Update:
This story was updated on Thursday, July 4, 2024 with additional details and context on local street names.
North Texas’ odd street names explained
Cartman Road? Star Trek Lane? Bossy Boots Drive? A look at some of the most fun, distinctive street names in D-FW.
The city of Dallas has more than 9,600 individual street names. For the most part, real estate and subdivision developers name the streets.
With the booming construction of roadways in the D-FW area, naming city streets has become a challenging endeavor. New streets must avoid names that duplicate or resemble existing ones in each city.
The long and short of it boils down to one thing: safety. Fire trucks and ambulances need to be able to navigate to a home seamlessly.
Larry Delzell, who is Dallas homebuilder Perry Homes’ senior vice president of land acquisition, said there was one instance where he submitted more than 100 street names to the city of Plano and had four approved.
“It’s because in an emergency, if somebody’s trying to tell you where they are, you don’t want to mix up Willowbend or Willow Way or Willow-you-know. You don’t want to have a bunch of Willow-something,” he said.
Delzell began naming streets 52 years ago, starting with the Bent Tree Country Club area in Dallas after he graduated from Southern Methodist University.
“I quickly realized it’s not as easy as it looks,” said Delzell.
He now keeps a list of hundreds and hundreds of potential street names on his desk next to his work computer, gathering inspiration from travel or his grandchildren’s names.
Delzell has recycled his favorites. He thought “Winding Hollow,” for instance, had a nice ring to it, so he’s incorporated it into communities in Frisco and Arlington.
For Blue Star Land, the Frisco development firm owned by the Gene and Jerry Jones family of the Dallas Cowboys, sticking to a theme is the name of the game.
Beyond tying street names to the football team and family names, Blue Star tries to find a local connection to a community’s history, well-known waterway or another notable feature.
“After you do four or five of these big developments, you start running out of names,” said Joe Hickman, the firm’s general manager. “You tend to go to California, New York or other places. You look there and they have Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Seventh Avenue, but that’s boring, you know?”
As a result, some developers have turned to pop culture or other creative themes for naming roads. That’s because as North Texas continues to add homes at a rapid clip, it forces some of the older communities to get more and more creative. And, well, others simply started out with quirky names.
Here’s a roundup of some of North Texas’ most distinctive.
Dallas’ first street names
The first 18 roads laid in the city were named by Dallas founder John Neely Bryan. Those included Pacific, Elm, Main, Commerce, Houston and Columbia.
The closer streets are to downtown Dallas, the more likely it is that they were named after politicians, businessmen or civic leaders.
Touch the interactive image below to see the stories behind some of Dallas’ most well-known streets:
‘Dallas,’ the prime-time soap opera
Dallas, one of the most popular TV shows in history, aired on CBS from 1978 to 1991. There are two subdivisions in North Texas named after characters from the show, from J.R. Avenue to Sue Ellen Avenue. One is a well-kept trailer park in Wylie. A neighborhood in Denton also features streets named after the series’ characters. Take a spin sometime on Cliff Barnes Lane or Miss Ellie Circle.
Goin’ down to Garland, gonna have myself a time
Some of the streets in the Summerfield Addition subdivision in Garland share the names of characters from the show South Park. Cartman Road is no surprise, but Garrison Way may be our favorite. Many of the homes were built between 2001 and 2003, shortly after the show’s debut and peak popularity (the show debuted in 1997, followed by a movie in 1999).
Lead me to your (Mansfield) door
The Beatles officially broke up in 1974 but Beatlemania lives on, especially in the Strawberry Fields neighborhood of Mansfield. Located near State Highway 360, Fab Four song titles name the streets of one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in the town. Residents can take the Long and Winding Road or Abbey Road while listening to one of the most popular bands of all time. Our salute goes to Sgt. Pepper Court.
Up, up and away!
Attention Superman: There are not one, not two, but seven roads named Lois Lane in North Texas. Streets sharing the name of the Man of Steel’s love interest can be found in Richardson, Rowlett, Cedar Hill, Dallas, Plano, Euless and Kaufman.
Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah
The “Disney Streets” is the nickname for a few of the streets within Dallas’ Northaven Park neighborhood with names such as Pinocchio Drive and Cinderella Lane.
The News received some backlash in 2009 for referring to the “Disney Streets” as such, with some residents saying the names are actually just from fairy tales. Sleepy Lane, which shares a name with one of the seven dwarves, used to be called Humpty Dumpty Drive, which may lend credence to a naming scheme unrelated to Disney. Nevertheless, the wife of late developer Robert Gump said the Disney connection was an intentional choice as the neighborhood was being built in the 1950s.
Gump’s wife told The News, “He wrote a letter to Walt Disney asking for permission to name the streets after the Disney cartoons. He received a return letter from Disney with approval.”
Smoke break
Streets in the Dallas neighborhood of Alameda Heights, south of Ledbetter Drive and east of Lancaster Road, are named after cigarette brands. You can cruise down Kool Avenue, Lucky Street or Pall Mall Avenue. When the streets known as Cigarette Hill were developed during the post-World War II housing boom, smoking was not considered to be bad.
Fatima cigarettes were discontinued in the 1980s. While Gooch is not a cigarette brand like the others, the name has ties to the tobacco industry. Sir William Gooch, Governor of Virginia, was the architect of the Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730 while he was the lieutenant governor. This act had a significant impact on the tobacco industry by allowing poor quality tobacco to be destroyed.
In the historic Rosedale Park neighborhood of Fort Worth, there’s a street named Bong Drive. Many of the houses on the street were built in the post-World War II era.
There’s also a Bong Street in Denison. Neither has an address numbered 420.
Kings and queens
In Rowlett, there’s a small road named Elvis Presley Lane. A posh Castle Hills community in Lewisville has a street named after Queen Elizabeth I.
The aforementioned Castle Hills master-planned community in Lewisville contains dozens of streets named after King Arthur and its characters, including Sir Lancelot Boulevard and Merlin Drive.
According to the Castle Hills website, the land was acquired by the Bright family in 1952, and use of Arthurian legend in street names is a nod to H.R. “Bum” Bright, owner of the Dallas Cowboys from 1984 to 1989, who was an avid fan of the fanciful tales. Our own fantasy would be an estate on Excalibur Boulevard.
America’s Team
Valley Ranch — the neighborhood in Irving that used to be the home of the Dallas Cowboys’ office and practice facility — still sports Cowboys street names including Staubach Drive, Dorsett Drive and Landry Court.
There’s also a Saint Landry Drive in Northeast Dallas. In 1981, The News named it the fourth worst street name in the city, saying, “Everyone knows that the Dallas Cowboys are blessed by someone above, but this is just too much.”
That didn’t stop officials from naming the stretch of Interstate 30 between Interstate 35E and Interstate 35W after the late Dallas Cowboys coach, Tom Landry.
The Rangers and Mavericks also have players represented, with Nowitzki Way fronting the south side of the American Airlines center in Dallas. Nolan Ryan Expressway will lead you to the Rangers’ stadium in Arlington. There’s still no word on a possible Mike Modano Street.
Bossy Boots Drive
One of Allen’s main roads, Bossy Boots Drive is located west of U.S. Highway 75. The road’s name is taken from an affectionate nickname for Janice Brittingham, the late wife of Robert M. Brittingham, who acquired the land that now makes up the Twin Creeks area of Allen.
To boldly go where no man has gone before
Star Trek Lane is part of the Arapaho East subdivision of Garland, which was developed in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Many of the houses on Star Trek Lane were built in 1978, the year before the first Star Trek movie was released. In 1981, The News named Star Trek Lane the second worst street name in the city of Dallas, to the dismay of local Trekkies. Many other streets in the neighborhood give a nod to the Star Trek series.
There’s also a neighborhood in Cedar Hill with an interstellar vibe that has more than a dozen streets named after planets. Shoutouts to constellations are also in the fold.
Pinching pennies
Squeezepenny Lane in McKinney is probably named after a 19th-century community that was located south of Melissa. No one knows exactly why the town was named Squeezepenny in 1855. According to one historical account, the mill owner was supposedly extremely tight with his money. To cross the bridge, he’d “squeeze the last penny out of you.”
Amos ‘n’ Andy
In the Gilbert-Emory neighborhood of Dallas there are two streets named after the Amos ‘n’ Andy radio program, which began in the late 1920s, and the television show that followed in the early 1950s. The radio characters were created and acted by white men who treated skin color as a punch line. Not long after the TV series began to air, the NAACP launched a protest of the show, criticizing its negative stereotypes of African Americans.
CBS finally canceled the show in 1953, though the show remained in syndication until the mid-1960s. In 2018, The News interviewed residents who had lived on Amos Street since 1952. The West Dallas street names remain in place today.
Four score and seven years ago
The Presidential Estates subdivision in Duncanville has streets named after 10 former leaders of the free world including Truman Court, Madison Court and South Lincoln Drive.
Robin of Loxley
Stories of Robin Hood’s escapades have maintained enduring popularity over the years, and that iconography was an equally popular theme for area developers in the 1940s and 1950s. The Sherwood Forest neighborhood in Irving contains names from the tales including Nottingham Drive and King Richard Street. The News frequently credited this neighborhood to Earl McGraw, who served as officer and vice president of the Irving Home Builders Association throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
There’s also a Robin Hood Boulevard located in Mesquite’s Sherwood Forest neighborhood, which contains houses from the 1940s.
Hard to chew on
There are very few homes on Chicken Gristle Road in rural Granbury. But like many rural areas in Texas, that is bound to change. The road is located on a peninsula on the Brazos River and Lake Granbury. We could not find a reason for why this road was named Chicken Gristle.
Advance token to Boardwalk
By the time the Park Place North neighborhood in Arlington was developed in the mid-1980s, people had been enjoying the board game Monopoly for five decades. If you’re driving around the neighborhood in your 1930s roadster, it’s doubtful you’ll see a man in a top hat walking his Scottie dog. But you can still pass go on Marvin Gardens Street or Saint James Place. Take note: Boardwalk has “no outlet.”
Reindeer games
In 1969, Reindeer Road was a new street in Lancaster. By 1989, developers had established Reindeer Run Estates. Maybe they “deerly” loved Christmas because they had the “ideer” to name the streets after three of Santa’s reindeer: Dancer Lane, Dasher Road and Prancer Street.
For many years, the Reindeer Manor Haunted House, located near Reindeer Road and Houston School Road, scared children and adults throughout the Halloween season — completely unrelated to Christmas.
Dallas Morning News staff researchers Spencer Bevis and Jennifer Brancato contributed to this report.
