The town arrived later, and it arrived for the railroad. In 1863 a settler named Alexander McRae Dechman founded the community first known as Dechman. When the Texas and Pacific reached the depot in 1876 the place became a rail town, and in 1877 the name the railroad used — taken from the great grassland the tracks ran across — became official. Grand Prairie incorporated in 1909 as a farming and ranching crossroads and stayed one for thirty years: a name taken from the land, and a founder's name taken off the map.
What’s with the Mustangs of Grand Prairie? Wild Spanish horses ranged this grassland into the 1850s, and ninety years later a plant on the same prairie built 4,790 Mustang fighters. The answer is two answers, and the second one borrowed its name from the first. Wild horses ran the North Texas prairies here into the 1850s, plentiful enough that the settlers who arrived didn’t bother inventing names for the creeks — they called one spring-fed branch Mustang Branch because Spanish horses ranged along it, and there is still a Mustang Creek running northeast into Tarrant County. Ninety years later, on that same grassland, a factory was turning out fighter planes called Mustangs at better than one aircraft an hour. Two kinds of Mustang, one prairie, and a word that crossed an ocean twice to get here.
Why People Visit Grand Prairie, Texas
People come for the central Metroplex location and the mix of prairie, lakes, and live racing — and stay curious about an aviation heritage most visitors never expect from a city between Dallas and Fort Worth. It is flat, friendly, and in the middle of everything, with a long horizon and a longer memory than its suburbs suggest.
