Dallas Rediscovered: A Photographic Chronicle of Urban Expansion, 1870-1925

By William L. McDonald; introductory essay by A.C. Greene; published by the Dallas Historical Society, 1978.

Dallas Rediscovered examines a city of opulent Victorian Gothic mansions, of elaborate cast-iron commercial emporiums, and of sharecropper shanties where the poor struggle to survive. The book explores Dallas through its architecture, its system of spatial growth and land utilization, and through the developers, land speculators, and urban designers who were so important to the creation of the modern city.

When Dallas Became a City: Letters of John Milton McCoy, 1870-1881.

Edited by Elizabeth York Enstam, foreword by Millicent Hume McCoy; published by the Dallas Historical Society, 1982.

This book, considered to be the most important primary source ever published about the history of Dallas, describes how Dallas was transformed from a Southern country market town into a boomtown. Reading like a novel, the letters of John Milton McCoy tell the story of daily life in a thriving frontier town and give insight into the customs and values of late nineteenth-century America.

[Amazon.com Info]

[Free Downloadable DHS Publications]

Please also visit Amazon.com to purchase these additional titles about Dallas and its history. Many of the authors have been featured at Dallas Historical Society lectures.

• Dallas: A History of "Big D"
  by Michael V. Hazel
• Dallas: The Making of a Modern City
  by Patricia Evridge Hill
• Dallas Forth Worth and the Metroplex
  by Robert R. Rafferty and Loys Reynolds
• Gordon Conway: Fashioning a New Woman
  by Raye Virginia Allen
  (also available in paperback)
• A Light in the Prairie: Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, 1872-1997
  by Gerry Cristol
• Women and the Creation of Urban Life: Dallas, Texas 1843-1920
  by Elizabeth York Enstam