“Deacon”byDallasis licensed underCC BY 2.0
People in Dallas pepper their sentences with “sir” and “ma’am” and say "Howdy" like it's an obligatory greeting. You won’t be able to resist that sweet Texan drawl and soon enough you’ll be “ya’ll”-ing with the rest of us. It's true what you've heard--Texans are a friendly bunch, and they love their cowboy hats and boots.
The Dallas Cowboys are known as America's team in part because it was the first to introduce sideline cheerleaders. The girls have their own reality TV show and have entertained more U.S. troops on foreign soil than any other entertainment act in the last 25 years. Move over, Bob Hope!
“Japanese Food”byAnderson Manciniis licensed underCC BY 2.0
Dallas has more restaurants per capita than New York City, and the cuisine is international in flavor. Head to Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek for some of the best French-Continental fare you'll ever experience. Seafood, barbecue, Italian, Japanese, Tex-Mex...whatever delights your palate, you can find it in Dallas, Texas.
Dallas oil man Lamar Hunt was the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs when he jokingly called the NFL championship the “Super Bowl.” Spoiler: the name stuck.
There are lots of reasons to love the State Fair of Texas:
Dallas is home to 18 of the Fortune 500 companies and 18 of the top wealth holders on Forbes Magazine's list of richest billionaires. If that’s not enough to convince you we’re rolling in money, listen to this: Dallas is second only to New York in its population of billionaire denizens.
The city's West End MarketPlace is a hot spot for tourists and locals alike, and just north of the city, in Plano, Shops at Legacy attract shoppers like flies at a barbecue. Headquartered in Dallas, Neiman Marcus is a hometown mainstay. The city is riddled with shopping malls, including North Dallas's Galleria, and shopping centers, so you'll never have trouble finding a place to buy your western clothes.
Let’s look at the numbers, shall we? The annual average wind speed in Dallas is 10.7 mph. In Chicago, it's 10.3 mph.
Dallas’s Woodrow Wilson High School is the only secondary institution in the nation that’s alma mater to two Heisman trophy winners--Davey O'Brien in 1938 and Tim Brown in 1987. The school also graduated such musical luminaries as Steve Miller of The Steve Miller Band and ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill as well as Pulitzer Prize winning author Lawrence Wright.
The list of movies and TV series filmed in Dallas is impressive:
Plus "Dallas," the hit TV series, claims the most watched TV episode of all time in the "Who Done It?" episode when millions of viewers tuned in to find out who shot J.R.
The Statler Hilton, built in 1956, introduced elevator music to its patrons and hosted 21" Westinghouse TVs in every room, which had never been done before. There was even a heliport on top of the building for transporting guests to and from the airport.
Seriously, why interact with an actual person when you can just have a machine spit money out at you? Dallas is also the place where the integrated circuit computer chip, which would later become the microchip, was invented. Plus Dallas has been home to many innovative technology companies, including Texas Instruments.
Where is the largest farmers’ market in the U.S.? Right in the middle of Dallas, Texas. The market opened in the late 1800s, allowing farmers to sell directly from their wagons. Millions of people visit every year, all year round.
Not far from the farmers’ market is the site of the first skyscraper built west of the Mississippi. The Praetorian Building was 15 stories tall and constructed in 1909, and while the building was destroyed in 2013, the city still has 262 high-rise buildings. Twenty-eight of those are more than 400 feet tall, with the tallest being the Bank of America Plaza at 921 feet.
With 45,000 Jewish residents, Dallas is home to the largest Jewish community in the state of Texas. The city is 25% African-American, boasts a large Mexican-American population and 42.4% of the population is derived from Hispanic or Latino origins. There is also a large and active LGBT community and the city is home to many religious faiths.
The big purple dinosaur and “Wishbone” the book-loving pup were created in Dallas. Both shows were popular in the 1990s.
One of the longest running Texas traditions is called Red River Rivalry. The Texas-OU college football faceoff is one of the biggest events in sports and fans of both teams look forward to it every year. The teams having been facing off at the State Fair of Texas since 1900 when Oklahoma was still a U.S. territory.
Deep Ellum is well known for its diverse arts and entertainment culture--probably because it has more bars and nightclubs than any other district in the city. In the 1920s, however, it was a haven for jazz and blues artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter and Bessie Smith. The name is a derivative of what locals once called "deep Elm Street."
In the 19th century, railroad tracks made Dallas an industrial town to be reckoned with. As the city grew and automobiles became more popular, major interstates were built in and around the city, including the famed I-635.
Everything is bigger in Texas, they say. DFW Airport covers a land mass larger than Manhattan and hosts the largest parking lot in the world.
From its early roots as manufacturers of private goods to our status today as a major center for commerce, energy, computers and medical research, Dallas has always been a hub for industry.
Here are just some of Dallas’s criminal connections:
Dallas has several popular country clubs. It's most famous, Dallas Country Club, founded in 1896, was the first country club in Texas.
With more locations worldwide than McDonald's, the 7-Eleven convenient store chain is headquartered here. See if you recognize just some of the other chains that call Dallas home:
Before Dallas became an independent republic and before it joined the United States, it was a part of Coahuila y Tejas, which made it an official part of Mexico.
Dallas is the only core city that is a part of the largest Metropolitan Statistical Area not sitting on a navigable body of water. In English: it's not on a coast and has no major river used by boats and ships running through it.
The Dallas Public Library system is one of the largest in the U.S. and the main library, consisting of 10 stories, houses one of the largest genealogical research sections in the Southwest. The library also hosts an original copy of the Declaration of Independence and Shakespeare's "Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies."
The Dallas Zoo was the very first zoo in the Southwest (started in 1888) and today has more than 2,000 animals. Almost one million people walked through the front gates in 2013, making it the largest zoo in Texas. Its most obscure bragging right: 20% of okapi in Japan and the United States were born or bred at the Dallas Zoo.
The Globalization and World Rankings Research Institute moved Dallas up to Alpha- status in 2013 but kept Houston as a Beta+ city. These distinctions are based on factors that contribute to how the city impacts the global economy.
Dallas is home to the largest urban arts district in the U.S. Among many fascinating institutions, the Dallas Arts District includes:
Like This Post? You’ll Definitely Love These:
