DALLAS FIRSTS

What did Orville Wright, Levi Strauss, George Crum and William Kemmler have in common? They were all firsts. Just about everyone knows that Orville won the right to fly the first airplane after beating Wilbur in a coin toss, and most people are aware that Strauss made the first pair of blue jeans. Fewer know that George Crum invented the potato chip, and hardly anyone knows that William Kemmler was the first person to die in the electric chair. Being first is more lasting than setting records. Record setters are just asking for trouble because the human race keeps getting bigger, faster and smarter. But when you’re first, no one can ever take that away from you-though that may have been of little consolation to Kemmler. Dallas has had some spectacular and historic firsts, such as the first time it was the largest city in Texas, with a population of 38,067 in 1890. We’ve also had forgettable firsts-who remembers Dick Van Raaphorst, the first Dallas Cowboy rookie to lead the team in scoring in 1964? Here it is-from the fabulous to the unfortunate-the first great list of Dallas firsts. APARTMENT. Belleview Place, a fancy, three-story brick building, was built by Frederick Hughes in 1890 on Sullivan Street, just west of City Park. The “New York-style” living concept was a little premature, though, and at the turn of the century the building was converted into a treatment center for cocaine and morphine addicts.

OPERA HOUSE. In 1873, Tom Field opened a small auditorium on the second floor of a frame building on the south side of Main Street between Lamar and Austin. Since there wasn’t a dressing room, the performers had to make a mad dash across the street to the Windsor Hotel every time they had to make a costume change.

MOVING PICTURE SHOW. An exhibition of Edison’s Vitascope was shown at the Dallas Opera House in 1897. The movie consisted of a series of shorts, including a hanging, a lynching, a Mexican duel, a fire rescue and Niagara Falls in action. That same year, Henry Putz opened the first motion-picture theater in a room over a drugstore at Main and Lamar, using a bed sheet for a screen.

OSCAR. The first Dallas native to win this coveted award was Dorothy Malone in 1956 for her supporting role in Written on the Wind. Ginger Rogers, who won an Oscar in 1940 for Kitty Foyle, got her start in Dallas when she won a Charleston contest at the Baker Hotel, but she grew up in Fort Worth. Greer Garson, a 1942 winner for Mrs. Miniver, made Dallas her home in later years.

POST OFFICE. From 1843 until 1846, John Neely Bryan served as postmaster of Dallas, tacking letters to the back of his cabin door.

LEGAL HANGING. Jane Elkins, a slave convicted of murder in Farmers Branch, was hanged in Dallas on May 27, 1857.

ELECTRIC LIGHTS. Lights were installed in 1882 at the Sanger Bros. Department Store, Mayer’s Beer Gardens, John Oram’s Jewelry Store and the St. George Hotel. Before long, they were found in many of the more fashionable homes. Each evening, promptly at 10 p.m., the electric company turned off all power to the city.

NEIMAN-MARCUS CATALOG. It debuted in 1926, but it wasn’t until 1960 that the famous series of “His and Her” Christmas gifts was christened with a matching set of Beechcraft airplanes. Stanley Marcus came up with the idea so that he would have something to feed the na-ticnal newscasters who called every year for an update on the shopping habits of the ultrarich.

POOR FARM. Built in 1877 on 339 acres near Hutchins. Not only the destitute, but also the mentally ill were sent out to the farm to raise cotton and cattle and to work on road gangs when necessary.

PIZZA. In 1945, Carlo Campisi and his sons, Sam and Joe, served the first pizza at a small lounge near the intersection of Knox and McKinney. In 1950, the Cam-pisis moved their pizza business to the Egyptian Lounge on Mockingbird Lane, later changing its name to the Egyptian Restaurant.

JAIL. In 1850, Dallas County officials published the specifications for the first jail. It was to be constructed of oak timber with a cedar foundation and was to have walls 16 feet long, 9 feet high and 8 inches thick. There was to be a single window, 10 inches by 16 inches, equipped with six iron bars.

PIANO. Lucy Latimer persuaded her husband and the ox team to bring along her prized piano on the trek from Northeast Texas.

FOOTBALL TEAM. In 1891, the few institutes of higher learning scattered throughout the Southwest had yet to discover the game of football, so the formation of town teams came into vogue. Dallas formed a team that year and scheduled a big game with Fort Worth on Thanksgiving Day. The reporter for the News was quite impressed with the spectacle, noting that “the excitement was so great at times that the large audience rose to its feet and, with cheers and show of handkerchiefs, attested to its appreciation.” But the Herald reporter had reservations over what appeared to be an endless series of “gouging, pulling, hauling and snatching one’s limbs asunder,” with “each man seemingly perfectly indifferent to his neighbor’s comfort.” Fort Worth won the game, 24-11.

NFL TOUCHDOWN. On September 28, 1952, George Taliaffero, halfback of the Dallas Texans, threw a touchdown pass to Buddy Young. The play had been set up by a fumbled punt by New York Giants safety Tom Landry.

LEAGUE-LEADING PRO RUSHER. Abner Haynes of the AFL Dallas Texans led the league in 1960 with a season total of 875 yards. (These were Lamar Hunt’s Texans, no relation to the 1952 version, which later became the Baltimore Colts.)

COWBOY TO MAKE THE PRO BOWL. Receiver Jim Doran, who also scored the Dallas Cowboys’ first touchdown, made the Pro Bowl squad at the conclusion of the Cowboys’ first season in 1960.

BARBED-WIRE FENCE. Purchased in the mid-1870s by the Campbell family of Richardson, much to the consternation of local proponents of the open range.

PRIVATE ARMY. A band of commandos led by Bull Simons was hired by Ross Perot to free two of Perot’s executives from a Tehran prison in 1979.

FACTORY. Maxime Guillot was passing through Dallas on his way to the California gold rush when he decided to stop and seek his fortune by more conventional means. Guillot set up the city’s first factory at the corner of Elm and Houston, where he produced fine carriages for 50 years. The Guillots were also the city’s first Catholic family.

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. Tom Clark, who was born in Dallas in 1899, was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1949. Tom’s son, Ramsey, born here in 1927, was appointed attorney general in 1967.

SALOON. In Adam Haught’s Saloon, housed in a tent in the village of Dallas during the 1840s, patrons could order thirst-quenchers ranging from ice-cold beer to strawberry daiquiris. They could order anything they wanted to, but what they got was whiskey – because that’s all Haught sold.

DUMMY. In 1892, the operation of an electric streetcar line between Dallas and Oak Cliff was initiated by the Dallas and Oak Cliff Dummy Company. Three years later, probably as a result of prompting from its advertising department, the firm’s name was changed to the Dallas and Oak Cliff Electric Railway Company.

SAXOPHONE. In 1883, the saxophone was introduced in Dallas by J. Parker’s German Brass Band and Orchestra at Mayer’s Beer Gardens at the corner of Elm and Stone.

GAY DISCO. The Bayou Landing opened on Pearl Street in 1972.

ICONOCLASTIC MAGAZINE. The Pitchfork was Wilford “Pitchfork” Smith’s labor of love during the Twenties and Thirties. Pitchfork fumed and denunciated month after month, attacking all that was sacred and defending all that was shady. Occasionally he fell into fits of 1 discouragement when it appeared that no one cared, and he would merely reprint the last month’s issue rather than emit fresh provocations. Pitchfork was a renowned orator who brought tears to the eyes of the citizens when he conducted a mock funeral for the “late John Barleycorn” on the corner of Main and Akard on the night before Prohibition went into effect.

STREETCAR. In 1873, a mule-powered streetcar line was established to make the run down Main Street between the courthouse and the train depot. Planks were laid to afford the mules the benefit of sound footing.

STEAMBOAT. In 1867, the counties of Dallas and Kaufman combined to offer a prize of $15,000 to the first steamboat to successfully navigate the Trinity River from Galveston to North Texas. The owner of a vessel with the unromantic name of “Job Boat No. 1” took up the challenge, departing Galveston on May 1, 1867. The trip wasn’t very romantic, either – after finally scraping over all the snags and under the low-lying limbs, “old No. 1” steamed into Dallas a year and five days later.

DIVORCE. In 1846, Charlotte Dalton sued her husband, Joseph Dalton, claiming numerous shortcomings on his part. The jury ruled in Charlotte’s favor, and that afternoon Charlotte Dalton married Henderson Crouch, the foreman of the jury.

DOG. Tubby, John Neely Bryan’s faithful bear dog. Bear dogs were used in the “sport” of bear-baiting, in which a brown bear captured in the woods was brought into the settlement and tied to a stake to be tormented by a pack of dogs. Tubby made the trip from Arkansas to Dallas with Bryan in 1842.

TELEPHONE. Installed in 1879, it connected the fire station to the pump house at Browder Springs. When Dallas got an honest-to-goodness telephone company in 1881, the first line was connected to John Oram’s Jewelry Store next to the telephone exchange on Elm Street to make sure the blamed thing would work. It did, and by the end of the year the phone company had 40 subscribers.

SHOPPING CENTER. The Highland Park Shopping Center, completed in 1932 at the corner of Preston Road and Mockingbird Lane, was the first shopping center in the United States with stores facing away from the streets. Big Town Shopping Mall, which opened in 1959, was the city’s first enclosed mall.

COUNCILWOMAN. Mrs. Carr P. Collins Jr. was elected in a 1956 runoff over Harold Abramson. Elizabeth Blessing became the city’s second councilwoman in 1961.

EXPRESSWAY. Central Expressway, which was laid along the path of the city’s first railroad, the Houston and Texas Central, which came to town in 1872. When Central opened in 1949, Mayor Wallace Savage said that the marvelous thoroughfare would “speed motorists to the city’s heart at 50 miles an hour and get them home in the evening in a much more relaxed frame of mind.” AUTOMOBILE. Ned Green, the son of Hetty Green, who was affectionately known as the “Witch of Wall Street,” rolled into town in the first visit of a horseless carriage on October 5, 1899. The trip from Terrell, 30 miles east of Dallas, was completed in Five hours and 10 minutes and consumed two quarts of gasoline in the process. A year later, the first traffic citation to a driver of an automobile was issued to Erie Freeman for going 10 miles per hour in a 7-mile-per-hour zone. By 1902, Dallas had its own automobile dealer, the firm of Garrett and Lipscomb, which handled the battery-powered National Electric. In 1903, Dallas had 40 cars, reputedly more than any city its size in the South.

CHINCHILLA RANCH. In 1946, Irwin G. Baker established the city’s first chinchilla ranch at his home at 1001 Winston when he purchased three chinchillas for $1,000 each. It was said at the time that there were only three genuine 100-percent chinchilla coats in the United States, each worth about $50,000. Baker said that the animals were odorless, cost only $2.50 a year in upkeep and tripled in number annually. He said that it was necessary, though, to feed them a special low-protein hay; otherwise, they would burp.

HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER.By 1907, unknown assailants were loose on the streets of the city, as evidenced by an editorial in The Dallas Morning News condemning the “cowardly assassins who run down people, and then put on ex-traordinary speed and escape.”

PARKING METERS. In 1929, Dallas set up an auto pound to haul off the double- and triple-parked cars, but in 1935, a parking-meter salesman convinced the city that all the effort was unnecessary. The thing to do, said the salesman, was to let the people take turns parking. He swore that experiments had proven that the machines eliminate parking “hogs,” rarely result in damage to bumpers and fenders, and cause little or no delay to those desiring a space. The city purchased and installed 1,000 meters, more than any other city in the world.

AUTOMATIC ELEVATOR. Installed in 1950 in the Atlantic Refining Building by Otis Elevator Company.

RECORDED LAND SALE. John Neely Bryan sold lots 5 and 6 of block 3, at the corner of Main and Houston, to Henry Harter for $160. It was recorded on November 28, 1846.

MARSHAL. Andy Moore, who created a stir in 1858 when he shot and killed the town’s leading entrepreneur, Alexander Cockrell, who was trying to persuade Moore to make good on a debt. Moore was tried for murder and found innocent.

BRAND. William P. Carder’s earmark for cattle, hogs and sheep: “a smooth crop of the right ear and a shallow fork in the left ear,” was recorded on September 1, 1846.

MAJOR HEIST. On November 14, 1921, eight bandits held up the post office on Jackson Street, making off with a quarter of a million dollars in currency and Liberty bonds. The gang was led by W.S. Scrivener, who had escaped from the Texas penitentiary where he was serving a 50-year sentence for the Sanger Bros. payroll robbery. The bandits were soon apprehended, and the money was found in a ravine near Fort Worth. Scrivener claimed that the gang got him drunk and tricked him into going along on the heist.

AIR TRAVEL Professor Wallace, a daredevil aeronaut, departed from Dallas in a wicker basket tied to a gas bag in April 1861. The duration of the professor’s flight is not known, as he was never heard from again.

FLYING EXHIBITION. In 1910, the people of Dallas paid $1 to see the city’s first exhibition of nose dives and figure-eights in an airplane. Stunt pilot Otto Brodie had done such things before, but never in a Texas wind. The first day, he got no more than 20 feet off the ground. A couple of days later, he reached an altitude of 40 feet, then plummeted to the earth. Brodie, with a bloody nose and a cut lip, was able to walk away from the accident, but the promoters refused to pay him because his contract called for a “successful” flight.

CONVENTION. Epitomizing the city’s history of success in drumming up convention trade, the 1886 reunion of the veterans of the Texas War for Independence was held in Dallas, which didn’t even exist during the Texas revolution.

BUILDING TALLER THAN TWO STORIES. Sarah Cockrell’s three-story St. Nicholas Hotel, a fancy brick hostelry, was built in 1859 and burned in 1860.

QUADS AND QUINTS. The first quadruplets were born April 30, 1956, atMethodist Hospital to Mr. and Mrs.George A. Hunter. Mr. Hunter, a paintcontractor at Chance Vought, said thathe might have to ask for a raise. On July18, 1975, the city’s first quintuplets wereborn to Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Davis atParkland Hospital. Mr. Davis had beenforewarned that a multiple birth was inthe offing, but he was expecting onlyfour. Just after arriving at the hospitalto join his wife, Mr. Davis becametrapped in an inoperative elevator. Maintaining his presence of mind, he calledfor help on the emergency phone, explaining that his wife was having quadruplets at that moment. The hospital attendant, trained to remain calm in themost desperate of situations, calmly asked, “Sir, is your wife on the elevator with you?”

SANITATION CREW. In 1876, people were encouraged to let hogs roam the city to help clear the streets of refuse and litter.

MEXICAN PLATE. Mexican immigrant Miguel Martinez had worked as a a dishwasher at the Oriental Hotel before he opened the Martinez Cat坢 in Dallas. It had been a tradition among the few small Mexican cafe in North Texas to serve dishes in separate courses, but this tradition had little appeal to an ex-dishwasher. Martinez was the first to put the enchiladas, tamales, rice and beans on the same plate. The name of the establishment was later changed to El Fenix.

BRIDGE. A 520-foot-long covered toll bridge, which was built in 1855 by Alexander Cockrell and collapsed in 1858.

ALL-WOMAN JURY. In 1957, the first all-woman jury to serve in Dallas County sentenced Alvin Peterson to 50 years in the Texas penitentiary for possession of marijuana.

MAYOR. By a vote of 58 to 34, Dr. Sam Pryor became the first mayor of Dallas in 1856, defeating another physician, Dr. A. A. Rice. Pryor was called “Old Doc,”

nicknamed not so much for his age as for his gruff disposition.

MAYOR TO BE JAILED. In 1872, Reconstructionist Gov. Edmund J. Davis ordered Mayor Henry Ervay of Dallas to vacate the mayor’s office since he was impeding “progress.” When Mayor Ervay refused, he was jailed, endearing himself to the people of Dallas forever.

EX-MAYOR TO BE SHOT. In 1877, ex-mayor Ben Long was shot and killed at Hausman’s . Saloon for suggesting that a patron pay his tab before leaving the premises.

DALLAS MAYOR BORN IN DALLAS.

William Meredith Holland, born in Dallas in 1875, was elected mayor in 1911. It was during his administration that the city first undertook the collection and disposition of garbage.

PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE. Clyde Barrow of Dallas claimed this distinction in 1934 when he made the top of J. Edgar Hoover’s wanted list.

HOUSE OF BOARDS. Colonel John C. McCoy, who became the city’s first practicing attorney when he moved here in 1845, built the first house in Dallas out of sawed boards rather than hewn logs.

BICYCLE WITH RUBBER TIRES. The first bicycles in Dallas were the big-wheeled jobs that were as difficult to mount as a spirited stallion. In 1882, Gross R. Scruggs became the first citizen of the city to sport a bicycle with rubber tires, which he purchased for $62.50.

AUTOMATIC CAR WASH. The first automatic car wash with a conveyor chain was installed at the corner of Ross and Akard in 1947 by J.B. Hudnall.

COUNTRY CLUB. In 1896, R.E. Potter and H.L. Edwards laid out a six-hole golf course in a cow pasture. Tin cans were buried for cups, and the “greens” consisted of patches of scraped earth protected from the cows by strands of wire. Before long, players rented one room in a nearby house in which to store their clubs. In 1900, the group incorporated as the Dallas Golf and Country Club and bought 55 acres between Oak Lawn and Turtle Creek for $165 an acre. In 1911, the group moved to Highland Park, changed the name to the Dallas Country Club and opened the membership to 500 citizens who could meet the club’s standards of “integrity in business coupled with moral probity.”

AIR-CONDITIONED HOUSE. The 43-room mansion of pioneer geologist Everette De Golyer, which overlooks White Rock Lake, was the first house to have air-conditioning.

SERMON. The first sermon in Dallas County was delivered by Thomas Brown, an itinerant Methodist preacher. The most remarkable thing about Brown was that he was the only Protestant preacher in all of North Texas who didn’t like

fried chicken.

CAST FOR A BROKEN LEG. Splints were used to hold broken legs in place in the early days of Dallas, as was the case elsewhere. To counteract the tendency of the leg to shrink, weights were tied to the limb, but the determination of the proper amount of weight to be applied was a very inexact science. Invariably, the patient wound up with a leg a little shorter or longer than before. In 1883, Dr. George T. Veal applied a plaster-of-Paris cast to the broken limb of a young society belle who rose to walk again without a limp.

ICE. The first ice transported to Dallas was chipped out of the Great Lakes and was used to refrigerate beer. It was such a luxury here that it sold for almost as much as the beer. The first Dallas ice plant, the Browder Springs Ice Company, opened in 1878. In 1927, Joe Thompson opened a small ice house at the corner of 12th and Edgefield in Oak Cliff. He later added a small stock of groceries, and, after tiring of telling people what the store’s hours were, changed the name of the store to 7-Eleven, the first of a chain of hundreds.

FATAL KNOCKOUT. In 1890, prizefighter Jake Kilrain brought an entourage to town for an exhibition in the fine art of pugilism at the Dallas Opera House. A burly Dallas carpenter stepped into the ring to have a go at Louis Baznia, one of Kilrain’s understudies, who looked like an easy mark. Baznia pummeled the carpenter until he collapsed on the floor, where a short time later he was pronounced dead. Baznia was tried for murder but was found innocent.

BOXING CHAMP. The first Dallas native to win a world’s boxing championship was Curtis Cokes, a local bank messenger, who won the welterweight crown in 1956 by defeating Jean Josselin of France.

DRAFT. Begun in 1856, when the legislature of the State of Texas passed a law compelling “all free male citizens over the age of 18 and under the age of 45, and all male slaves between the ages of 16 and 60, to work on the streets of the town at least five days in each and every year.”

WHITE WOMAN. Martha Gilbert, wife of Mabel Gilbert, an early Dallas pioneer.

ESCALATOR. Installed at the Neiman-Marcus store on Main Street during a major remodeling effort in 1949. The Sears store on Ross had the second one.

NEWSPAPER. In 1849, James Wellington Latimer moved his weekly newspaper from Paris, Texas, to Dallas, hauling his press on an ox cart. That year, in order to sell 50 copies of the Cedar Snag a week in Dallas, he would have had to sell a copy to every man, woman and child in the village. When Dallas became the county seat a couple of years later, Latimer changed the name of the paper to the Dallas Herald, which was sold in 1885 to the Dallas Morning News.

ELEPHANT. The children of Dallas were treated to their first glimpse of an elephant when the Eldred Circus came to town in 1859, but it was a long time before the city had a resident pachyderm. In 1904, when the Park Board was created, it inherited 27 animals – five deer, a raccoon, two foxes, a wolf, an eagle, two anteaters, three squirrels, eight peafowl, three monkeys and an old bear.

In 1920, Frank (“Bring ’Em Back Alive”) Buck, who grew up trapping coons and possums along Turtle Creek in Dallas, was commissioned to stock the zoo with wild and exotic animals. Wilbur the Bull Elephant became the crowd favorite – until one sad day when Wilbur ran amuck in a suicidal dash into a concrete wall.

BLACK CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATE. Howard Daniels Jr. ran fourth in a five-man race for Place 5, which Wallace Savage won in 1949. C.A. Galloway became the first black member of the council when he was appointed to fill an interim term in 1967. George Allen was later appointed under similar circumstances but then became the first black candidate elected to the council in 1969, out-polling Clarence Huginnie by a margin of 28,818 to 11,375.

BLACK SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATE. The Rev. Maynard Jackson, pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church, ran unsuccessfully for the school board in 1939. Dr. Emmett J. Conrad was the first successful candidate in 1967, defeating Mrs. Albert Roberson by a count of 25,747 to 21,330. Rev. Jackson’s son later became the mayor of Atlanta.

PRO BASEBALL TEAM. The Dallas Hams won the first Texas League championship in 1888 with a record of 55 wins and 27 losses. (Scheduling was inexact – the second-place team from New Orleans went 15 and 10.) The Hams wore lace shirts and spikeless shoes and used bats that were clearly marked with the spot where the bat should strike the ball to avoid shattering the club.

PAVED STREET. In 1881, an experimental stretch of Elm Street was paved with bois d’arc blocks. The first blocks sank into the mud, but after street engineers figured out how to prevent that by laying a preparatory base, the material became quite popular for paving, and, in a few years, several miles of Dallas streets were paved with bois d’arc. But it never caught on with kids or horses, who hated it because the sap stuck to their feet.

TRAFFIC SIGNAL. The first traffic light was installed at the five-way intersection of Elm, Ervay and Live Oak. The signal was operated by a uniformed officer stationed on a tower high above the intersection. Things went well enough until the bored officer forgot what he had done last and switched from red to yellow, and then back to red, which caused havoc below. In 1923, Dad Gar-rett, a member of Dallas’ fire department, connected a sewing machine motor to the light, and Dallas had its first automatic traffic signal.

RADIO STATION. In 1921, WRR in Dallas became the first radio station west of the Mississippi River.

TV PROGRAM. The first broadcast by a Dallas station was KBTV’s coverage of its ribbon-cutting ceremonies on September 17, 1949. Vice President Alben W. Barkley did the honors and was followed by “Dallas in Wonderland,” a variety show featuring local talent. The station later changed its name to WFAA-TV.

TEXAS-OKLAHOMA FOOTBALL GAME. In 1912, the first Texas-OU kickoff was at Gaston Field, a baseball park near the fairgrounds. Several major rule changes were implemented that year. The value of a touchdown was increased from five points to six; the number of downs, from three to four. The field was shortened from 110 yards to 100, and end zones were added. The rule prohibiting forward passes in excess of 20 yards was eliminated, as was the penalty assessed for an incomplete pass. But most people still thought that passing was sissy, and the Sooners battered away at the Longhorns on the ground for a 21-6 victory.

PRESIDENTIAL VISIT. In 1843, Dallas was visited by Sam Houston, president of the Republic of Texas, who was in the area to smoke the peace pipe with the Kiowas, Comanches and several other Indian tribes who had taken a dim view of the settlement of North Texas by the white man. Fearing that the Texans would poison their tobacco, the Indians failed to show, and Houston returned to the capitol with nothing to show for his arduous journey.

On April 5, 1905, Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to visit Dallas. The president, who was in Texas for a reunion of the Rough Riders, was a big hit in the city. He said that Texas was a “veritable garden of the Lord,” that he loved all Southerners and that he even loved the Trinity River. A grand bash was held at the Oriental Hotel, and each guest was given a floral replica of the Battleship Texas floating in “real Trinity River water.”

STATE HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL CHAMPION. Oak Cliff High School won the Texas gridiron crown in 1924. Led by Roy Lumpkin, Oak Cliff thrashed a strong Waco High School team-31-0, and Waco didn’t even make a first down. Lumpkin later went on to play pro football against Bronko Nagurski and Dutch Clark and

was one of the last pro performers to play without a helmet.

In 1950, Sunset High School won the Big City Championship, a special division comprised of the city champs from Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Fort Worth. The Dallas public schools have produced no other state football champion.

LITERARY CLUB. The Dallas Shakespeare Club was formed in 1885 by the leading ladies of the city. In a leadership dynasty that would make Tom Landry blush, Mrs. Henry Exall served as president of the club for 50 years.

DALLAS NATIVE TO HIT 500 HOMERS IN THE MAJORS. Ernie Banks, a graduate of Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, hit 512 home runs for the Chicago Cubs.

SOLOMONLIKE DECISION. In the 1840s, a nondenominational house of worship was built out of logs on Uncle Billy Miller’s farm across the river. A rift in the church soon ensued, and each of the two factions took half the logs and rebuilt elsewhere.

AERIAL PHOTO. In 1913, Dallas photographer Frank Rogers hired a pilot totake him up to photograph the newDallas-Oak Cliff Viaduct. Rogers stationed himself in the rear cockpit withhis left knee in the seat and his right footbraced against the stick. The photography proceeded well until the plane hitan air pocket, which caused Rogers tofly momentarily without benefit of theaircraft. Rogers landed safely in the seat,but the picture was blurred.