Believe It or Not Boulevard

The stretch of the Metroplex around Grand Prairie has been in the entertainment business for a century. It started with Thoroughbreds: an oil-rich rancher built a glamorous racetrack here in the 1920s that drew celebrities by the thousands. The pari-mutuel windows are long gone, but the idea stuck, and the corridor filled in with a theme park, museums, a modern racetrack, and a sprawling open-air marketplace. This driving loop ties the historical anchors — the lost Arlington Downs track, the bowling hall of fame, the marker for the theme park that put Texas on every family's road-trip map — to the living attractions of today's strip. A few of these markers sit just over the Arlington line, but they all belong to the same neon ribbon of fun that runs through Grand Prairie's backyard.