Pleasant Grove

Pleasant Grove is a residential neighborhood in the Dallas city limits, eight miles southeast of downtown Dallas in southeast central Dallas County. The area is unofficially bounded by Bruton Road to the north, White Rock Creek to the west, Trinity River to the south, and Cheyenne Road to the east. The center of old Pleasant Grove was at Lake June Road and Buckner Boulevard, but the area now considered Pleasant Grove includes portions of Pleasant Mound, Urbandale, Parkdale, and Piedmont. The first settlers in the Pleasant Grove area in the 1840s included W. B. Elam, who held the original land grant, Richard Bruton, and Cornelius Cox. By 1875 a wooden building was used as a union church and school. An early teacher at one of the schools built in the 1880s was Don Lebow, who named the school Pleasant Grove after its location in a grove of cottonwood trees. The name was then applied to both the school and the community. In 1900 Sam Street's map of Dallas County showed Pleasant Grove as a small community with a store. In 1916 the first brick schoolhouse was built.

Due to a post-World War II housing boom the population grew from 120 to 3,500 between 1943 and 1952. By the late 1940s Pleasant Grove had seven businesses, including a new bank. Businesses remained less important than the residential areas, but in 1952 Pleasant Grove Shopping Center, a major retail center, was built. In 1937 Pleasant Grove formed its own school district, which by the late 1940s had fourteen buildings. In June 1954 the Pleasant Grove school district merged with the Dallas Independent School District. Pleasant Grove twice fought incorporation movements and remained unincorporated. The city of Dallas started annexing areas of Pleasant Grove in the late 1940s, and by 1962 all of Pleasant Grove was within the Dallas city limits. In 1962 the Greater Pleasant Grove Chamber of Commerce was formed to promote business in the area. In the 1990s Pleasant Grove continued to be known as a separate community, although it was officially part of Dallas and received all its city services from Dallas.