Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1998. 1^st edition. 247 pages. Hardcover book in dustjacket; both in FINE condition.

The fascinating, story of Warren Ferris. Except for a twist of fate, Dallas, Texas, would have been named Warwick by its two founders, surveyor Ferris and land speculator William P. King.   A. C. Greene thought Warren Ferris the most unappreciated figure in Dallas history. Born in 1787 on the Niagara Frontier (Western New York), Ferris moved West in the heyday of Westward expansion arriving in Texas in 1837. Before arriving in Texas, he worked for six years in the Rocky Mountains as a trapper and fur trader. Ferris kept a diary of his adventure; it was published as Life in the Rocky Mountains and it provided a unique and valuable picture of trapper and Indian life in the 1830s.   Ferris also gave the public its first written description of Yellowstone's amazing geysers. Ferris followed his brother Charles to Texas the year after the Texas Revolution and became the official surveyor for Nacogdoches County, which then included much of northeast Texas west to the Trinity River. His brother returned to Buffalo, New York but Ferris spent another thirty-five years in Texas. In 1839, while surveying the Three Forks of the Trinity (site of Dallas Texas), Ferris entered the site on which Dallas would grow beginning in 1841.