Dallas: Named for a Vice President, Gone by the Century's Turn
Near Ridgway, Colorado
About three miles north of Ridgway, at the spot where Dallas Creek meets the Uncompahgre River, a stagecoach stop called Dallas appeared in eighteen eighty. The town was named after George M. Dallas, the fourteenth Vice President of the United States, who served under James K. Polk.
Dallas thrived as a toll-road waypoint linking Montrose with Ouray. The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad arrived in eighteen eighty-seven, and the town was formally incorporated in April of eighteen eighty-nine. Its post office ran from eighteen eighty-four to eighteen ninety-nine. The railroad, which might have guaranteed Dallas a future, instead accelerated its decline when better-positioned Ridgway became the rail hub. By nineteen hundred Dallas was effectively finished. A community now called Dallas Meadows sits near the old townsite, but of Dallas itself almost nothing remains beyond a few foundations half-hidden in the grass along the valley floor.
