OUR TOWNS

For the first hundred years, the people who ran Dallas believed the road to Metropolis was through neighboring towns and communities, which were systematically gobbled up. Early Dallas fought the village of Cedar Springs, on the road of the same name, and Hord’s Ridge across the river, for the right to become county seat. Dallas prevailed in an 1850 runoff by 28 votes.

East Dallas, a city of 6,000 inhabitants just east of downtown past what is now North Central Expressway, merged in 1890. The Reinhardt settlement farther east is now the Casa Linda neighborhood. Hord’s Ridge became the city of Oak Cliff, which joined Dallas in 1903 fallowing a heated election over whether cows should be allowed to run loose. Eagle Ford and Cement City in West Dallas followed suit years later.

Crimean War veteran Clement Letot, founder of a farming community along Lombardy Lane between Harry Hines and Webb Chapel, was postmaster of Letot and operator of the general store. The town of Vickery, in the vicinity of Greenville Avenue and Park Lane, was the first stop on the mass transit route of the 1930s, Texas Electric Railway’s Interarban to Richardson, Piano and points north. Preston Hollow, east of Preston Road around Walnut Hill and Royal Lane, voted 300-to-76 to merge with Dallas in 1945, although the voters of Highland Park and University Park declined the invitation.

Fruitdale, Lisbon, Pleasant Mound, Pleasant Grove and Scyene, where outlaw Belle Starr’s family owned a farm, were separate communities south of Dallas. Pleasant Grove, in its haste to join the big city, made national news in 1953 when it prematurely abolished its school system, giving the kids an extra three months vacation.