism. Dallas, however, displayed its resilience when, after a fire had destroyed the best part of its business district in 1860, in the 1970s, when most of the United States was in recession, Dallas had a trade boom. It is, however, debatable if the county has been able to recover from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.