Modern day Coppell began about 181 years ago in July of 1843 when Sam Houston travelled from Crockett, Texas along the Trinity River to arrive at Grapevine Springs in an attempt to sign the Republic of Texas's first Indian treaty. It wasn't until two months later, and some 20 miles away, that the treaty was signed in September near present-day Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington. Then, they would have been traveling by horse, likely through what is now DFW Airport where a few thousand planes are taking off and landing every day.
This particular area that I walked around today, Old Town Coppell, began in 1866 when Kentucky native, Washington Bullock, purchased 280 acres and built the first brick house in Dallas County. Coppell, originally named Gibbs in 1873 in honor of Barnett Gibbs who served Lieutenant Governor of Texas, got its name in 1892 when the town officially changed the name of the post office to the previously named railroad depot in honor of George Coppell, the New York financier who immediately revived the railroad that had gone into bankruptcy.
By 1893, Coppell had four stores – a lumber yard, a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin, and a school house. Coppell really didn't change much for another 80 years, but was incorporated in 1955 with two square miles of land and a population in the hundreds, purely to control its own zoning before Dallas could swallow it. By 1970, Coppell had a population of 1,728 and eight businesses. But by 2000, the population was almost 40,000 – a 2,214% population increase in 30 years driven entirely by the 1974 opening of the DFW Airport, which sits directly adjacent to Coppell's southwestern border. A portion of the airport property is actually within Coppell's city limits.
Coppell's economic identity is almost entirely DFW Airport adjacency: Amazon, The Container Store, Uline, Samsung, Mohawk Industries, Nokia, IBM. I'm sure some of the warehouses I walked by today have at least something to do with one of these companies. And they wouldn't exist if it weren't for DFW Airport.
