Texas Centennial Exposition
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
As plans began to take shape for the Centennial celebration of Texas Independence, a group of Dallas businessmen led by R. L. Thornton, Sr., Fred Florence, and Nathan Adams, joined together to promote the city as the host of the major Centennial event. The Centennial Exposition Corporation, formed in 1935, took temporary control of the State Fair grounds, and a team of over 100 architects, artists, and craftsmen soon began designing the Exposition complex. Employing thousands of people in the midst of the Great Depression, the project resulted in the creation of impressive structures, works of art, and landscaping. Officially opened by Gov. James Allred on June 6, 1936, activities of the Exposition included a spectacular parade through downtown Dallas, guest speakers, and nationwide news coverage. In his speech to the crowd, U. S. Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper declared "America, here is Texas!" President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the Exposition on June 12. The Exposition ran for 178 days, entertaining over six million people. It was a turning point in the development of the city of Dallas and left a legacy of art, history, architecture, and culture to generations of Texans.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As Texas prepared to mark a century of independence, a group of Dallas businessmen led by R.L. Thornton won the city the role of hosting the central celebration. The Centennial Exposition Corporation took over the State Fair grounds in 1935, and more than a hundred architects and artists built a dazzling complex that put thousands to work in the depths of the Great Depression. Opened by Governor Allred in June 1936 and visited by President and Mrs. Roosevelt, the exposition drew over six million people in 178 days.
Why it matters
The exposition transformed Dallas's national profile and left a lasting legacy of art and architecture, showing how a Depression-era civic gamble could reshape a city's future.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the mid-1930s, Texas was preparing to celebrate a century of independence — and doing it in the teeth of the Great Depression. That collision of a proud anniversary with hard times is the backdrop for the Texas Centennial Exposition. As the marker describes, a group of Dallas businessmen led by R.L. Thornton, Sr., Fred Florence, and Nathan Adams set out to win their city the honor of hosting the central Centennial event, and in 1935 they formed the Centennial Exposition Corporation to make it happen.
The timing was audacious. To build a lavish exposition when the nation was mired in unemployment and want was a civic gamble of the first order. Yet that same hardship made the project matter all the more: employing thousands of people in the midst of the Depression, as the marker puts it, the effort was as much a lifeline as a celebration.
The corporation took temporary control of the State Fair grounds and turned an army of talent loose on them — more than a hundred architects, artists, and craftsmen designing an entire exposition complex from the ground up. The result, the marker records, was a wealth of impressive structures, works of art, and landscaping: a gleaming modern city-within-a-city conjured out of a Depression-era fairground.
People & events
The story's driving force is a trio of Dallas men — Thornton, Florence, and Adams — whose ambition for their city set the whole enterprise in motion. Around them gathered the builders and makers, the hundred-plus architects, artists, and craftsmen whose hands shaped the exposition's buildings, murals, and grounds. In a time of scarcity, theirs was creation on a grand and hopeful scale.
The opening, on June 6, 1936, was a genuine event. Governor James Allred officially opened the exposition, and the day featured a spectacular parade through downtown Dallas, guest speakers, and nationwide news coverage. The marker preserves a ringing line from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper, who told the crowd, "America, here is Texas!" — a single sentence that captured the whole point of the exposition, a state introducing itself to the nation.
And then, on June 12, came the visit that sealed its national stature: President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the Exposition. To have a sitting president attend, in the depths of the Depression, marked Dallas's moment on the national stage. Over its full run of 178 days, the marker records, the exposition entertained more than six million people.
Its place in the American story
The Texas Centennial Exposition belongs to the great American tradition of the world's-fair-style exposition — those sprawling, optimistic showcases where a city or nation displayed its progress, its art, and its aspirations. What sets this one apart is that it was staged in the hardest of times, and became, in the marker's words, a turning point in the development of Dallas, leaving a legacy of art, history, architecture, and culture to generations of Texans.
It is a case study in how a Depression-era civic gamble could reshape a city's future. By spending boldly to build and to employ when others were retrenching, Dallas drew six million visitors and the eyes of the nation, and lifted its national profile in a way that outlasted the 178 days of the event itself. The presence of President Roosevelt and the reach of nationwide coverage turned a state anniversary into an American occasion.
The deeper significance is the legacy of stone, paint, and design left behind. Expositions are temporary by nature, but the finest of them leave permanent art and architecture that keep telling their story. This one did exactly that, planting on the fairgrounds a body of buildings and works of art that Texans have inherited ever since.
If you visit
When you visit, look for the legacy the marker describes — the art, architecture, and landscaping that the exposition left behind. These are the enduring traces of a spectacle built to last only 178 days, and finding them is the pleasure: a stretch of monumental design, a mural, a structure whose grand lines still carry the confidence of 1936.
Stand on the grounds and reconstruct the moment in your mind. Picture the opening on June 6, 1936, the parade winding through downtown Dallas, the crowds, and Secretary Roper's cry of "America, here is Texas!" Then imagine the presidential visit six days later, the sense of a struggling nation's leader arriving to see what a determined city had built. Remember, too, the thousands who found work here when work was desperately scarce — the human story beneath the glamour.
For a road trip through Dallas's past, this marker pairs naturally with the larger history of the fairgrounds it was built upon. Treat it as the story of a single, transformative season — the six months in 1936 when Dallas gambled on grandeur in the middle of a depression and, by the marker's account, changed the course of its own future.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · R.L. Thornton, Sr.
- · Franklin D. Roosevelt
Themes & tags
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