Dallas, The City of Splendid Realities — 1905

by Paula Bosse

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by Paula Bosse

In 1905, a group of jaycees-like Dallas businessmen formed the Hundred and Fifty Thousand Club — their aim was to promote the city in hopes that it would achieve a population of 150,000 by 1910. Below is one of their impressive ads, which, of course, includes the favorite insistent claim of Dallas boosters that the Trinity River will ANY DAY NOW become a bustling “direct water route to the Gulf and the Panama Canal, that will put it in closest touch with the markets of the entire world.” The entire world! (Still waiting for that “navigable Trinity,” guys….) (Transcription is below the ad.)

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DALLAS: The City of Splendid Realities

  • Probably no community in the world offers larger opportunities for the investment of capital and intelligent effort than does the city of Dallas, Texas.
  • Dallas is the commercial and industrial center of the most rapidly developing state in the Union.
  • The country surrounding the City is wonderfully rich and fertile — the famous black waxy belt that has never known a crop failure.
  • Its railroad shipping facilities are unexcelled, and now that the improvement of the Trinity River is assured it will stand at the head of navigation with a direct water route to the Gulf and the Panama Canal, that will put it in closest touch with the markets of the entire world.
  • There are dozens of opportunities for money making right now in the supplying of distinctly felt needs.
  • Conservative investors who have capital to place safely and profitably in industrial or public service enterprises, wide-awake men who are looking for a profitable employment of personal effort and limited capital in fruit raising, truck farming, chicken raising or small canning industries, are invited to write for information that will be of distinct interest to them.

Hundred and Fifty Thousand Club
Dallas, Texas
Write for Booklet, Dallas 1905

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When the results of the 1910 Census were revealed, Dallas hadn’t reached its goal of a population of 150,000. But it had grown an impressive 116% in a decade, and, according to The Dallas Morning News, this meant that Dallas had the largest population in all of Texas and about the 50th largest in the United States. (Click article for larger image.)

population_1910-census_dmn_091710Dallas Morning News, Sept. 14, 1910

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Sources & Notes

Ad found in the pages of Texas and Pacific Quarterly, 1905.

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Copyright © 2023 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.