In 2018, Will Maddox reported on the history of Reinhardt Elementary School, viewed through the eyes of a beloved teacher. John Slate, Dallas City Archivist, adds more detail to the story of this former town.
Dallas’ history is intimately connected to railroad history. Several communities now within our city limits once grew around rail stations. Such is the case with the unincorporated village of Reinhardt, which was on the northern border of what’s now the Casa Linda area between Peavy and Gus Thomasson Roads. Renamed from Ola, Reinhardt was a convenient stop on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway railroads, halfway between Dallas and Duck Creek – the future Garland. Like the Missouri-Kansas-Pacific railroad, Santa Fe was a very important link to Midwestern cities.
Maddox described Reinhardt as coming into existence in the early 1870s, primarily a patchwork of cotton farms operated by families now honored with local street names — Chenault, Peavy, Zacha and Goforth to name a few.
Writings about the village usually include a reference to the namesake as being president of the railroad. But was he? Joseph W. Reinhart was a Santa Fe railroad executive from Pittsburgh, serving one disastrous term as president from 1893-94. Because Reinhardt was named before anyone around here knew Reinhart, he’s an unlikely source. A Dallas Morning News article from January 1887 notes, “The post office at Ola, Dallas County, has been removed to the new station on the Santa Fe named Reinhardt in honor of Mr. Reinhardt of Dallas.”
“Mr. Reinhardt” was German-born Isidore Reinhardt (1839-1899), proprietor of two businesses. The first was Reinhardt the Clothier, which operated in the 1880s on Elm Street. When that business declined, he started I. Reinhardt & Son, the earliest fire insurance company based in Dallas.
According to the Handbook of Texas, in the late 1880s Reinhardt had 37 residents, a railway station, telegraph office, and a combination post office/general store. In later years it had a population of 100 and supported two segregated schools, two drugstores, a bank and a cotton gin. A “Reinhardt Pike” briefly existed into the early 1920s.
Inevitably, the village fell into decline. A 1937 Dallas Times-Herald article chronicled the last days of the Reinhardt post office, established in 1886. In 1945, the City of Dallas annexed Reinhardt into the city limits. The tiny Reinhardt school district was absorbed into Dallas Independent School District in 1946. All that remains of Reinhardt are a few residences, Reinhardt Elementary School and Reinhardt Bible Church’s building, now occupied by St. Peter Vietnamese Catholic Church on Garland Road.
