Garland is one town made from two — a Dallas County city on the old Blackland Prairie, fifteen miles northeast of downtown Dallas, that began its life as a pair of feuding railroad camps glaring at each other across a mile of black dirt. Today it is one of the largest cities in Texas: a manufacturing powerhouse of the Metroplex, home to one of the most diverse communities in the state, with Lake Ray Hubbard on its eastern shore and a square downtown that remembers where it all started. One post office, two stubborn towns, and a name nobody could argue with — that is Garland.
Union came quickly once the name did. On March 31, 1891, Garland incorporated and absorbed both Duck Creek and Embree — one city where two rivals had stood — and by 1890 the young town already counted four churches, three cotton gins, and a flour mill. The Blackland farms kept it prosperous: cotton above all, and in the early twentieth century Garland's twin rail lines made it one of the region's great onion-shipping points, moving the crop out of the black dirt by the trainload.
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 on the historic downtown square, with the Plaza Theatre marquee glowing over it.
