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About Dallas
To outsiders Dallas represents Texas, displaying the characteristics associated with the state--individualism, affluence and sheer size. Through a combination of big thinking and swashbuckling free enterprise, a dusty river crossing with no discernible assets was transformed into modern Dallas, a leading commercial and financial center and the country's eighth largest city.
The town began slowly. John Neely Bryan chose the site in 1841 and erected a single cabin. He believed that the Trinity River was navigable for trade all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. He was mistaken, and 3 years later the site consisted of only two cabins. Bryan then realized that he would have to settle for ferrying emigrants across the river. A steamboat reached Dallas from Galveston in 1868, but the journey took more than a year, and Bryan's new settlement languished until after the Civil War.
In 1872, through bribes and gifts of land, Dallas' leaders convinced the Texas Central Railroad to divert its tracks to the community. A year later the Texas Pacific arrived, and because of a nationwide financial panic the town became the temporary railhead for both lines. The effect was immediate. The population doubled to 6,000, and soon wagonloads of wheat, wool and other products crowded in to be shipped via the railroad. By 1900 Dallas was a regional banking center for north Texas farmers and one of the world's largest inland cotton markets. Its financial role was enhanced when many insurance firms, prompted by a 1908 Texas law requiring them to keep a major part of their reserves in the state, established headquarters in the city.
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