Dallas

Dallas, is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the largest city in and seat of Dallas County, with portions extending into Collin, Denton, Kaufman and Rockwall counties. With a 2020 census population of 1,304,379, it is the ninth most-populous city in the U.S. and the third-largest in Texas after Houston and San Antonio. Located in North Texas, the city of Dallas is the main core of the largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States and the largest inland metropolitan area in the U.S. that lacks any navigable link to the sea. It is the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country at 7.5 million people. Dallas and nearby Fort Worth were initially developed due to the construction of major railroad lines through the area allowing access to cotton, cattle and later oil in North and East Texas. The construction of the Interstate Highway System reinforced Dallas's prominence as a transportation hub, with four major interstate highways converging in the city and a fifth interstate loop around it. Dallas then developed as a strong industrial and financial center and a major inland port, due to the convergence of major railroad lines, interstate highways and the construction of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, one of the largest and busiest airports in the world. In addition, Dallas has DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) with different colored train lines that transport throughout the Metroplex. Dominant sectors of its diverse economy include defense, financial services, information technology, telecommunications, and transportation. Dallas is home to nine Fortune 500 companies within the city limits while the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex hosts twenty-two Fortune 500 companies, the second most in Texas and fourth most in the United States. Over 41 colleges and universities are located within its metropolitan area, which is the most of any metropolitan area in Texas. The city has a population from a myriad of ethnic and religious backgrounds and one of the largest LGBT communities in the U.S. WalletHub named Dallas the fifth most diverse city in the United States in 2018.

History

The Caddo people were the original recorded inhabitants in the Dallas area before Spanish colonists claimed the territory of Texas in the 18th century as a part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Later, France also claimed the area but never established much settlement. In all, six flags have flown over the area preceding and during the city's history: those of France, Spain, and Mexico, the flag of the Republic of Texas, the Confederate flag, and the flag of the United States of America. In 1819, the Adams–Onís Treaty between the United States and Spain defined the Red River as the northern boundary of New Spain, officially placing the future location of Dallas well within Spanish territory. The area remained under Spanish rule until 1821, when Mexico declared independence from Spain, and the area was considered part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. In 1836, Texians, with a majority of Anglo-American settlers, gained independence from Mexico and formed the Republic of Texas. Three years after Texas achieved independence, John Neely Bryan surveyed the area around present-day Dallas. In 1839, accompanied by his dog and a Cherokee he called Ned, he planted a stake in the ground on a bluff located near three forks of the Trinity River and left. Two years later, in 1841, he returned to establish a permanent settlement named Dallas. The origin of the name is uncertain. The official historical marker states it was named after Vice President George M. Dallas of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, this is disputed. Other potential theories for the origin include his brother, Commodore Alexander James Dallas, as well as brothers Walter R. Dallas or James R. Dallas. A further theory gives the ultimate origin as the village of Dallas, Moray, Scotland, similar to the way Houston, Texas, was named after Sam Houston whose ancestors came from the Scottish village of Houston, Renfrewshire. The Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845 and Dallas County was established the following year. Dallas was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1856. In the mid-1800s, a group of French Socialists established La Réunion, a short-lived community, along the Trinity River in what is now West Dallas. With the construction of railroads, Dallas became a business and trading center and was booming by the end of the 19th century. It became an industrial city, attracting workers from Texas, the South, and the Midwest. The Praetorian Building in Dallas of 15 stories, built in 1909, was the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi and the tallest building in Texas for some time. It marked the prominence of Dallas as a city. A racetrack for thoroughbreds was built and their owners established the Dallas Jockey Club. Trotters raced at a track in Fort Worth, where a similar drivers club was based. The rapid expansion of population increased competition for jobs and housing. In 1910, a white mob of hundreds of people lynched a black man, Allen Brooks, accused of raping a little girl. The mob tortured Brooks, then killed him at the downtown intersection of Main and Akard by hanging him from a decorative archway inscribed with the words "Welcome Visitors". Thousands of Dallasites came to gawk at the torture scene, collecting keepsakes and posing for photographs. In 1921, the Mexican president Álvaro Obregón along with the former revolutionary general visited Downtown Dallas's Mexican Park in Little Mexico; the small park was on the corner of Akard and Caruth Street, site of the current Fairmont Hotel. The small neighborhood of Little Mexico was home to a Latin American population that had been drawn to Dallas by factors including the American Dream, better living conditions, and the Mexican Revolution. During World War II, Dallas was a major manufacturing center for military automobiles and aircraft for the United States and Allied forces. Over 94,000 jeeps and over 6,000 military trucks were produced at the Ford plant in East Dallas. North American Aviation manufactured over 18,000 aircraft at their plant in Dallas, including the T-6 Texan trainer, P-51 Mustang fighter, and B-24 Liberator bomber. On November 22, 1963, United States President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Elm Street while his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Downtown Dallas. The upper two floors of the building from which the Warren Commission reported assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy have been converted into a historical museum covering the former president's life and accomplishments. Kennedy was pronounced dead at Dallas Parkland Memorial Hospital just over 30 minutes after the shooting. On July 7, 2016, multiple shots were fired at a Black Lives Matter protest in Downtown Dallas, held against the police killings of two black men from other states. The gunman, later identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, began firing at police officers at 8:58 p.m., killing five officers and injuring nine. Two bystanders were also injured. This marked the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the September 11 attacks. Johnson told police during a standoff that he was upset about recent police shootings of black men and wanted to kill whites, especially white officers. After hours of negotiation failed, police resorted to a robot-delivered bomb, killing Johnson inside Dallas College El Centro Campus. The shooting occurred in an area of hotels, restaurants, businesses, and residential apartments only a few blocks away from Dealey Plaza.

Geography

Dallas is situated in the Southern United States, in North Texas. It is the county seat of Dallas County and portions of the city extend into neighboring Collin, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties. Many suburbs surround Dallas; three enclaves are within the city boundaries—Cockrell Hill, Highland Park, and University Park. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 385.8 square miles (999.3 km2); 340.5 square miles (881.9 km2) of Dallas is land and 45.3 square miles (117.4 km2) of it (11.75%) is water. Dallas makes up one-fifth of the much larger urbanized area known as the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, in which one quarter of all Texans live. Dallas's skyline has twenty buildings classified as skyscrapers, over 150 meters in height. Despite its tallest building not reaching 300 meters, Dallas does have a signature building in Bank of America Plaza which is lit up in neon but falls outside the top two hundred tallest buildings in the world. Although some of Dallas's architecture dates from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the notable architecture in the city is from the modernist and postmodernist eras. Iconic examples of modernist architecture include Reunion Tower, the JFK Memorial, I. M. Pei's Dallas City Hall and the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Good examples of postmodernist skyscrapers are Fountain Place, Bank of America Plaza, Renaissance Tower, JPMorgan Chase Tower, and Comerica Bank Tower. Downtown Dallas also has residential offerings in downtown, some of which are signature skyline buildings. Several smaller structures are fashioned in the Gothic Revival style, such as the Kirby Building, and the neoclassical style, as seen in the Davis and Wilson Buildings. One architectural "hotbed" in the city is a stretch of historic houses along Swiss Avenue, which has all shades and variants of architecture from Victorian to neoclassical. The Dallas Downtown Historic District protects a cross-section of Dallas commercial architecture from the 1880s to the 1940s. The city of Dallas is home to many areas, neighborhoods, and communities. Dallas can be divided into several geographical areas which include larger geographical sections of territory including many subdivisions or neighborhoods, forming macroneighborhoods. Central Dallas is anchored by Downtown, the center of the city, along with Oak Lawn and Uptown, areas characterized by dense retail, restaurants, and nightlife. Downtown Dallas has a variety of named districts, including the West End Historic District, the Arts District, the Main Street District, Farmers Market District, the City Center Business District, the Convention Center District, and the Reunion District. "Hot spots" in this area include Uptown, Victory Park, Harwood, Oak Lawn, Dallas Design District, Trinity Groves, Turtle Creek, Cityplace, Knox/Henderson, Greenville, and West Village. East Dallas is home to Deep Ellum, a trendy arts area close to Downtown, the homey Lakewood neighborhood (and adjacent areas, including Lakewood Heights, Wilshire Heights, Lower Greenville, Junius Heights, and Hollywood Heights/Santa Monica), historic Vickery Place and Bryan Place, and the architecturally significant neighborhoods of Swiss Avenue and Munger Place. Its historic district has one of the largest collections of Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired prairie-style homes in the United States. In the northeast quadrant of the city is Lake Highlands, one of Dallas's most unified middle-class neighborhoods. South Dallas, a distinct neighborhood southeast of Downtown, lays claim to the Cedars, an eclectic artist hotbed, Fair Park, home of the annual State Fair of Texas, held from late September through mid-October, and Exposition Park, Dallas, a small enclave filled with artists, art galleries, and bars along tree-lined Exposition Avenue. Southwest of Downtown lies Oak Cliff, a hilly area that has undergone gentrification in recent years, in neighborhoods such as the Bishop Arts District. Oak Cliff was a township founded in the mid-1800s and annexed in 1903 by Dallas. Today, most of the area's northern residents are Hispanic and Latin American. The ghost town of La Reunion once occupied the north tip of Oak Cliff. South Oak Cliff's population is a mix of African American, Hispanic, and Native American. South Side Dallas is a popular location for nightly entertainment at the NYLO rooftop patio and lounge,[51] The Cedars Social.[52] The neighborhood has undergone extensive development and community integration. What was once an area characterized by high rates of poverty and crime is now one of the city's most attractive social and living destinations. Further east, in the southeast quadrant of the city, is the large neighborhood of Pleasant Grove. Once an independent city, it is a collection of mostly lower-income residential areas stretching to Seagoville in the southeast. Though a city neighborhood, Pleasant Grove is surrounded by undeveloped land on all sides. Swampland and wetlands separating it from South Dallas are part of the Great Trinity Forest, a subsection of the city's Trinity River Project, newly appreciated for habitat and flood control. Dallas and its surrounding area are mostly flat. The city lies at elevations ranging from 450 to 550 feet (137 to 168 m) above sea level. The western edge of the Austin Chalk Formation, a limestone escarpment (also known as the "White Rock Escarpment"), rises 230 feet (70 m) and runs roughly north–south through Dallas County. South of the Trinity River, the uplift is particularly noticeable in the neighborhoods of Oak Cliff and the adjacent cities of Cockrell Hill, Cedar Hill, Grand Prairie, and Irving. Marked variations in terrain are also found in cities immediately to the west in Tarrant County surrounding Fort Worth, as well as along Turtle Creek north of Downtown. Dallas, like many other cities, was founded along a river. The city was founded at the location of a "white rock crossing" of the Trinity River, where it was easier for wagons to cross the river in the days before ferries or bridges. The Trinity River, though not usefully navigable, is the major waterway through the city. Interstate 35E parallels its path through Dallas along the Stemmons Corridor, then south alongside the western portion of Downtown and past South Dallas and Pleasant Grove, where the river is paralleled by Interstate 45 until it exits the city and heads southeast towards Houston. The river is flanked on both sides by 50 feet (15 m) tall earthen levees to protect the city from frequent floods. Since it was rerouted in the late 1920s, the river has been little more than a drainage ditch within a floodplain for several miles above and below Downtown, with a more normal course further upstream and downstream, but as Dallas began shifting towards postindustrial society, public outcry about the lack of aesthetic and recreational use of the river ultimately gave way to the Trinity River Project, which was begun in the early 2000s. The project area reaches for over 20 miles (32 km) in length within the city, while the overall geographical land area addressed by the Land Use Plan is approximately 44,000 acres (180 km2) in size—about 20% of the land area in Dallas. Green space along the river encompasses approximately 10,000 acres (40 km2), making it one of the largest and diverse urban parks in the world. White Rock Lake and Joe Pool Lake are reservoirs that comprise Dallas's other significant water features. Built at the beginning of the 20th century, White Rock Lake Park is a popular destination for boaters, rowers, joggers, and bikers, as well as visitors seeking peaceful respite from the city at the 66-acre (267,000 m2) Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden, on the lake's eastern shore. White Rock Creek feeds into White Rock Lake and then exits into the Trinity River southeast of Downtown Dallas. Trails along White Rock Creek are part of the extensive Dallas County Trails System. Bachman Lake, just northwest of Love Field Airport, is a smaller lake also popularly used for recreation. Northeast of the city is Lake Ray Hubbard, a vast 22,745-acre (92 km2) reservoir in an extension of Dallas surrounded by the suburbs of Garland, Rowlett, Rockwall, and Sunnyvale. To the west of the city is Mountain Creek Lake, once home to the Naval Air Station Dallas (Hensley Field) and a number of defense aircraft manufacturers. North Lake, a small body of water in an extension of the city limits surrounded by Irving and Coppell, initially served as a water source for a nearby power plant but is now being targeted for redevelopment as a recreational lake due to its proximity to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, a plan the lake's neighboring cities oppose. Dallas has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa) characteristic of the Southern Plains of the United States. It also has continental characteristics, characterized by a relatively wide annual temperature range for the latitude. Located at the lower end of Tornado Alley, it is prone to extreme weather, tornadoes, and hailstorms. Summers in Dallas are very hot and humid, although low humidity characteristics of desert locations can appear at any time of the year.July, the driest month, is just rainy enough to keep Dallas from having a Mediterranean climate. July and August are typically the hottest months, with an average high of 96.0 °F (36 °C) and an average low of 76.7 °F (25 °C). Heat indices regularly surpass 105 °F (41 °C) at the height of summer. The all-time record high is 113 °F (45 °C), set on June 26 and 27, 1980 during the Heat Wave of 1980 at nearby Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Winters in Dallas are cool to mild, with occasional cold spells. The average date of first frost is November 12, and the average date of last frost is March 12. January is typically the coldest month, with an average daytime high of 56.8 °F (14 °C) and an average nighttime low of 37.3 °F (3 °C). The normal daily average temperature in January is 47.0 °F (8 °C) but sharp swings in temperature can occur, as strong cold fronts known as "Blue Northers" pass through the Dallas region, forcing daytime highs below the 50 °F (10 °C) mark for several days at a time and often between days with high temperatures above 80 °F (27 °C). Snow accumulation is seen in the city in about 70% of winter seasons, and snowfall generally occurs 1–2 days out of the year for a seasonal average of 1.5 inches (4 cm). Some areas in the region, however, receive more than that, while other areas receive negligible snowfall or none at all.[66] The all-time record low temperature within the city is −3 °F (−19 °C), set on January 18, 1930. The temperature at nearby Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport reached −2 °F (−19 °C) on February 16, 2021, during Winter Storm Uri. Spring and autumn are transitional seasons with moderate and pleasant weather. Vibrant wildflowers (such as the bluebonnet, Indian paintbrush and other flora) bloom in spring and are planted around the highways throughout Texas. Springtime weather can be quite volatile, but temperatures themselves are mild. The weather in Dallas is also generally pleasant from late September to early December and on many winter days. Autumn often brings more storms and tornado threats, but they are usually fewer and less severe than in spring. Each spring, cold fronts moving south from the North collide with warm, humid air streaming in from the Gulf Coast, leading to severe thunderstorms with lightning, torrents of rain, hail, and occasionally, tornadoes. Over time, tornadoes have probably been the most significant natural threat to the city, as it is near the heart of Tornado Alley. A few times each winter in Dallas, warm and humid air from the south will override cold, dry air, resulting in freezing rain or ice and causing disruptions in the city if the roads and highways become slick. Temperatures reaching 70 °F (21 °C) on average occur on at least four days each winter month. Dallas averages 26 annual nights at or below freezing, with the winter of 1999–2000 holding the record for the fewest freezing nights with 14. During this same span of 15 years,[specify] the temperature in the region has only twice dropped below 15 °F (−9 °C), though it will generally fall below 20 °F (−7 °C) in most (67%) years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture places Dallas in Plant Hardiness Zone 8a. However, mild winter temperatures in the past 15 to 20 years had encouraged the horticulture of more cold-sensitive plants such as Washingtonia filifera and Washingtonia robusta palms, nearly all of which died off during Winter Storm Uri. According to the American Lung Association, Dallas has the 12th highest air pollution among U.S. cities, ranking it behind Los Angeles and Houston. Much of the air pollution in Dallas and the surrounding area comes from a hazardous materials incineration plant in the small town of Midlothian and from cement plants in neighboring Ellis County.

Economy

In its beginnings, Dallas relied on farming, neighboring Fort Worth's Stockyards, and its prime location on Native American trade routes to sustain itself. Dallas' key to growth came in 1873 with the construction of multiple rail lines through the city. As Dallas grew and technology developed, cotton became its boon and by 1900, Dallas was the largest inland cotton market in the world, becoming a leader in cotton gin machinery manufacturing. By the early 1900s, Dallas was a hub for economic activity all over the Southern United States and was selected in 1914 as the seat of the Eleventh Federal Reserve District. By 1925, Texas churned out more than ⅓ of the nation's cotton crop, with 31% of Texas cotton produced within a 100-mile (160 km) radius of Dallas. In the 1930s, petroleum was discovered east of Dallas, near Kilgore. Dallas' proximity to the discovery put it immediately at the center of the nation's petroleum market. Petroleum discoveries in the Permian Basin, the Panhandle, the Gulf Coast, and Oklahoma in the following years further solidified Dallas' position as the hub of the market. The end of World War II left Dallas seeded with a nexus of communications, engineering, and production talent by companies such as Collins Radio Corporation. Decades later, the telecommunications and information revolutions still drive a large portion of the local economy. The city is sometimes referred to as the heart of "Silicon Prairie" because of a high concentration of telecommunications companies in the region, the epicenter of which lies along the Telecom Corridor in Richardson, a northern suburb of Dallas. The Telecom Corridor is home to more than 5,700 companies including Texas Instruments (headquartered in Dallas), Nortel Networks, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Nokia, Rockwell Collins, Cisco Systems, T-Mobile, Verizon Communications, and CompUSA (which is now headquartered in Miami, Florida). Texas Instruments, a major manufacturer, employs 10,400 people at its corporate headquarters and chip plants in Dallas. In the 1980s Dallas was a real estate hotbed, with the increasing metropolitan population bringing with it a demand for new housing and office space. Several of Downtown Dallas' largest buildings are the fruit of this boom, but over-speculation, the savings and loan crisis and an oil bust brought the 1980s building boom to an end for Dallas as well as its sister city Houston. Between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, central Dallas went through a slow period of growth. However, since the early 2000s the central core of Dallas has been enjoying steady and significant growth encompassing both repurposing of older commercial buildings in Downtown Dallas into residential and hotel uses, as well as the construction of new office and residential towers. The opening of Klyde Warren Park, built across Woodall Rodgers Freeway seamlessly connecting the central Dallas CBD to Uptown/Victory Park, has acted synergistically with the highly successful Dallas Arts District, so both have become catalysts for significant new development in central Dallas. The residential real estate market in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex has not only been resilient but has once again returned to a boom status. Dallas and the greater metro area have been leading the nation in apartment construction and net leasing, with rents reaching all-time highs. Single family home sales, whether pre-owned or new construction, along with home price appreciation, were leading the nation since 2015. A sudden drop in the price of oil, starting in mid-2014 and accelerating throughout 2015, has not significantly affected Dallas and its greater metro area due to the highly diversified nature of its economy. Dallas and the metropolitan region continue to see strong demand for housing, apartment and office leasing, shopping center space, warehouse and industrial space with overall job growth remaining very robust. Oil-dependent cities and regions have felt significant effects from the downturn, but Dallas's growth has continued unabated, strengthening in 2015. Significant national headquarters relocations to the area (as exemplified by Toyota's decision to leave California and establish its new North American headquarters in the Dallas area) coupled with significant expansions of regional offices for a variety of corporations and along with company relocations to Downtown Dallas helped drive the boom in the Dallas economy. Dallas led Texas's largest cities in Forbes magazine's 2015 ranking of "The Best Place for Business and Careers". In 2020, Dallas ranked No. 2 in Forbes magazine's ranking of "The Best Place for Business and Careers". The Dallas–Fort Worth area has one of the largest concentrations of corporate headquarters for publicly traded companies in the United States. Fortune Magazine's 2021 annual list of the Fortune 500 in America indicates the city of Dallas had nine Fortune 500 companies, and the DFW region as a whole had 22.[17] As of 2021, Dallas–Fort Worth represents the second-largest concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters in Texas and fourth-largest in the United States, behind the metropolitan areas of Houston (24), Chicago (35) and New York (64). In 2008, AT&T relocated their headquarters to Downtown Dallas, AT&T is the largest telecommunications company in the world and was the ninth largest company in the nation by revenue for 2017. Additional Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Dallas in order of ranking include Energy Transfer Equity, CBRE (which moved its headquarters from Los Angeles to Dallas in 2020), Tenet Healthcare, Southwest Airlines, Texas Instruments, Jacobs Engineering, HollyFrontier, Dean Foods, and Builders FirstSource. In October 2016, Jacobs Engineering, one of the world's largest engineering companies, relocated from Pasadena, California to Downtown Dallas. Nearby Irving is home to seven Fortune 500 companies of its own, including ExxonMobil, which is the largest energy oil company in the United States by revenue and market cap, McKesson, the country’s largest pharmaceutical distributor and listed at number seven overall on the 2021 Fortune 500 list, Fluor (engineering), Kimberly-Clark, Celanese, Michaels Companies, and Vistra Energy. Plano is home to an additional four Fortune 500 companies, including J.C. Penney, Alliance Data Systems, Yum China, and Dr. Pepper Snapple. Fort Worth is home to two Fortune 500 companies, including American Airlines, the largest airline in the world by revenue, fleet size, profit, passengers carried and revenue passenger mile and D.R. Horton, the largest homebuilder in America. Westlake, TX, north of Fort Worth, now has two Fortune 500 companies: Financial services giant, Charles Schwab, and convenience store distributor, Core-Mark. One Fortune 500 company, GameStop, is based in Grapevine. Additional major companies headquartered in Dallas and its metro area include Comerica, which relocated its national headquarters to Downtown Dallas from Detroit in 2007, NTT DATA Services, Regency Energy Partners, Atmos Energy, Neiman Marcus, Think Finance, 7-Eleven, Brinker International, Primoris Services, AMS Pictures, id Software, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Chuck E. Cheese's, Zale Corporation, and Fossil, Inc. Many of these companies—and others throughout the DFW metroplex—comprise the Dallas Regional Chamber. Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world's largest breast cancer organization, was founded and is headquartered in Dallas. In addition to its large number of businesses, Dallas has more shopping centers per capita than any other city in the United States and is also home to the second shopping center ever built in the United States, Highland Park Village, which opened in 1931. Dallas is home of the two other major malls in North Texas, the Dallas Galleria and NorthPark Center, which is the second largest mall in Texas. Both malls feature high-end stores and are major tourist draws for the region. According to Forbes magazine's annual list of "The Richest People in America" published September 21, 2011, the city is home to 17 billionaires, up from 14 in 2009. In 2009 (with 14 billionaires) the city placed sixth worldwide among cities with the most billionaires. Dallas is the third most popular destination for business travel in the United States, and the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center is one of the largest and busiest convention centers in the country, at over 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2), and the world's single-largest column-free exhibit hall. VisitDallas is the 501(c)(6) organization contracted to promote tourism and attract conventions but an audit released in January 2019 cast doubts on its effectiveness in achieving those goals.

Government

The city uses a council-manager government, with Eric Johnson serving as mayor, T.C. Broadnax serving as city manager, and 14 council members serving as representatives to the 14 council districts in the city. This organizational structure was contested by some in favor of a strong-mayor city charter, only to be rejected by Dallas voters. In 1969, Anita N. Martínez become the first Latin American to sit as a councilwoman in Dallas's city council. In the 2017–2018 fiscal year, the city's total budget (the sum of operating and capital budgets) was $3.3 billion. The city has seen a steady increase in its budget due to sustained growth: the budget was $1.7 billion in 2002–2003, $1.9 billion in 2003–2004, $2.0 billion in 2004–2005, and $2.2 billion in 2005–2006. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which exercises original jurisdiction over 100 counties in North and West Texas, convenes in the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in the Government District of Downtown. The same building additionally houses United States Bankruptcy and Magistrate Courts and a United States Attorney office. Dallas also is the seat of the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas. The city of Dallas is a Democratic stronghold, with over 69% of voters supporting Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and 67% of voters supporting Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election (excluding write-ins). Democratic voters dominate the majority of the city, especially the central urban core and southern sectors, with Republicans spreading a sliver of suburban neighborhoods in North Dallas. In the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, 57% of Dallas voters voted for John Kerry over George W. Bush. Dallas County was closely divided, with 50% of voters voting for Bush and 49% voting for Kerry. Results in the 2008 and 2012 elections favored Barack Obama, with the 44th President receiving 57% of Dallas County voters in both years, with greater margins in the city of Dallas. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, approximately 66% of Dallas voters voted for Hillary Clinton, with 28% of city voters voting for Donald Trump. Dallas County as a whole saw 61% of voters voting for Clinton, with 35% support for Trump. In 2004, Lupe Valdez was elected Dallas County Sheriff. An open lesbian, Valdez was the only female sheriff in the state of Texas until her resignation. Despite controversies in her handling of county jails, she won re-election in 2008 with a 10-point victory over Republican challenger Lowell Cannaday.

Previous Page Back to Beginning Back to Dreamweaver