Posted Jan 18, 2013, 7:32 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Cedar Park, TX
Posts: 1,962
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Speaking of Dallas being evil, I recently came upon this interesting bit of history about how Dallas came to be.
Keep in mind, before this, Dallas was just another little Texas town.
From Wikipedia:
"In 1871, railroads were beginning to approach the area and Dallas city leaders did not intend to stand idly and be left out. They paid the Houston and Central Texas Railroad US$5,000 to shift its route 20 miles (32 km) to the west and build its north-south tracks through Dallas, rather than through Corsicana as planned. A year later, Dallas leaders could not pay the Texas and Pacific Railway to locate there, so they devised a way to trick the Railroad—Dallas had a rider attached to a state law which required the railroad to build its tracks through Browder Springs—which turned out to be just south of Main Street. The major north-south and east-west Texas railroad routes intersected in Dallas in 1873, thus ensuring its future as a commercial center."
As you can imagine, the population exploded at that point. One railroad passing through wouldn't have been enough to have this effect. It had to be two intersecting railroads. So Dallas's very existence as the biggest metropolis in Texas is the result of some shadiness, which seems fitting, in a way. If they hadn't done anything, the biggest metropolis in Texas would likely have been 20 miles to the east of Dallas and probably a bit to the north or south.
I do love me some Texas history. So, yeah, Dallas is evil. Still, I want the best for it. I want it to urbanize and densify, because it's a city in Texas and I think it's worth fixing.
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