In 1839, John Neely Bryan first visited the place that would one day become Dallas. He had come to the three forks area of the Trinity to survey a spot for a possible trading post serving Indians and settlers. The site was the easiest place to cross the Trinity, and also near where the Preston Trail was planned. This highway would link North Texas to South Texas.

After surveying, Bryan returned to Arkansas to settle his affairs. While he was gone, a treaty was signed, removing all Indians from North Texas. He returned in November of 1841, to find the Indians, and half of his customers, gone. So, he shifted his trading post idea to that of a permanent community. About 22 miles to the northwest, there was a community called Bird's Fort. He invited those who had settled there to come and settle in his proposed town. John Beeman arrived in April of 1842 and planted the first corn. Other families soon followed. Members of the Peters Colony settled nearby, and Peter's Colony agents bragged on the new town, now called Dallas, attracting even more settlers.
Dallas was incorporated as a town in 1856. Samuel Pryor was elected the first mayor. Dallas continued to grow steadily. Many settlers from the failed colony of La Reunion came to Dallas and became leading citizens, adding an artistic and intellectual element to the city. By 1859, Dallas boasted a barber shop and photographer.

The only thing that the city of Dallas was lacking was a major university. In 1910, efforts began to have Southwestern University in Georgetown move to Dallas. They refused, but this action brought Dallas to the attention of the Methodists. They voted in 1911 to establish a university in Dallas, after the city offered $300,000 and 666.5 acres of land for the campus. In 1915, Southern Methodist University opened its doors.

In 1911, Dallas became the location of one of twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks. The city campaigned for years, and the bank's arrival assured Dallas's place as a financial center.
 

Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas and the seventeenth-largest city in the United States.[5] Situated in North Texas, Fort Worth covers nearly 300 square miles (780 km²) in Tarrant and Denton counties, serving as the county seat for Tarrant County. As of the 2007 U.S. Census estimate, Fort Worth had a population of 681,818.[2] Fort Worth’s population has now reached 702,850, according to new estimates released by the North Central Texas Council of Governments. The city is the second-largest cultural and economic center of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area (commonly called the Metroplex). Fort Worth and the surrounding Metroplex area offer numerous business opportunities and a wide array of attractions.

Established originally in 1849 as a protective Army outpost at the foot of a bluff overlooking the Trinity River, the city of Fort Worth today still embraces its western heritage and traditional architecture and design more than its more contemporary neighbor, Dallas.

Caddo Native Americans inhabited the Dallas area before it was claimed, along with the rest of Texas, as a part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain in the 1500s. The area was also claimed by the French, but in 1819 the Adams-Onís Treaty officially placed Dallas well within Spanish territory by making the Red River the northern boundary of New Spain.[1]

Another European who probably visited the Dallas area was Athanase de Mezieres in 1778. De Mezieres, a Frenchman then in the service of the King of Spain, probably crossed the West Fork of the Trinity River near present-day Fort Worth, having followed the western edge of the Eastern Cross Timbers from the Tawakoni Village on the Brazos River near present Waco. He then proceeded north to the Red River.[1] He wrote:

“ It is worthy to note that from the Brazos River on which the Tuacanas are established, and until one reaches the river which bathes the village of the Taovayzes (Red River), one sees on the right a forest that the natives appropriately call the Grand Forest. ...it is very dense, but not very wide. It seems to be there as a guide to even the most inexperienced, and to give refuge in this dangerous region to those who, few in number and lacking in courage, wish to go from one village to another. -De Mezieres[1]