Here is a small Dallas mystery: nobody is entirely sure who the city is named for. The usual answer is George Mifflin Dallas, the U.S. vice president of the 1840s, and it may well be him — but John Neely Bryan, who did the naming, never pinned it down, and historians have floated a half-dozen other Dallases over the years. The city has worn the uncertainty lightly. Long ago Dallasites shortened the whole question to two letters that settle nothing and say everything: Big D.
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.
