Southfork, Home of the Ewings

Located in rural Braddock, Texas, Southfork was the 100,000 acre homestead of oil millionaire John Ross "Jock" Ewing (Jim Davis) and his wife, Eleanor Southworth "Miss Ellie" Ewing (Barbara Bel Geddes).

Other family members included Larry Hagman as John Ross "J.R." Ewing, their eldest son and the most unscrupulous of the lot; Linda Gray as Sue Ellen, J.R.'s long-suffering, alcoholic wife; Tyler Banks and Omri Katz as their small son John Ross Ewing III; Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing, the complete moral reverse of his brother J.R.; Victoria Principal as Bobby's wife Pamela Barnes Ewing, the daughter of Digger Barnes, the family's former arch rival; and David Aykroyd and Ted Schackelford as Gary Ewing, the least aggressive of the Ewing brothers who moved to Southern California with his wife, Valene (Joan Van Ark) on the spin-off series KNOTS LANDING/CBS/1979-93.

When Jock Ewing died in South America in 1981, Miss Ellie married Clayton Farlow (Howard Keel) who became the new patriarch of the family.

In reality, the custom built 8,500 square-foot, six-bedroom mansion used for the series is located on a 200-acre horse and cattle ranch formerly owned by Joe R. & Natalie Duncan who built what was to be "Southfork" in 1970 from ideas picked up from their many visits to mansion and ranches around the country. When location scouts for the DALLAS series saw the Duncan's white four-post facade, the Ewing mansion was born.

Now a popular tourist attractions, the Southfork Ranch and Conference Center located at 3700 Hogge Road (Central Expressway, to Exit 30 near the suburbs of Plano) in Parker, Texas has been called "The most famous white house west of D.C."

As a publicity stunt, the Duncan's sold off a few of their acres to hungry DALLAS fans who craved their own chunk of the Ewing spread. The price tag was $25.00 a square foot. Their teenage sons sold Southfork tee-shirts out of an old Dodge van by the property's gate and by 1981 tourists were paying $4.00 to visit J.R.'s stomping grounds.

After the Duncan's sold their ranch, the new owner, Terry Trippet, who headed the Colin Commodore Ltd. partnership charged $6.00 a pop to each of the 500,000 tourists who visited Southfork.

For a mere $2,500 a night, one could sleep in J.R.'s upstairs bedroom and for a modest $2.00 charge one might sip tea on the balcony or eat a $13.95 breakfast of eggs, biscuits, and gravy (Bobby's and J.R.'s favorite dish).

Since purchasing the house from the Duncan's (who sold it because they lost their privacy) Trippet added a convention center, party pavilion, a rodeo ring and gift shops.

He also added a brightly painted red, white and blue oil rig which reportedly cost $9 million dollars. The 183-foot oil rig flies both the flags of the USA and the Lone Star State. When the rig was dedicated 1000 black, helium-filled balloons floated from the top of the rig to symbolize a stream of gushing oil.

On January 1st, 1991, control of this popular tourist attraction was taken over by Glenfed Financial Corporation because the owners could not come up with the mortgage payments.

In 1992, the ranch was purchased at auction for $2.6 million by Rex Maughan, an Arizona businessman. Lorimar Pictures who produced the series shot exterior scenes on the property about two or three months of the year.

On the finale episode of DALLAS (5/3/91), Southfork was no more...well almost. It seemed that J.R. Ewing was contemplating suicide since his life was falling apart. A representative of Satan in the guise of an angel, offered J.R. the opportunity to see what the world would have been like had he not been born. He discovered that a new brother named Jason sold off the homestead and had Southfork leveled to make way for a huge housing development. So much for family loyalty.

The 1986 TV-movie Dallas: The Early Years set in the Texas oil wildcatting days of the 1930s told the origins of the Barnes-Ewing Feud and showed Southfork in its early days when it was owned by Miss Ellie's father, Aaron Southworth (Hoyt Axton).

Southfork resurfaced on the reunion specials Dallas: J.R. Returns (1996) as J.R. Ewing returns from exile to reclaim his family's oil company; and Dallas: The War of the Ewings (1998). See also TV CHARACTER BIOS: "Jock Ewing"

External Links

• Dallas (IMDb)

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