Big business

Continental Gin Company 19 Showroom

232 N. Trunk Ave.

While Eli Whitney is most often credited with the cotton gin, it was Robert Munger who perfected the design and secured a number of patents for his work. With his brother, they opened Munger Improved Cotton Machine & Manufacturing Co. in 1885 and built a showroom to display his products. It built the fortune needed for him to develop his namesake Munger Place. The company eventually closed in 1962 after the last of the city’s cotton fields had been replaced by housing developments. (Source: Texas State Historical Association)

East Dallas Union Depot

20 Pacific and Central Expressway

W.H. Gaston ensured the neighborhood’s prosperous future when he persuaded the railways to come through East Dallas with $5,000 and free rights of way on his expansive properties. The East Dallas Union Depot, which went by several names over the years, welcomed the Houston and Texas Central Railway’s inaugural arrival on July 16, 1872. At the time, the depot wasn’t more than a few small shacks, but in 1897 it was replaced with a stately brick structure. It was abandoned as a freight site in 1933, at which point it became a welfare center and relief station during the post-Depression years. In 1935, the city made plans to tear it down but ensured materials were repurposed to build homes for the needy, specifically the box cars. (Source: The Dallas Morning News, Texas State Historical Associaiton)

URSULINE ACADEMY

21 Live Oak, Haskell, Bryan and St. Joseph

Less than a week after arriving in Dallas in 1874 with just $146 between them, six nuns, led by Mother St. Joseph Holly, opened Ursuline Academy with seven students. It grew quickly, and in 1882 the Sisters made plans to build a lavish Gothic style structure on 10 acres in East Dallas. Although the building wasn’t completed until 1907, it drew students from all over the country and Mexico. It remains the city’s oldest continuously still be seen in the northwest corner of the intersection. (Sources: City of Dallas, The Dallas Morning News)

PORTER CHEVROLET AND 25 THE GIANT SANTA 5526 E. Mockingbird Lane

It was undoubtedly an eye-catching publicity stunt. Two years after Big Tex was unveiled to rave reviews at the 1951 State Fair of Texas, the owner of Porter Chevrolet hired the same artist, Jack Bridges, to build a 80-foot Santa Claus to draw attention to his dealership. It took 12 people two months to complete, and when it was done, Bridges realized no trucks in the area were big enough to move it. Instead, Santa was cut into pieces and reassembled on the roof, complete with a full-sized 1954 Chevy in its lap. Days after it was installed, 46-year-old Park Lane neighbor Roy Davis made plans to have a crane hoist him up to Santa for his Christmas card photo. Tragically, as he was being lowered down, he fell 35 feet onto the concrete below, landing just between Santa’s boots, where he died. (Source: The Dallas Morning News)

For the birthplace of the frozen margarita machine, the ice plant wars, the East Dallas origin of The Hockaday School and more business histories, go online to lakewood.advocatemag. com/historymap.

Neighborhood oddities

UFO SIGHTING 26 White Rock Lake

On a mild, slightly breezy March evening in 1959, two men spotted something unusual in the sky over White Rock Lake cylindrical, dime-sized from their perspective and aluminum in color. It moved in a straight but rolling path northward for about 10 seconds, then vanished. That’s how they described it to the U.S. Air Force, which in 1954 launched project 10073, a.k.a. Blue Book, a study of UFO sightings, the reports of which were declassified in 2004. When the operation ceased in 1970, agents had investigated more than 12,000 UFO sightings; the majority of which could be explained — usually as misidentified clouds or stars (“natural phenomena”), conventional aircraft or clandestine military aircraft unfamiliar to civilians. But a small percentage of cases went unexplained, including this one. The witnesses’ names are censored, but the documents show that one was a 37-year old supervisor of technical illustration at Temco Aircraft in Garland. The other was a 35-year-old service manager at Royal McBee Typewriter Corp. According to the March 1 record card: “It is impossible for this station to determine if there were any aircraft in that area at this certain time.” In other words: unidentified, unexplained. (Source: Project Blue Book case files on Sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1947-69).

Birthplace Of Daffy Duck

27 White Rock Lake

Tex Avery went down in history for his creative work animating cartoons for Warner Bros. and MGM in the golden era of the medium. He helped develop beloved characters like Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. But before that, he was a student at North Dallas High School with the class of 1926, where he was known to write “What’s up, Doc?” in yearbooks. He said the inspiration for Daffy Duck came from his years duck hunting at White Rock Lake. (Source: International Animated Film Society)

WARREN ANGUS FERRIS

28 CEMETERY

St. Francis and San Leandro

Some people in Forest Hills seemingly live on an old burial ground. Warren Angus Ferris was a prolific American surveyor who charted Yellowstone before coming to Dallas in 1840, where his records note the arrival of city founder John Neely Bryan one year later. He made his home on 80plus acres along White Rock Creek. He established the cemetery in 1847 after the death of his son, where numerous members of the Ferris family, including Warren Angus himself, also were laid to rest. Over the years, it fell into disrepair and was targeted by vandals. By 1970, only a handful of grave markers remained intact, so the city declared it a public nuisance and made plans to sell the land. One of those tombstones belonged to Rev. Taylor, a black minister who lived nearby and was the last person buried at the cemetery in 1906. Strangely, his marble headstone showed up on the front lawn of Sandra Stevenson at 8614 San Benito in June 1982, seemingly a prank. Around that same time, plans were made to build five houses over the graves. Decendents of those buried in the now-unmarked cemetery implored officials to move the graves, but the city said it was not obligated. The burial sites remained and several houses were built in 1985-86. In 1988, the cemetery earned a marker from the Texas Historical Commission, the only visible remnant of what lies beneath. (Source: The Dallas Morning News, Dallas Central Appraisal District)

ZODIAC KILLER AT THE LAKE? 29 Lawther Drive

Northern California was terrorized by the Zodiac Killer, who claimed five confirmed victims but was suspected in multiple other murders between 1968-74. But in 1973 he went quiet, leading some to question whether the killer, or perhaps killers, were on the run. That same year, White Rock Lake was the scene of a vicious crime. Labor Day weekend, a pair of 16-year-olds from Farmers Branch were most likely making out in a sports car by the lake when two unknown men approached. They shot Robert Milam in the right eye, and one raped his girlfriend before fleeing in the luxury vehicle. Milam died a few days later. It was vaguely reminiscent of the Zodiac Killer, who targeted young couples by lakes, at the same time some detectives theorized that the still unknown serial killer may actually be two people. The White Rock Lake murder was flagged for investigation by the California cops before Dallas Police identified the killers as two men suspected in a string of robberies. (Sources: San Francisco Police Department, The Dallas Morning News) students at Dallas ISD magnet schools live outside of the district