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There are few things that matter more to a young boy growing up in Dallas than watching the Dallas Cowboys, winners of five NFL Super Bowls, throw and catch a football in person. In 1970, the Cowboys were on their way to their first Super Bowl and still played in the Cotton Bowl, a monument haunted by the ghosts of Doak Walker, Sammy Baugh, Jim Brown, and Bobby Layne.
My dad and I arrived for a preseason game against Kansas City to find that all tickets were sold. Along with others, we waited by the end zone fence near the team’s dressing quarters, watching the players file out to the field. Suddenly, an older man approached me from inside the chain-length fence, put a ticket in front of my nose, and asked if I wanted to see the game. I looked in astonishment at the man, then at my dad, who urged me to take the gift. I was barely 11 years old, and I took a seat among that crowd of about 70,000 by myself. The experience was more than the average adventure; in Dallas, that was as close to a rite of initiation into manhood as a boy could get.
Since moving to Dallas in 1965, my parents, Dorothy and Jim Shay, provided a wide range of such unexpected adventures and pleasant experiences for my sister, Kathy, my brother, Patrick, and me. Besides viewing gridiron heroes, I chased thrills on rides in Fair Park and learned how to start a fire in the rain with other Boy Scouts in the countryside. I flipped into swimming pools, collected rocks and insects, and played baseball, basketball, and other sports in numerous parks.
Though the area is not blessed with ocean-side beaches and mountains, something made me stay close as I entered adulthood. I attended junior college in Dallas, finished my journalism degree in nearby Denton, worked for local newspapers and magazines, met my wife, Michelle, and began a family with the birth of our son, Preston, and daughter, McKenna.
Mention Dallas today to outsiders, and many people think of the Dallas Cowboys, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the television show, Dallas, which birthed a popular tourist site, Southfork Ranch. The region, which has expanded through the years to include Fort Worth - Dallas’ sister city 32 miles to the setting sun that is known as “Where the West Begins” - and other cities, also has an image of being a somewhat sterile business center that helps keep the cost of living lower than most U.S. metropolitan areas and people moving here in search of better jobs. As home to numerous Fortune 500 companies like Texas Instruments, there is some merit to that perception. But through this book, I’m here to tell you that present-day Dallas/Fort Worth is much more than that.
Cultural, sports, and recreational opportunities - in a short word, fun - abound for both children and adults at little or no cost. Most Dallas/Fort Worth residents understand the importance of relieving stress through relaxation and fun activities; they work hard and play hard. And they see value in the words of novelist Lawana Blackwell: “Outings are so much more fun when we can savor them through the children’s eyes.”
The region boasts one of the largest urban art districts in the country, two world-class symphony halls, several renown art and science museums, some 40 theaters, orchestras, and ballet and opera groups, and many more specialized museums related to the Old West, flight, and other topics. Famed architects like I.M. Pei and Frank Lloyd Wright have designed Dallas buildings, while known sculptors such as Henry Moore have contributed to the area’s public art. The region also contains one of the few Asian art museums in the country.
Dallas/Fort Worth is the only area to rank among the top five metropolitan regions in the country every year since 1993 in The Sporting News’s annual report on the best metro areas for stadium quality and related factors. Fans can attend almost any professional sporting event imaginable, including NASCAR and Indy auto racing, football, basketball, hockey, baseball, volleyball, track and field, soccer, horse racing, rodeos, and polo.
Moreover, there are plenty of hills and green spaces to enjoy, and several lakes have sandy beaches. Dallas, Fort Worth, and most surrounding cities contain more parkland per resident than the national average. Many parks incorporate miles of concrete and dirt hike and bike trails, lakes or ponds, and plenty of playground equipment that can be enjoyed for free. Admission to most public swimming pools - some of which resemble small water parks - cost only a nominal fee, and some swimming areas are even free.
Then, there are privately-owned theme and water parks like Six Flags Over Texas and Hurricane Harbor, as well as amusement centers where kids can do everything from play miniature golf and laser tag to ride go-karts and bumper boats. Besides the obvious family entertainment, the area offers more unusual activities and places, such as watching buffalo eat in the wild, viewing a real cattle drive, digging for 100 million-years-old fossils, canoeing down the Trinity River, and observing the rings of Saturn and other planets.
More on the changing face of Dallas
While some say the area hasn’t changed enough, Dallas is a cosmopolitan, child-friendly city that elected an African-American mayor - Ron Kirk - in 1995 and 1999 and a progressive woman mayor - Laura Miller - in 2002. In 1960, Dallas was about 80 percent Anglo; four decades later, white people dropped to 35 percent in the eighth largest city in the country. Hispanics comprised the largest ethnic group at 36 percent, according to the 2000 Census. Almost every ethnic background is found among Dallas’ neighborhoods, from Vietnamese to Ethiopian. Some 58 different languages are spoken in the homes of children who attend Dallas public schools.
Fort Worth and most other area cities have greater percentages of white residents than Dallas, but they are still becoming more diverse. The neighborhood where I live in Arlington, the area’s third largest city, is as diverse as you will find across the country. On my small cul-de-sac block alone, there are African-Americans, Caucasians, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, and people of mixed heritage.
You can find sophisticated restaurants where jazz musicians entertain patrons near boisterous country and western clubs. You can feast on Thai food next to down-home eateries that serve thick steaks. Giant high-tech corporations exist near old-fashioned mom-and-pop shops. Physicians and other staff at medical facilities perform cutting-edge research and treatment close to herbal and holistic healers. Top-notch universities reside in neighborhoods where parents home-school their children. The world’s third-busiest airport occupies the same space as small municipal airports. In short, the area has become a rich American melting pot that has learned how to survive together.
Of course, Dallas/Fort Worth is not perfect - what large metropolis is? Crime continues to plague the area at a higher rate than the national average. Even with its diversity, the region could stand to make improvements in race relations, helping the homeless and working poor, and related issues. Transportation infrastructure has not kept pace with growth, and road construction causes further delays.
Overall, Dallas/Fort Worth is a good place to raise children. Numerous national surveys have given the region good marks for medical services, cultural and recreational amenities, low average school classroom sizes, an infant mortality rate below the national average, and other factors.
An annual study by CNN and Money magazine of the best places to live ranked the Dallas area - which for that review included some suburbs like Irving, but separated Tarrant County’s Fort Worth and Arlington from Dallas - 16th among 328 U.S. metro areas in 2001. Dallas was cited as the best area for arts, sports, and recreational opportunities in Texas. Fort Worth/Arlington placed second among 27 Texas metro areas and 33rd in the country.
In addition, a 2001 review by Washington, D.C.-based Population Connection of the top kid-friendly cities gave Dallas a good ‘B’ rating. Big D placed 12th among the 25 largest U.S. cities.
Fort Worth, with a lower crime rate and more parkland per residents than Dallas, received even better marks, ‘B+’ and 8th place. Arlington, located about halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, earned a ‘B’ rating and placed 40th among 140 mid-sized U.S. cities. Several other smaller component cities in the area earned good marks: Plano [A+, 8th among 78 U.S. component cities], Carrollton [A-, 18th], Irving [B+, 29th], Garland [B, 35th], Mesquite [B, 41st], and Grand Prairie [B-, 47th].
Another indication that the Dallas/Fort Worth area is a good place for families to live is population growth. People are moving to the 12-county D/FW region in droves; the metroplex ranked among the ten fastest-growing large U.S. metropolitan areas in the 1990s, increasing about 30 percent, from 4 million to 5.2 million during that decade. The region is expected to grow to about 7 million by 2020.
Four counties - Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Denton – comprise the bulk of the area’s population, with more than 4.5 million residents in 2000. Collin County, anchored by Plano, was the fastest-growing U.S. county in the 1990s among those with 200,000 or more people, increasing 86 percent. Denton County ranked as the seventh fastest-growing large U.S. county, with a 58 percent rise.
The point is that people, particularly younger families, want to live here. Births rose dramatically in Collin and Denton counties between 1995 and 2000 - 49 and 32 percent, respectively. Dallas and Tarrant counties were also above the state’s 13 percent average at 15 and 17 percent, respectively.
To continue such growth, Dallas/Fort Worth, as the country’s largest metro area not on a navigable body of water, has defied the odds. Sure, Native Americans considered the region, which they called “Three Forks of the Trinity,” a fertile hunting ground long before the first European settler, John Neely Bryan, erected a cabin here in 1841. But the Trinity River was 300 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and to build cotton and farming industries took perseverance by early Anglo settlers that I have come to admire, while viewing with disdain other practices like owning slaves. With the successful attraction of rail lines to Dallas in the 1870s, the city soon became a center for banking, insurance, printing, apparel, leather, and jewelry, as well. Today’s economy is well-diversified among banking, insurance, manufacturing, telecommunications, high-technology, retail, and other areas. The city has been chosen among the best in the country for business by leading publications like Fortune.
While I have come to respect my hometown’s business prowess, I don’t consider myself to be a civic booster who overlooks the warts. Like many people, I have undergone several stages in relating to my native city. There was the wide-eyed child who marveled at the tall, glass-covered skyscrapers and adored the Cowboys as gods. There was the rebellious teen-ager who used a fake ID to experience the famed nightlife and read North Dallas Forty, an irreverent novel by former Cowboy Peter Gent. There was the crusading reporter who searched deep into the underbelly to expose the warts. And there is the more mature parent who gained a deeper understanding of the area’s development and settled in suburbia to catch a glimpse of the American Dream. With insight gained through such stages, perhaps I can relate a more honest viewpoint of my home metropolis than most.
In writing this book, I relived those stages at various times, which helped me unearth new family adventures and rediscover places that had been here all along. While I have lived in the area for almost four decades, researching and writing this book, visiting sites with my wife and children, dad, mom, sister, her husband, Barton, their children, Erika and Julia, brother, his wife, Deneen, their children, Morgan, Austin, and Krystal, mom-in-law, Adele, brother-in-law, Norman, his wife, Barbara, their son, Tyler, brother-in-law, Paul, his wife, Andrea, their daughter, Brooke, friends, and their families, helped me see Dallas/Fort Worth anew.
At times, walking or driving past a certain location jolted a memory. Driving past Fair Oaks Park in North Dallas, I saw my birthday party, the smiling faces, heard the laughter as we pranced around the playground like we had not a care in the world. I saw our family dog, Boots, long buried in a friend’s farm near Paris, Texas, chasing horses there again. Watching Preston laugh as he sped up and down on the whale ride at Sandy Lake Amusement Park, I saw myself enjoying that same ride when I was around his age. And outside the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park, I saw a little boy waiting with his dad outside the end zone gate, merely wishing to get a glimpse of his gridiron heroes, and God or someone more than granting that wish.
There’s something profoundly reassuring in reliving such memories. But it’s time to make new ones. As H. Jackson Brown Jr., author of A Father’s Book of Wisdom, said, “Don't wait for your ship to come in. Row out to meet it.”
It is hoped that, through these pages and your own experiences they may inspire, you and your family, too, can row out to see a new Dallas/Fort Worth emerge, whether you are a long-time resident or short-time visitor.
How to Use This Book
Since Dallas/Fort Worth has expanded into a multi-county region, a comprehensive parent’s guidebook to this area should include material from all of those counties. Others I have read fail to do this, focusing on either the Dallas or Fort Worth/Arlington areas. This book is the first guidebook I’m aware of to take on the ambitious task of covering the entire region, from Lake Texoma to Mineral Wells to Waco to Tyler.
Since Dallas County is the most populous in North Texas, five chapters detail its family attractions. Tarrant County, the second most crowded, gets three chapters, while Collin and Denton counties receive one apiece. Another chapter covers sites in the outlying counties and in cities within 100 miles or so of downtown Dallas, with a few weekend destinations farther out than that.
Chapter One relays more basic information to know about Dallas/Fort Worth. That includes more details on the layout of the region’s neighborhoods, suburbs, and cities, available transportation, and tips on safety, dealing with the heat, and saving money on lodging and other matters.
Chapter Two covers major family attractions, such as Dallas’ Fair Park and Arts District and Fort Worth’s Stockyards and Cultural District. Then come the chapters on attractions and activities in Dallas County, split into sections: downtown and uptown, north, east, south, and west. Suburbs of those areas often contain overlapping school district and other boundaries; for instance, the high school I attended, Lake Highlands, is in the city of Dallas and the Richardson school district. Therefore, it’s appropriate to include those suburbs with that particular section of Dallas.
Each chapter divides attractions into five categories: museums/theaters, entertainment/sports venues, parks/nature areas, shopping/food, and miscellaneous.
The section on shopping is included because that activity is an important part of Dallas/Fort Worth - officials say the Metroplex has more shopping centers per capita than any other major U.S. metro region. And with the hot Texas sun beating down for much of the year, you have to get inside an air-conditioned mall at times just for a break. I attempted to feature stores, malls, and restaurants that have real family appeal and attractions, such as NorthPark Center with its train ride and special kids’ festivals like a robotic zoo.
Chapters on Fort Worth, Arlington, and Northeast Tarrant County, which include the same five categories, follow the ones on Dallas County. Then come Collin and Denton County and the chapter on day and weekend trips.
Finally, the appendix includes a calendar of special events like the State Fair of Texas, suggestions for birthday parties such as dude ranches, how area cities ranked in recent studies, and resources for more information.
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©2008 Parent's Guide Press/Mars Publishing Inc.
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