History of Dallas (1874–1929)
The history of Dallas, Texas, United States from 1874 to 1929 documents the city's rapid growth and emergence as a major center for transportation, trade and finance.
Conversely, the city suffered multiple setbacks with a recession from a series of failing markets (the "Panic of 1893") and the disastrous flooding of the Trinity River in the spring of 1908.
After purchasing supplies on credit during the year, farmers owed merchants most of their crop, whose price was lowered by the high shipping costs to the port of Galveston.
Progressive Era reformers sought to improve municipal government by such changes as the commission system, city planning, and zoning controls.
Dissatisfied with its haphazard development they endorsed centralized planning and wrote and secured the adoption of a new charter and set up a board of commissioners.
By the 1920s supporters of comprehensive planning were calling for a program that included adoption of council-manager government, a citywide zoning policy, and public funds for improvements in parks, sewers, schools, and city streets.
From the 1870s on, Dallas leaders portrayed the city as southwestern, or later as part of the "Sunbelt", in order to incorporate wealthy non-southern whites, including Jews, into society.
By the 1880s women in temperance and suffrage movements shifted the boundaries between private and public life in Dallas by pushing their way into politics in the name of social issues.
[11] During 1913–19, advocates of woman suffrage drew on the educational and advertising techniques of the national parties and the lobbying tactics of the women's club movement.
Community and social occasions served as recruiting opportunities for the suffrage cause, blunting its radical implications with the familiarity of customary events and dressing it in the values of traditional female behavior, especially propriety.
Suddenly this whole structure turned on its side down-stream, broke loose from the rest of the track at one end and swung out into the middle of the current and began breaking up, first into large sections and then into smaller pieces, rushing madly along to some uncertain destination.
[Approximately half a dozen of the workmen fell into the torrent at this point; exaggerated reports of their drowning swept the city.
Much to the horror of residents, thousands of livestock drowned in the flood and some became lodged in the tops of trees—the stench of their decay hung over the city as the water subsided.
His plans included using levees to divert the river, removing railroad lines on Pacific Avenue, consolidating train depots into a central station, new parks and playgrounds, and the straightening and widening of several streets.
[2] After the disastrous flood, the city wanted to find a way to control the reckless Trinity and to build a bridge linking Oak Cliff and Dallas.
This had already been attempted following the 1890 flood—the result was the "Long Wooden Bridge," an unstable structure which had connected Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff and Cadiz Street in Dallas until being washed away in the 1908 flood.
George B. Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News, proposed a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) concrete bridge similar to one crossing the Missouri River in Kansas City.
