Grapevine, Texas

For decades, a Rotary Club sign at the edge of town called Grapevine the Cantaloupe Capital of the World. It stayed up until the early nineteen seventies. The claim had some backing. Cotton had been the main crop here since the settlement days, but early in the twentieth century cantaloupe farms took over, spreading across twenty five thousand acres of Texas soil. Melons, by the square mile. What ended it was an airport. Dallas Fort Worth International opened in nineteen seventy four, and Grapevine sits right at its north entrance. More of that airport lies inside Grapevine's city limits than any other city's. The farm town turned into a center of commerce almost overnight. Today the city holds a mall, a hotel resort, and a string of wineries, and the population has passed fifty thousand. The old downtown corridor is still there, carefully maintained. The cantaloupe sign is not.