Is it my imagination, or wasn't there a huge, monolith looking stadium somewhere in Dallas called Cobb Stadium, or something like that? I remember passing by it in the 70s/80s but can't remember where it was I saw it, & haven't passed by it in years. I assume it is torn down. Who played there? What was its capacity?

I believe it was just west of downtown, you could see it from I-35. I always used to ask my parents "Is that the Cotton Bowl?" because you could see a C and an O and it looked big to me back then.

The Infomart was put in its place. I believe it was torn down in the time frame of 1978-81. The address was Stemmons freeway (I-35) just east of Oak Lawn. If you are driving from downtown, you pass the AAC on your right, then make a curve to the left (past the exit onto the tollway). The stadium was on the North (right) side of the road.

Incidentally, Dallas has always had real good facilities for its high schools -- football and basketball. Its just that these facilities (like Loos and Sprague, and formerly Cobb) cater to several schools. Few, if any, Dallas high schools have very good on campus facilities.

It was demolished in '81.

I remember it very well.

P. C. Cobb Stadium, renamed in about 1965-1970 after a well-thought-of, long-term Athletic Director for the Dallas Independent School District, was built of solid cement or concrete with just enough wood, glass and metal for the seats, windows and doors.

Before that it was known and is still fondly remembered by folks my age as Dal-Hi Stadium.

I think it may have been a joint public works project between the DISD and FDR's Works Progress Administration(WPA)during the post-depression recovery, but that's open for correction by anyone who knows better or does a internet search.

It was the hallowed home of Dallas high school football for decades.

It was also where the Dallas Texans, later the Kansas City Chiefs, featuring Abner Haynes played.

The Dallas Cowboys had dibs on the Cotton Bowl, but Lamar Hunt's Texans teams would have kicked their butts in those early years if they had ever played an intra-league showdown to see who would remain in Big D and who had to leave town.

I just have faint recollections of hearing this stadium's origins, but I clearly remember shivering there in sometimes below freezing temperatures watching high school battles where the Sunset Bisons, Adamson Leopards, Forrest Avenue Lions, North Dallas Bulldogs, Crozier Tech Wolves and the South Oak Cliff Golden Bears played without facemasks.

It was where I first attended high school football about 1945 as a baby.

The ride to the pressbox with my Dad was my first one on an elevator.

As I got older I had the run of most of the stadium, including the sidelines when my Dad was working.

I knew the ticket takers, the folks at the concession stands and the custodians.

A sudden spring storm cut short one of my junior high track meets and we watched the 1957 tornado drop down from a black cloud and tear across Oak Cliff and West Dallas, standing in awe on the uppermost row of the stands in my soaked W. E. Greiner Junior High Yellowjacket warm-up sweats.

From the top of this sports castle we had the best, and probably safest, vantage point/storm shelter in town.

Blackie Sherrod used to cover the high school sports beat there for The Dallas Morning News, sometimes I spotted player's numbers for him while he typed on an Underwood.

Or I answered the phone in the press box giving the changing score to whoever called.

There was an indoor basketball arena where the annual Dr. Pepper Tournament was held over the Christmas holidays and a quarter mile cinder track with extended straightaways on both ends, so the 220 yard dash and low hurdles could always be run without using the curve and regardless of the wind direction.

I played in about fifteen HS football games there as a Sunset Bison and watched my Dad coach well nigh to a hundred as a Sunset High assistant and then as the first head coach South Oak Cliff High ever had.

There was a concrete wall at least fifteen feet tall that completely encircled the whole complex and along with the towering pressbox that gave it that monolithic appearance.

As the crow flies, it was very close to the Riverchon Park high school baseball complex on Lemmon Avenue, just over a hill and across the railroad tracks.

Dal-Hi/Cobb Stadium was a formidable structure and it took explosives and a wrecking ball to bring it down.

As stated above, the Merchandise Mart and other sales convention type buildings now stand very near to this great stadium's former location, just off Industrial Blvd. near the Trinity levee and the south terminus of the Tollway to North Dallas, adjacent to the current Stemmons Expressway that runs through the river's bottomland.

Just a guess from years in the past, but I bet I've seen 15-20 thousand fans watching the biggest HS football games there in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

Heck maybe even more, HS football was a really big show in town in those pre-TV or pre-pro ball days.

Some playoff games were held in the larger Cotton Bowl, "the stadium that Doak Walker built," but others were held at Dal-Hi/Cobb Stadium.

I remember watching Jim Brown and the Syracuse Orangemen work out at Dal-Hi/Cobb while the Abe Martin's TCU Horned Frogs practiced at home in Fart Wurf for their Cotton Bowl meeting in 1956 or 1957.

Those workouts were closed to the general public.

That was one benefit of being the guest/son of a Dallas high school assistant coach that P. C. Cobb had hired right out of the post-war Navy on the strength of his application letter and a 1930s career as a well-remembered player for North Dallas High and the Baylor Bears.

BTW, that picture above, which really brings back the memories, just shows the front entrance of the basketball arena which faced Oak Lawn Avenue.

This was big but austere, heated but unair-conditioned and the only nod toward decoration was a big round clock that was on the wall next to the scoreboard and the game clock.

This time-of-the-day piece was donated by Dr. Pepper and had only the numerals "10, 2 and 4" appearing on it's face.

These were the times of the day you were advised to drink Dr. Pepper as a pick-me-up to keep you alert and healthy during the course of a day.

You see, unlike Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper never made it as a mixer for hard liquor, so they had to come up with something to push sales.

The football stadium sprawled and towered over acres behind the basketball edifice, beneath the lights shown in the distance.

You can also see a part of the wall, that so impressed me as a kid, going off the left side of the photograph.

It still looks pretty tall.

Gig 'em, FAST FRED '65.

Before the world wide web, village idiots usually stayed in their own village.

[This message has been edited by FAST FRED (edited 8/10/2003 2:46p).]

Thanks for the nice reflections, Fast Fred. I never saw Cobb Stadium, but as you described the place it almost felt like I was there.

I'm a fan of older stadiums. Wish we could keep them forever.

Excellent read, Fast Fred. A far better account than I could've hoped for when I posted this topic.

And thanks for the responses, guys. I always wondered what happened to that place. I guess it was in bad shape when it was torn down. With a 20,000-30,000 butt capacity, it seemed that was the kind of place that would have been a good fixer-upper. New press box, bleachers, scoreboard, and facilities and you'd have one of the best inner city high-school-only complexes in the state. A great playoff venue, too.

Oh well. Thanks for the info.











[This message has been edited by GoldenTriangleAg89 (edited 8/10/2003 1:41p).]

Alas, I think it was built to last, but not to easily remodel.

And the land it stood on was worth way too much money to not be sold and redeveloped by a forward-thinking, budget-balancing school board.

It was too big for for current Dallas inner city HS football "crowds," that have plenty of room to rattle about in the smaller but well-distributed stadiums that now easily and well serve the DISD.

First they sold off the vast parking lots that were never filled at the end anyhow and then the land the stadium sat upon.

Glad I got to use it.

When your team's bus pulled up to those tall walls back in the day, escorted by police cars, and the gate attendants opened the big double swinging wooden doors to let you enter a stadium already filling with fans an hour before kickoff you felt as though you were part of something really cool.



Gig 'em, FAST FRED '65.

Before the world wide web, village idiots usually stayed in their own village.