The Grape Vine Prairie

The Grape Vine Prairie. . , Looking southward on Main Street, gaze for a moment back in time... to a time before commercial businesses, D/FW International Airport and neighborhood upon neighborhood brought thousands sands of people to the area...to a time when the greatest attraction was the fertile land itself. , As early as 1844, it was the black soil that beckoned such as the Ambrose Fosters, Leonards and Charles Throops to leave their homes in Missouri and trek to North Texas. Other families from Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and Ohio soon followed. With all they owned in a wagon, they struck out to put down new roots...roots they knew would bear a better life for themselves and their children on the Grape Vine Prairie., The sections of land along Denton Creek, north of this location and now mostly under Lake Grapevine, and Big Bear Creek, south of here and within D/FW Airport, were the first to be settled. This region, between the geographical zones called the Eastern Cross Timbers and the Blackland Prairie, was soon called the "Grape Vine Prairie.” Wild mustang grapes grew profusely among the trees and bushes, and were the basis for the community's name. Turn of the century Prairie farmers used horse power and steam engines to ease their labors. But threshing grain on the Prairie was still tiring work! Even before the "Missouri Colony" arrived, the nomadic Wichita, Caddo and Cherokee tribes who passed through had named the area after the grapevines. , The settlers found a prairie covered with tall grasses, "as high as a man on horseback," with few trees except along the watercourses where hackberry and elms grew. Pioneers at first raised cattle, plus what little vegetables and grain they needed for their own consumption. After the Civil War, cotton became a major crop, and still later, raising truck crops including cantaloupes and dairy cows were the primary agricultural enterprises. , Today, some of the land to the north of Grapevine is still farmed. But bringing even greater reward then the pioneers ever imagined is use of much of the Grape Vine Prairie as a great transportation center. The D/FW Airport was designed and constructed in the late 1960s. Its development forever changed the small farming community of Grapevine, spurring a tenfold population growth in little more than 20 years. , In the 1800s the spirit of the Grape Vine Prairie called the hardworking and courageous to settle and prosper in a place rich with the promise of opportunity. Today, most of the Prairie farms are gone, but he heart of the community Grapevine's historic Main Street. The Grape Vine Prairie spirit still beckons those seeking opportunity to look here... to hometown with a familiar looking heart and soul. , Captions: , Many descendants of pioneer farm families still live in Grapevine. Young Thelma Daniel Conine, pictured with her parents J.J. and Llora Elsie Daniel, grew up to be Grapevine's first female City Council member. In 1917, at age seven, while helping her father to plow the Prairie, Thelma saw her first airplane fly overhead. She could not have dreamed how many airplanes would one day fly over the former family farmstead! , The Bushong log house, built in about 1871, sheltered several generations of the Bushong and Yeats families. Restored and much altered, it remains a residence today, north of this site near Lake Grapevine., Turn of the century Prairie farmers used horse power and steam engines to ease their labors. But threshing grain on the Prairie was still tiring work!