New Hope

The site of New Hope was within what later became the city limits of Sunnyvale, near Belt Line Road and Towneast Boulevard four miles north of Mesquite in eastern Dallas County. The community was located at the junction of the land grants of J. S. Phelps, J. Johnson, H. J. Webb, and the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway Company. New Hope was sparsely settled until well after the Civil War because the Texas and Pacific Railway bypassed it and went through Mesquite (1873). A community began to grow around T. P. Tinsley's general store in 1885, and in 1886 a post office was established in New Hope. Both Tinsley and Frank Ellis, the postmaster, are credited with naming New Hope in the late 1880s. By the early 1900s New Hope had a population of 214, four churches, four stores, two blacksmith shops, a bank, a cotton gin, and a school. In 1905 the New Hope News was published there.

In the first half of the twentieth century New Hope declined. In 1919 a fire destroyed some of the businesses, and by 1935 more were gone. The community's population had dropped to 100 by 1933 and to fifty by 1949. In the late 1940s another fire destroyed half of the New Hope business district. In 1946 Frank Ellis sold his store to D. M. Lander, Jr.