For half a century Irving stayed a quiet farm town of churches and cotton fields. Then the postwar boom found it. Through the 1950s and 1960s the prairie filled with subdivisions, schools, and highways as families poured into affordable new homes within reach of both downtowns. The decisive stroke came on the town's western edge, where the giant new Dallas/Fort Worth airport opened in 1974 — suddenly Irving sat beside one of the busiest gateways in the country, and the farm town's in-between location turned into a business address.
The transformation took shape as Las Colinas. Beginning in 1973, the rancher and developer Ben Carpenter laid out a master-planned city-within-the-city on old family ranch land: office towers and hotels, a man-made lake, and the Mandalay Canal, a Venetian-style waterway where water taxis still slide past the shops. At its heart he set Williams Square, a stark plaza of pink granite — and into that plaza came the mustangs. In a single generation Irving had gone from cotton rows to one of the most recognizable corporate skylines in Texas. Carpenter wanted a touch of Europe on the Texas prairie, and the result still surprises first-time visitors who half expect oil derricks and instead find canal boats.
Why People Visit Irving
Irving offers art, water, and wild bronze horses in the middle of the Metroplex. Visitors come for the Mustangs, the canals, and the music, and stay for a central, easygoing base beside DFW with museums, sculpture plazas, and trails close at hand. It is both a cultural stop and a convenient home base, with year-round appeal in its parks, paths, and public spaces.
