Highland Park

Product photo
Promotion: Nearby Map of Dallas County

Highland Park, on State Highway 289 and State Highway 75 four miles north of downtown Dallas in central Dallas County, is a 2.2-square-mile residential "island city" surrounded by Dallas on the south, east, and west and University Park on the north. In 1889 the land was bought by a group of Philadelphia investors, the Philadelphia Place Land Association, for an average price of $377 an acre, or $500,000 total. Henry Exall, acting as agent, intended to develop the land along Turtle Creek as Philadelphia Place, an area of exclusive housing modeled after parkland housing in Philadelphia. He laid out gravel roads and built a dam across Turtle Creek to form Exall Lake before the panic of 1893 destroyed the Dallas land boom and ended the development. Exall lost everything except his horse and some of the land. He subsequently began a breeding farm, Lomo Alto Horse Farm. During the 1890s Exall Lake was a favorite picnic destination for Dallasites. Bass and perch abounded in it, and a steamboat operated on it. Exall bred horses with his stallion Electrite until 1906, when John Armstrong bought the land for a residential development.

Armstrong had been a partner of Thomas L. Marsalis in the development of Oak Cliff but sold out to open a meatpacking business. With the sale of his business he invested the money in 1,326 acres of the former Philadelphia Place land to develop under the name Highland Park. Armstrong, along with his sons-in-law Hugh Prather and Edgar Flippen, gave Highland Park its name because of its location on high land overlooking downtown Dallas. The investors hired Wilbur David Cook, a landscape architect of Beverly Hills, California, to design the layout. In addition, George E. Kessler, who designed Fair Park and much of downtown Dallas, was hired to help in planning and development. Twenty percent of the original land was set aside for parks. The first 100-acre addition was begun in 1907 and promoted with the slogan "Beyond the City's Dust and Smoke." Later appeared the slogan "It's Ten Degrees Cooler in Highland Park." The second development in Highland Park, the Lakeside addition, was developed in 1910.

Continue Reading

Lisa C. Maxwell | © TSHA

Handbook of Texas Logo

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

Belongs to

Highland Park is part of or belongs to the following places:

Currently Exists

Yes

Place type

Highland Park is classified as a Town

Location

Latitude: 32.83105300
Longitude: -96.80128600

Has Post Office

No

Is Incorporated

Yes

Population Count, 2021 View more »

8,747