LAKE DALLAS, TEXAS. Lake Dallas is a resort community on the shores of Lewisville Lakeqv ten miles south of Denton in southeastern Denton County. The site was occupied in 1852. The area offered water, timber, and farmland, and the community that developed in the vicinity was originally called French Settlement, after the family named French who settled there. In 1881 the community was more formally constituted and adopted the name Garza, the origin of which is in dispute. Garza may have been the chief of a crew that laid track for the Dallas and Wichita Railway, which built through the area in 1881. In 1926 or 1929, after the impoundment of Lake Dallas, the residents of the town renamed their community Lake Dallas. The community's population increased from 489 in 1940 to 1,431 in 1970, reflecting the additional use of the Garza-Little Elm Reservoir (now Lewisville Lake), the waters of which covered the original lake. In 1965, after a nine-year legal struggle among its residents, Lake Dallas was finally incorporated. By 1980 its population had grown to 3,177, largely because of the economic growth in the area between Dallas and Denton. In 1991 Lake Dallas reported 113 businesses and a population of 3,718. The population grew to 6,166 by 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY : Edward Franklin Bates, History and Reminiscences of Denton County (Denton, Texas: McNitzky Printing, 1918; rpt., Denton: Terrill Wheeler Printing, 1976). C. A. Bridges, History of Denton, Texas, from Its Beginning to 1960 (Waco: Texian Press, 1978). Denton Record-Chronicle, September 25, 1960.
David Minor
