Souvenir Guide to Dallas, Texas ─ A Sketch of Dallas and Dallas County, Their Resources, Business Enterprises, Manufacturing and Agricultural Advantages With a Directory of the Leading

In the poet’s view, dreams are visitors from the ivory gate, or children of an idle brain, but science is more prosaic, and teaches that dreams may be realities. In history we have many iridescent dreamers; in fact, all our great men have been such, and in many instances the dream has surpassed all human expectations. Little did the young lawyer, John Neely Bryan, as he pitched his lonely tent on the banks of the Trinity river in 1840, dream that he was the founder of a city which was to be the future metropolis of the South. Wonderful has been the growth and unparalelled the expansion of this whole Republic within the last decade, but no section has ever seen such wonderful development as has enterprising Dallas. In 1870 the population was on 1700, but fortunately for Dallas, the accursed spirit of division, which has blighted the fair prospects of many a young city, was unknown here. Great enterprises and boundless public spirit were stamped on every feature of the city. Enterprise and industry have achieved results as startling as the wave of the magician’s wand, and in this atom of time has sprung up, as if it were by magic, a city with a population of 61,855 souls. Nor has the march of development slackened, but the watch-word is still “Onward!” and Dallas is ranked among the largest and most progressive cities of the South.