City of Mesquite
Mesquite, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In May 1873, Texas & Pacific Railroad engineer A.R. Alcott platted a new depot town named Mesquite. The post office opened the following year. The community developed along the rail line, with businesses initially facing Front Street. As the town grew, business owners turned their front doors to Main Street in an effort to create a Town Square. Voters incorporated Mesquite in 1887. In 1903, following a legal challenge, the city re-incorporated with new boundaries. Mesquite, which began with an Agrarian economy, grew rapidly in the second half of the 20th century as a Dallas suburb. The school district, established in 1901, is a draw for new residents, and the city continues to grow. (2004)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Mesquite began in May 1873 when Texas & Pacific engineer A.R. Alcott platted a depot town along the new rail line, and a post office followed the next year. Businesses first faced Front Street, then turned toward Main Street to form a town square as the community grew; voters incorporated in 1887 and re-incorporated with new boundaries in 1903. What started as an agrarian railroad stop expanded rapidly in the later twentieth century as a Dallas suburb, anchored by a school district dating to 1901.
Why it matters
Mesquite's story captures the classic Texas pattern of a railroad depot town that survived long enough to be absorbed and transformed by metropolitan Dallas's postwar sprawl.
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Related people
- · A.R. Alcott
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sam Bass Train Robbery
Mesquite, TX
On an April day in 1878, the notorious outlaw Sam Bass and his gang stopped a Texas & Pacific train near Mesquite and made off with $152—never suspecting a hidden shipment of $30,000 rode aboard. Bass had become one of the most hunted men in Texas, and his luck ran out just months later when Texas Rangers gunned him down during a planned bank robbery. His brief, violent career made him a fixture of frontier legend.
Mesquite Cemetery
Mesquite, TX
This ground was already a burial place before the Texas and Pacific Railroad founded the city of Mesquite in 1873, its earliest marked grave dating to 1859. In 1890 local builder and civic leader Louis C. Ebrite laid out the cemetery in the grid of driveways still used today, and it was formally deeded for cemetery use two years later. It continues to honor area veterans and the generations of families who built Mesquite.
Scyene Road, Old
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Beginning as a buffalo trail, Scyene Road became one of the earliest roads in Dallas County, linking the town of Scyene with Dallas — a full day's wagon journey west — and reaching east toward Jefferson and Shreveport. Settled in the 1840s and 1850s and named for a town in ancient Egypt, Scyene reportedly sheltered outlaws such as Belle Starr and Jesse James along this route in the 1870s. Once a thriving town with a post office, stores, school, and churches, Scyene declined after the Texas & Pacific Railroad bypassed it in 1872.
Kleberg
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The town of Kleberg took root in 1850 on the land grant of Robert Justus Kleberg, a veteran of the Republic of Texas army who had fought at San Jacinto. Beginning as a stage stop where two wagon trails met, it grew into a farming town that gained a post office, bank, and shops once the railroad arrived in 1881. Ambitious dams and locks on the Trinity River briefly brought jobs in the early 1900s, until a 1908 flood swept the work away.