United, the town grew on the rich black soil of the Blackland Belt. Cotton came first — gins, a roller flour mill, and the rail lines carrying the crop to market — and by the 1940s Garland had become a major onion-shipping point on the railroad. Industry followed: a cotton mill, then manufacturing, and a Texas cowboy-hat trade that made the city part of the state's hat-making story. Through the mid-twentieth century the Dallas boom rolled northeast and Garland turned from a farm-and-rail town into one of the largest cities in Texas — but the downtown square, the Plaza Theatre of 1941, and Duck Creek itself still mark where it began.
What's with Duck Creek and Embree? They're the two towns that became Garland — and they couldn't stand each other. When the railroads built rival depots a mile apart in 1886, Embree grew up around the Santa Fe stop and a new Duck Creek around the Katy stop, and the rivalry got bitter enough that, by local accounts, men started carrying guns and neighbors stopped speaking across the divide. The fight was really over the post office and the right to incorporate. Congressman Joseph Abbott broke the deadlock in 1887 by putting the post office on neutral ground halfway between the depots and giving the place a brand-new name nobody could claim — Garland — so that neither town "won." That's why Garland's real origin story isn't a founding so much as a peace treaty: one town made from two.
Why People Visit Garland Texas
- Stroll the historic downtown square and the restored Plaza Theatre (1941).
- Get out on Lake Ray Hubbard for boating, sailing, and shoreline parks.
- Walk the old-growth bottomland of Spring Creek Forest Preserve.
- Ride the wooded singletrack at Rowlett Creek Preserve.
- Shop and gather at Firewheel Town Center and the downtown events on the square.
