Presenting the Leaders, Legends, and Landmarks of Our Community
According to the Texas State Historical Association, the original Preston Trail was part of a Native American trail that ran from St. Louis to Southwestern Texas.
In the 1840s, Republic of Texas soldiers surveyed the land and carved out a road that ran from the town of Preston Bend in Grayson County to the community of Cedar Springs near present-day Dallas. And while the road’s importance to interstate travel would soon decline, the section north of Dallas would become the major artery for development in the 20th century.
In the early part of the 1900s, developers created the communities of Highland Park and Preston Hollow along Preston Road as a place for professionals to live close to booming Dallas.
Nearby University Park began as a group of homes near the newly created Southern Methodist University. In the 1920s, the fledgling community asked to be annexed into Highland Park and then Dallas. It was denied both times. Highland Park was also rejected by Dallas in 1913.
By the 1940s the three thriving communities looked more attractive to Dallas, which hoped to annex them all. Preston Hollow voters agreed to a union in 1945. Highland Park and University Park voters decided to remain on their own, creating the municipal boundaries that more or less exist to this day.
Over the decades that followed, each community carved out an individual identity different from each other as well as the larger city that surrounds them. The people who live there and the places they created are all products of the unique environment in which they were formed. These are some of the leaders, legends, and landmarks of our community.
