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          Before Dallas Center became a town, a group of army men who were civil engineers, came riding into the area on horseback.  They sought lodging at the Moses Slaughter farm home north of the present town site.  They stayed in the community and surveyed for the railroad, often wading through the swamp land, in hip boots, as they placed the stakes in the muddy, black soil.  One of these men was James L. Loring who later moved his family to Dallas Center and became a well-known businessman of the new town.

          Dallas Center was so named because of its location near the center of Dallas county.  It is about four miles east of the center, east and west, and almost the exact center north and south.  It is approximately twenty-two miles northwest of Des Moines in the midst of a prosperous farming community.  The town was laid out in the northeast corner of Adel township.  Officially, from the affidavit recorded in the courthouse in Adel:  "-that Dallas Center is laid out on the the N W 4 Sec. 2 of Twp. 79 Range 27 of the 5th P M Dallas County State of Iowa; and that the streets and alleys are of the width and dimensions as shown in the accompanying plat and parallel and perpendicular to the W and S center line of Sec. 2 and the Des Moines Valley railroad - Dated May 8, 1869, signed by Francis Pelton, surveying engineer, recorded June 1, 1869."

          The original plat was of an acre bounded by what is now 13th Street on the east (the Church of the Brethren is on 13th) and Kellogg Avenue on the west.  Two weeks after the original plat was filed with the judge of the county, the Huber and Vandercook Addition plat was filed.  This extended the town one-half mile east of the present northeast boundary to the T-road.  Later most of this area was vacated and the city limits established where they remain just east of 10th Street.

          A petition for incorporation of Dallas Center was not filed until 11 years later, on March 22, 1880.  But for all practical purposes, Dallas Center will observe its one-hundredth birthday June 1, 1969, the anniversary of the recording of the original plat.  More recent additions to the town include the Brenton Addition to the northwest and Meadowview Acres to the southeast.

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