La Réunion, Dallas's Failed Utopia

In April of eighteen fifty-five, about two hundred French, Belgian, and Swiss colonists arrived on the south bank of the Trinity River in central Dallas County with a radical plan. Their leader, Victor Prosper Considerant, had been exiled from France after a failed uprising against Napoleon the Third. He envisioned a Fourierist commune, a cooperative society where members shared labor and profits equally.

The colonists named it La Réunion. At its peak in the fall of eighteen fifty-six about three hundred people lived here. But Considerant had overspent on land purchases elsewhere and the joint-stock company funding the experiment ran dry.

Within eighteen months the colony collapsed. The settlers scattered into Dallas and nearby towns, bringing European craft and intellectual culture that quietly shaped the young city. Today nothing remains at the site except a small cemetery and a historical marker in Reverchon Park.