Where exactly is West Dallas?

This content originally was a newsletter Dallas Free Press emailed to insiders. To become one, sign up here for free.

“Where exactly is West Dallas?”

We’re frequently asked some semblance of this question. Another version is: “How do you define West Dallas?”

The answer is that we at Dallas Free Press do not define West Dallas. Instead, we ask our West Dallas neighbors how they define their neighborhood, and let that be our guide for our reporting and storytelling parameters.

Crucial note: West Dallas ≠ northwest Dallas.

West Dallas neighbors define their community as south of the Trinity River and north of I-30, with Highway 12 creating the western border. Neighbors sometimes call it “the island” because of the hard borders created by a river and an interstate highway.

West Dallas encompasses almost the  entirety of zip code 75212, with a tiny portion of 75208 jutting across I-30 on the eastern side. Neighborhood high school L.G. Pinkston is known by alumni as “the Pride of the West Side,” with its attendance boundaries overlapping pretty much all of West Dallas and extending south into Oak Cliff.

The complicated part is when neighbors disagree on the definition of where their neighborhood is. Though there is general agreement on the definition of West Dallas,  not everyone agrees on where Eagle Ford is in relation to Ledbetter, for example.

So what do we do when there isn’t consensus?

Just keep listening and let neighbors tell their own stories about their communities. That’s the important thing.