SMU, a President & the Heisman

University Park is, in the simplest terms, the city that grew up around a university. When Dallas was chosen in 1911 to host a new Methodist school, citizens pledged hundreds of acres and a fortune in cash, and Southern Methodist University rose on the prairie north of town — the suburb following close behind. This walk crosses the heart of that campus and the streets just off it, taking in the domed Jeffersonian hall that started it all, the grand auditorium beside it, a presidential library, a museum of Spanish masterworks, and the pioneer cemetery of the family who once farmed this ground. Along the way you'll brush past Mustang football legend and Heisman ties that still echo around the stadium. It's a tour about ambition — civic, academic, and architectural — laid out in red brick and limestone under big Texas oaks.