Every July 14, Bishop Arts remembers something most of Dallas has forgotten: this city has French roots. Real ones. In the 1850s, about 350 French, Swiss, and Belgian settlers crossed an ocean to build a utopian colony called La Reunion on the west bank of the Trinity, just across from what would become downtown. The utopia part didn’t take — farming socialists and North Texas summers were never going to get along — but the settlers scattered into the young city and left their mark. Reunion Tower carries the colony’s name to this day.
So, when Oak Cliff throws a Bastille Day party, it isn’t borrowing someone else’s holiday. It’s celebrating the neighborhood’s own origin story.
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