Collection: Mesquite Texas

It started as a water stop on the railroad. In 1873 the Texas & Pacific Railway dropped a depot on the Blackland Prairie east of Dallas and named it for Mesquite Creek. Five years later it was famous for fifteen minutes: the outlaw Sam Bass robbed the train here in 1878, and rode off with about $152. The little rail town grew into a cotton community, then a Dallas suburb, and along the way became the official Rodeo Capital of Texas. Railroad town, outlaw country, Saturday-night rodeo — this is the real Mesquite, and this page tells that story.

The Blackland Prairie here was long a gathering ground — Caddo, Tawakoni, and Wichita peoples held trading fairs across this part of North Texas. The town itself begins in May 1873, when the Texas & Pacific Railway built a depot on the line east of Dallas and named it for nearby Mesquite Creek. A post office followed in 1874, the first church in 1877, and on December 3, 1887 Mesquite incorporated. It was cotton country at first — gins and farms on the flat prairie — with the railroad running straight into the Dallas markets.

What's with the train robbery? In April 1878 the outlaw Sam Bass and his gang stopped the Texas & Pacific train right here at Mesquite — one stop on a short, spectacular Texas crime spree that had lawmen chasing him all that summer. The Mesquite job was almost a bust: the gang got away with only about $152 and some loose change. Bass was cornered and killed at Round Rock a few months later, on his 27th birthday, and rode straight into Old-West legend. It's the kind of thing that happens to a railroad town: the train comes through, and so does history.

For its first seventy-five years Mesquite stayed small — fewer than 1,700 people as late as 1950. Then the Metroplex arrived: the postwar boom and the highways turned the cotton town into a major Dallas suburb, and the population climbed past 150,000. Through all of it, one identity stuck and became official — the Rodeo Capital of Texas. Since 1958 the Mesquite Championship Rodeo has run at what's now Resistol Arena, the chutes banging open on summer Saturday nights, keeping the town's Western character alive long after the cotton gins closed.

Our Mesquite logo carries a Texas longhorn — the cattle breed that built the open range — and a Lone Star over "1845," the year of statehood and the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Texas place. Printed black-and-white with the worn look of a branding iron or an old rodeo poster, the longhorn and star read as Texas in shorthand: cattle country, the Lone Star, the open prairie. What makes this one Mesquite is the place behind it — the 1873 rail depot, the Sam Bass robbery, and the Rodeo Capital the prairie town became.

Today Mesquite is a major Dallas suburb of more than 150,000 on the eastern edge of the Metroplex, but its character still runs back to the railroad: a depot town named for a prairie creek, an 1878 train robbery, and a Rodeo Capital identity it has carried since 1958. Our Mesquite designs gather that into wearable form — the rail town, the outlaw country, the Rodeo Capital, the longhorn-and-star. From the old T&P depot to the Saturday-night chutes — wear a little of real North Texas.

Mesquite Texas — Travel Guide

Visiting Mesquite Texas Today

Mesquite sits about twelve miles east of downtown Dallas on the Blackland Prairie — a major Metroplex suburb that still carries its railroad-town and Rodeo Capital heritage. The history is easy to find between the highways: the old town square, a pioneer ranch homestead, and the Saturday-night rodeo.

Rodeo, Parks & Heritage in Mesquite Texas

For visitors searching for things to do in Mesquite, Texas:

• Catch the Mesquite Championship Rodeo at Resistol Arena on a summer Saturday night, the heart of the Rodeo Capital of Texas.
• Tour the Florence Ranch Homestead (1871), a restored pioneer farmstead and house museum.
• Walk the historic Mesquite town square and downtown, laid out around 1901.
• Relax at City Lake Park, with walking trails, fishing, and open lawns.
• Take the Mesquite Meander historic-cemetery walking tour each October.

Why People Visit Mesquite Texas

Most people know Mesquite for the rodeo and the shopping, but the city rewards anyone who looks for the older layer: a Texas & Pacific depot town from 1873, the site of a Sam Bass train robbery, and the official Rodeo Capital of Texas. It's flat, friendly North Texas — Dallas-close, but holding onto its own railroad-and-rodeo character.

For deeper reading on the Mesquite, Texas history described here — the Caddo, Tawakoni, and Wichita trading-fair heritage, the 1871 Florence Ranch Homestead, the 1873 Texas & Pacific Railway depot founding and Mesquite Creek, the 1878 Sam Bass train robbery, the 1887 incorporation, and the Rodeo Capital of Texas identity — it may be useful to consult (1) the Mesquite Historical and Genealogical Society, (2) the Mesquite Public Library local-history collection, (3) the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the Texas Historical Commission, (4) the City of Mesquite clerk's records office, and (5) the Dallas County and University of North Texas local-history collections. For travel and visitor information, it may be useful to contact (1) Visit Mesquite (the Mesquite Convention and Visitors Bureau), (2) Travel Texas, (3) the City of Mesquite Parks and Recreation Department, (4) the Texas State Parks office, and (5) the regional visitor and airport information desks.