A Guide to the History of Dallas, Texas

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Millermore Mansion, Old City Park

MillermoreMillermore, now located in Old City Park, is a two-story tall Greek Revival mansion - the only antebellum structure of its kind still standing in Dallas County. It was built and named for William Brown Miller, one of Dallas County's most successful cotton planters, stock-raisers, and slaveowners. Miller, who owned 7,500 acres of land in what is now Oak Cliff, also operated a ferry service on the Trinity River.

Miller came to Texas from Kentucky in 1847. His first home in Dallas County was a log cabin that sat on a hill on the south side of the Trinity River, overlooking Dallas, which was then little more than a collection of crude log dwellings. Miller's cabin boasted glass windows, reportedly the the first in the county.

Construction of Millermore began in 1855 on the same spot where Miller built his log cabin, a bluff in the vicinity of present-day Bonnie View Drive and Illinois Avenue. The mansion was completed in 1862.

By the mid-twentieth century Millermore was crumbling. It was rescued in 1968 by a group of citizens who banded together to have it moved to Old City Park. It was the first of many other older structures saved from demolition that now make up the park's collection of structures.


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