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.
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.
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.
