Demographics
West Dallas is made up of 11.45 square miles in zip code area 75212 and the northern most sections of 75208 and 75203. It is located west of the Dallas Central Business District and south of the Stemmons corridor and is bounded by downtown to the east, the Trinity River to the north, Loop 12 to the west and I30 to the south.
Click here: West Dallas Demographics Document
History of West Dallas
West Dallas originated as a community on the outskirts of Dallas, founded as a squatters’ settlement in 1886 to serve the labor needs of a local gypsum mine – the Texas Portland Cement Quarry. Housing built to shelter the laborers was shoddy and intended as temporary; however, a few of the homes stood well into the late 1970’s and their construction set the standard that is still in evidence today. By 1934 newspaper stories cited the “muck and filth of the West Dallas Squatters Camp.”
In 1893 West Dallas “school agitators” voted to form the West Dallas Improvement Association for the “general up-building of West Dallas,” founded its first school and approved the construction of a two story brick structure which closed two years later due to lack of funds. 1909 the first permanent school, Thomas A. Edison was opened as a free public school.
The City of Dallas annexed West Dallas into the city limits in 1954. Before annexation, most residents lived without basic services because their homes were outside the city limits. In 1956 a 3,500 unit public housing complex was built just north of the RSR lead smelter facility.1
Murphy Metals (later known as RSR Corporation), a secondary lead smelter processing company, opened a 63-acre facility in 1934. In the 1960s the facility released more than 269 tons of lead particles into the air each year. During this time few residents could afford the luxury of air conditioning, so in the summers they kept doors and windows open to combat the heat, directly exposing them to the toxins in the air, even in their own homes. It wasn’t until 1972 that Dallas officials learned that lead could be finding its way into the bloodstreams of children who lived in West Dallas and the bordering community of East Oak Cliff.
The Dallas Health Department then conducted a study of their own. They found that children living near smelters had a 36% increase in blood lead levels. In 1974 the City sued the local smelters. The companies agreed to pay $35,000 and install new pollution control equipment; however, by 1983 the pollution equipment had still not been installed.
After lengthy tests and lawsuits and delayed clean up action, RSR Corp. was ordered by the Dallas Board of Adjusters to close the West Dallas facility. In the summer of 1985 a $20MM out- of-court settlement was reached between RSR Corp. and Fred Baron who represented 370 children and 40 property owners who were all affected by the lead emitted from RSR. The RSR Corp facility still contained large amounts of lead contamination and in May 1993 the RSR Corp. site in West Dallas was named a Superfund site.
Residents who had been pushing for decades to solve the problem could finally lay their case to rest on September 28, 1994 when the EPA signed a Preliminary Close-Out Report for the RSR Corp. Superfund site stating all clean up for all the units had been completed. The EPA signed a Ready For Reuse document in May 2005 declaring the site ready for reuse or redevelopment.[6] The EPA reported that the clean up resulted in direct lower lead blood leaves of children. The community also benefited by having 400 properties, including 300 acres of commercial property eliminated of contamination.
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1 West Dallas Chamber of Commerce.
2 Dallas Daily Times Herald / Dallas Times Herald; various articles dated 1883-1984.
