Carrollton Texas — Retro Vintage History

What's with the Two Carrolltons? Anyone searching for this one has to be careful: there is a Carrollton in Georgia, another outside New Orleans, and a New Carrollton on the Washington Metro, and none of them is this Carrollton. North Texas's Carrollton got its name the way many frontier towns did — secondhand. The first families to arrive in the early 1840s, taking up free land under the Peters Colony grant, came from Carrollton, Illinois, and simply carried the name south with them. That Illinois town had in turn been named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence — so the name on a North Texas water tower traces, two towns back, to a Maryland statesman who never came anywhere near the Trinity River. Locals just call it Carrollton, Texas, and leave the genealogy to the historians.

Those first families — the Larners, the Furneaux, the Perrys, and a cluster of other English-rooted households sometimes called the 'English colony' — were after the same thing: the headrights the Peters Colony offered to anyone who would settle and improve the land. They found flat Blackland Prairie near the Elm Fork of the Trinity, good for cotton, corn, and grain, and they got to work. David Myers, also from Illinois, organized the first Baptist church in Dallas County in 1846; a community school followed around 1856 at the Union Baptist Church. For its first forty years Carrollton was a scattering of farms, gins, and mills, with a population you could count in the low hundreds.

What turned a farm district into a town was the railroad — three of them, really. The Dallas & Wichita line reached Carrollton and a post office opened in 1878; Jay Gould bought the unfinished road and pushed it to Denton in 1880, and it became the Missouri, Kansas & Texas — the 'Katy.' Then, in 1888, the Cotton Belt line crossed the Katy right at Carrollton, and that crossing made the place. A town that shipped its neighbors' cotton, cottonseed, grain, and livestock grew up in the angle of the rails, soon outpacing the older mill settlement of Trinity Mills to the north. The Historic Downtown Square took shape along Belt Line Road, and it is still the heart of the old town.

The most Carrollton thing on the skyline came with that shipping trade: the tall concrete grain-elevator silos that still ring the east side of the Square. Built to hold the grain the trains hauled in and out, the cylindrical complex outlasted the farms it served and became the town's accidental monument — a piece of industrial Texas standing over a square of vintage storefronts. In recent years the city has begun turning the silos into public art and a gateway for rail riders, so the structure that once measured the harvest now greets the commuter. Few suburbs keep a landmark so plainly honest about where their money first came from.

Carrollton incorporated as a city in 1913, with W.F. Vinson as its first mayor, and for decades stayed a small farming-and-rail town — a working cattle ranch survived inside the city limits as late as 1983. Then the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex grew out to meet it. The Sun Belt boom of the 1950s through the 1980s filled the prairie with neighborhoods, and Carrollton became the three-county suburb it is now, spread across Dallas, Denton, and Collin counties northwest of downtown Dallas. The DART Green Line and Trinity Mills Station arrived in 2010, tying the old rail town back into the region's rails — carrying passengers this time, not cotton.

Modern Carrollton is also one of the most Korean cities in Texas. Along Old Denton Road and through the north Dallas suburbs, a large Korean-American community has built groceries, bakeries, and barbecue restaurants thick enough that the area is sometimes called a hidden Koreatown — and in 2010 the city gave that everyday connection official shape by becoming a sister city of Guri, South Korea, just east of Seoul. The Festival at the Switchyard, begun the same year, brings the whole town back to the Square and the old rail yard each fall. A frontier farm town named twice-over for a Maryland signer now throws a street festival in the shadow of its grain silos, in one of the most diverse suburbs in North Texas.

Our Carrollton logo carries the Texas longhorn and the Lone Star above 'Texas Republic — Est. 1845,' the shared retro emblem of our Texas towns; the longhorn stands for the cattle-and-cotton country the town was built to ship, the star for Texas itself, and 1845 marks the year Texas joined the Union as a state. Rendered distressed in black-and-white, like a brand on a crate or a stock pen, it ties Carrollton to every other Texas town we make. What makes this one Carrollton is the town behind the brand — the two Carrolltons, the rail crossing, and the silos on the Square.

So Carrollton gathers an Illinois name, a railroad crossing, and a ring of grain silos onto the Blackland Prairie north of Dallas. Our Carrollton designs gather that into wearable form. Wear the history. Where the rails crossed — Carrollton, Texas.

Carrollton, Texas — Travel Guide

Visiting Carrollton Today

Carrollton sits about fourteen miles northwest of downtown Dallas, spread across Dallas, Denton, and Collin counties along I-35E and the old Cotton Belt and Katy rail corridors. The Historic Downtown Square and its grain silos, the A.W. Perry Homestead, the Korean dining district, and the city's lake parks are all an easy hop from one another.

The Square, the Silos & the Rail Town

For visitors looking for things to do in Carrollton, Texas:

• Walk the Historic Downtown Carrollton Square along Belt Line Road, ringed by vintage storefronts.
• See the concrete grain-elevator silos on the east side of the Square — the town's industrial landmark.
• Tour the A.W. Perry Homestead Museum, an 1844 settler farmstead.
• Catch the Festival at the Switchyard, the city's signature event around the old rail yard.
• Eat your way down Old Denton Road through one of North Texas's largest Korean dining scenes.
• Relax at Josey Ranch Lake Park, with walking trails and water views.
• Ride in from the region on the DART Green Line to Trinity Mills Station.

Why People Visit Carrollton

Visitors come to Carrollton for the old railroad town inside the modern suburb — the Square, the silos, and the Switchyard — and stay for the food, the parks, and the easy reach of the whole Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. It is equal parts Texas heritage and present-day diversity, with vintage storefronts on one block and Korean bakeries on the next. Welcoming and well-connected, Carrollton rewards anyone curious about how a North Texas farm town became a three-county suburb without losing its center.

Kindred Cities

Greetings, friends from Guri, South Korea (환영합니다) — a neighbour of Seoul and a natural sister for one of Texas's most Korean cities.

Carrollton and Guri found each other for a simple reason: tens of thousands of Korean-Americans call the north Dallas suburbs home, and Carrollton sits near the centre of that community, its plazas full of Korean groceries, barbecue and signage. Guri, just east of Seoul, gave that everyday connection an official shape across the Pacific.

The cities signed their tie in 2010 — young as sister relationships go, but anchored in one of the largest Korean-American populations in the American South.

If you're coming from Guri or greater Seoul, the welcome here is practical as much as warm: Korean restaurants and markets you'd recognise on sight, a community that already speaks the language, and the whole Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex at the doorstep. Come and visit us soon.

When you plan the trip, the City of Carrollton is the place to start.

For deeper reading on the Carrollton history described here — the Peters Colony settlement and the Carrollton, Illinois naming, the 1888 Katy and Cotton Belt rail junction and the Downtown Square, the grain-elevator silos and the cotton-and-grain shipping economy, the 1913 incorporation, and the Korean-American community and the Guri sister-city tie — it may be useful to consult (1) the Carrollton Public Library and its local-history holdings, (2) the A.W. Perry Homestead Museum, (3) the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the Texas Historical Commission, (4) the City of Carrollton clerk's records office, and (5) the Denton County Office of History and Culture. For travel and visitor information, it may be useful to contact (1) the City of Carrollton, (2) the Metrocrest Chamber of Commerce, (3) the City of Carrollton Parks and Recreation Department, (4) the Texas state parks office, and (5) DART and DCTA for transit to Trinity Mills Station.