For a city that started as a one-room log cabin, the development of two railway lines, a center for buying and selling of assets (where oil men kept their money), growth has abounded over the years. After WWII, it became the headquarters for banking and insurance, high tech, medicine, and conventions - all adding to its prosperity and growth.
Dallas is on the Trinity River and its founder was John Neely Bryan, who settled on the east bank of the Trinity in November 1841. Bryan had selected the best location for a trading post to serve the population journeying into the region. By 1880 the population had more than tripled, to 10,385.
Dallas became the world center for the leather and buffalo-hide trade. Merchants opened general stores along the railroad route and railroad construction continued to grow northward and settle into Dallas.
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Dallas’ banking and insurance industries emerged as major factors. At the turn of the century the economy of Dallas was showing impact in book commerce, jewelry, and wholesale liquor market in the Southwest. It was the world's leading inland cotton market, and it still led the world in manufacture of saddles and cotton-gin machinery.
Until World War II, Dallas ranked as a minor manufacturing center in the nation. Its three leading industries were food processing, apparel manufacturing, and printing and publishing.
