Grand Prairie

Grand Prairie is thirteen miles west of downtown Dallas in western Dallas and eastern Tarrant counties. It is crossed by State highways 161, 180, and 303, Interstate highways 20 and 30, and Farm Road 1382 (Belt Line Road). The townsite comprises approximately eighty-one square miles enclosed by Dallas, Arlington, Irving, and Cedar Hill. Mountain Creek Lake is on the east, a portion of Joe Pool Lake is in southern Grand Prairie, and Kirby, Cottonwood, and Fish creeks flow through the community, as well as the West Fork of the Trinity River. Settlers arrived in the area before the Civil War and built several stores, including the M. M. Miller store and the Phillip Goetsell store. The community was not organized, however, until 1863 when A. M. Dechman's wagon broke down on his trip from Jacksonville, Texas, to Fort Belknap with supplies for the army commissary. He traded his broken wagon, ox team, and $200 of Confederate money for a 239-acre tract that had originally been granted on May 1, 1850, to William and Walter Caruth.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.