The land here was Peters' Colony prairie before the Civil War, a stretch of the great Texas grassland crossed by trading paths between Dallas and Fort Worth. In 1863 the settler Alexander McRae Dechman founded the community first known as Dechman; when the Texas & Pacific Railroad arrived in 1876 it became a depot town, and in 1877 it was renamed Grand Prairie for the grassland it sat on. The town incorporated in 1909, a farming and ranching crossroads on the rail line at the heart of what would become the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
Grand Prairie keeps two kinds of speed in its memory. There is the aviation story — the Mustangs and Liberators that rolled out of the plant in the war years, and the jets that followed. And there is the racing story — the thoroughbreds and quarter horses that run at Lone Star Park, the grandstand that brought the Breeders' Cup to the prairie in 2004. Between them sits the prairie itself: the grassland that named the town, the rail line that built it, and the long, flat horizon between Dallas and Fort Worth where you can still see weather coming from miles away.
Why People Visit Grand Prairie Texas
People come to Grand Prairie for its easy central location in the Metroplex and its mix of prairie, lakes, and live racing — plus a deep aviation heritage most visitors never expect from a DFW suburb. It is flat, friendly, and right in the middle of everything: the grassland city between Dallas and Fort Worth.
