What followed was a boom the city more or less willed into being. Dallas made itself the largest inland cotton market in the country, then turned cotton money into banks, and banks into the financial capital of the East Texas oil fields — “Big D,” where the money was. Style came with the money: Neiman Marcus opened its doors in 1907 and gave the city a name for fashion and luxury it has never let go of. By the early twentieth century the prairie trading post had become one of the great commercial cities of the Southwest — glittering, ambitious, and a little theatrical about it.
What’s with the flying red Pegasus? Look up in downtown Dallas and you may catch a red horse with wings, glowing against the night. The flying red Pegasus has watched over the city since 1934, when an oil company raised a rotating neon “Flying Red Horse” atop the Magnolia Building — then the tallest tower west of the Mississippi — to welcome the oilmen of a national convention. It was visible for miles, bright enough that pilots are said to have steered by it, and it quickly became the thing Dallas loved most about itself. Nine decades on, taken down, rebuilt, and re-lit, the Pegasus still turns above the skyline — the unofficial mascot of Big D.
Why People Visit Dallas
Dallas rewards visitors who like a city with confidence: a skyline you can read like a history book, a world-class arts district, museums of real weight, and food worth crossing town for. Add the flying red Pegasus, the Art Deco of Fair Park, and Texas hospitality scaled up, and Big D makes a strong case for itself.
