Southfork Ranch, Dallas, Texas

The above drive may look familiar to you if you were a devotee of the television series Dallas. The drive leads up to the Southfork ranch, home to the Ewing family. From 1978 to 1991  the ranch was the fictional Dallas homestead of the Ewings, America's most charming but devious television family. Below is a picture of one of the cars that you would see, while watching the series, coming up the drive. Jock Ewing, patriarch of the Ewings, drove the Lincoln Continental. It has put in all of a total of 25 miles. Jim Davis, the character who played Jock, died in 1981.

 Also on display at the ranch is the pistol that shot JR. Do you remember how the nation, as well as the world (the television series was shown in 96 countries) was so captivated by the big question: "who shot JR?"?  Speaking of JR, on the tour we saw the "bad barn" where he did a lot of his evil deeds, and the swimming pool around which the Ewings had some of their more dramatic moments. The barn can be seen in the background of the picture below.

I did not know that the scenes in Dallas were shot outside only, the rest were done in Culver city, California. The cast was at Southfork during the summer months, that was a stipulation of the Duncan family who owned the ranch at the time.  Below is a picture of the outside breakfast dining area where the Ewings usually got into some disagreement with each other and left without finishing their meal. Ellie, or mom, would usually be seen sitting by herself at the end of those scenes and pondering how to smooth over the latest disagreement in her family. It always seems to me that all of the soap opera-type series follow the same story lines!

We learned while at Southfork that the series may be returning on cable. Larry Hagmann (JR)will probably still be in the series (he is now 79 years old). The story will focus on the offspring of JR and his brother Bobby, who are Chris and John Jr. I wonder which of those two will continue the antics of JR......