According to
WikipediaDallas in its beginnings relied on farming, neighboring Fort Worth's Stockyards, and Dallas prime location on Native American trade routes to sustain itself. Dallas's major growth came in 1873 with the building of several rail lines through the city. As Dallas got larger 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, Texas. Dallas's 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's position as the hub of the market.
Today the Dallas MeteroPlex has over 8 million people and is growing at a fast pace. DFW Airport also help fuel this growth too as its a major hub for several airlines.
Geography Dallas is Dallas County county seat. The city stretches into neighboring counties such as Collin, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall. The city has a total area of 385.8 square miles (999.3 km2), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 340,5 square kilometers (881,9 km2) of Dallas is land and 45,3 square kilometers (117,4 km2) of it (11,75 percent) is water.[22] Dallas is one-fifth of the much larger urban area known as the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, home to one quarter of all Texans. Architecture See also: Dallas Landmarks List and Dallas Dallas Dallas Skyline List of Tallest Buildings has several over 700 feet (210 m) high buildings. While some of Dallas ' architecture dates back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most of the city's notable architecture is from the modernist and postmodernist era. Reunion Tower, the JFK Memorial, I. M. Pei's Dallas City Hall and the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center are iconic examples of modernist architecture. Fountain Place, Bank of America Plaza, Renaissance Tower, JPMorgan Chase Tower, and Comerica Bank Tower are good examples of postmodernist skyscrapers. Several smaller structures, such as the Kirby Building and the neoclassical style as seen in the Davis and Wilson Buildings, are fashioned in the Gothic Revival style.