Dallas may have cultivated the image of an oil town in the popular imagination. In reality, fortunes here were built on oil extracted hundreds of miles away. Wildcatters just didn't expect there to be mineral riches under Dallas County, and until the last year, Dallas continued to look on enviously as Fort Worth and others in the 18-county Barnett Shale region drilled thousands of wells producing billions of dollars in natural gas. In February, however, Dallas finally got a piece of the action, as the city leased the mineral rights to 6,500 acres of city-owned land, including Love Field airport, for $34 million. And private landowners, including some homeowners, are beginning to see the... More >>>