After the war the aerospace work stayed and the prairie filled in around it — subdivisions, shopping, the Metroplex closing over the open ground from both directions. Then in 1996 Lone Star Park opened its grandstand and the horses came back to the prairie, thoroughbreds and quarter horses running spring and fall, with the Breeders’ Cup brought to the grandstand in 2004. The quarter horse itself traces its foundation stock in part to the same Spanish animals that ran here before the fences, which makes the return less a coincidence than a long circle closing.
The town arrived later, and it arrived for the railroad. This ground was Peters Colony prairie in the 1840s, open grass crossed by trading paths between the forks of the Trinity long before anyone platted a street. In 1863 a Nova Scotia-born settler named Alexander McRae Dechman founded the community first known as Dechman. When the Texas and Pacific reached the depot in 1876 the place became a rail town, and in 1877 the line renamed it for the grassland it stood on. Grand Prairie incorporated in 1909 as a farming and ranching crossroads and stayed one for thirty years — a name taken from the land, and a founder’s name taken off the map.
Why People Visit Grand Prairie, Texas
People come for the central Metroplex location and the mix of prairie, lakes, and live racing — and stay curious about an aviation heritage most visitors never expect from a city between Dallas and Fort Worth. It is flat, friendly, and in the middle of everything, with a long horizon and a longer memory than its suburbs suggest.
