It started as a water stop on the railroad. In 1873 the Texas & Pacific Railway dropped a depot on the Blackland Prairie east of Dallas and named it for Mesquite Creek. Five years later it was famous for fifteen minutes: the outlaw Sam Bass robbed the train here in 1878, and rode off with about $152. The little rail town grew into a cotton community, then a Dallas suburb, and along the way became the official Rodeo Capital of Texas. Railroad town, outlaw country, Saturday-night rodeo — this is the real Mesquite, and this page tells that story.
For its first seventy-five years Mesquite stayed small — fewer than 1,700 people as late as 1950. Then the Metroplex arrived: the postwar boom and the highways turned the cotton town into a major Dallas suburb, and the population climbed past 150,000. Through all of it, one identity stuck and became official — the Rodeo Capital of Texas. Since 1958 the Mesquite Championship Rodeo has run at what's now Resistol Arena, the chutes banging open on summer Saturday nights, keeping the town's Western character alive long after the cotton gins closed.
Why People Visit Mesquite Texas
Most people know Mesquite for the rodeo and the shopping, but the city rewards anyone who looks for the older layer: a Texas & Pacific depot town from 1873, the site of a Sam Bass train robbery, and the official Rodeo Capital of Texas. It's flat, friendly North Texas — Dallas-close, but holding onto its own railroad-and-rodeo character.
