The corner of Cedar Springs and Throckmorton is just an intersection. Two lanes, a crosswalk, a traffic light. But in 1978, when the Throckmorton Mining Company opened its doors as one of Dallas’s first openly gay bars, that corner became something else: a declaration.
Over the next four decades, the four blocks radiating from that intersection would become the most concentrated expression of queer life in Texas. JR’s Bar & Grill arrived in 1980, becoming the strip’s unofficial living room. Sue Ellen’s followed — the oldest, largest lesbian bar in the South. The Round-Up Saloon brought country-western two-stepping to a community that knew how to dance but hadn’t been invited to the floor.
The 1980s were brutal. AIDS devastated the neighborhood. But the community organized: Resource Center opened, Cathedral of Hope expanded, and the strip became a lifeline as much as a party destination. The 1990s brought Pride — the Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade marching down Cedar Springs, growing from hundreds to tens of thousands.
In 2015, rainbow crosswalks were painted at Cedar Springs and Throckmorton — the same week the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. That corner, again, at the center of everything. Today, the parade has moved downtown, new venues are opening in Deep Ellum and Bishop Arts, and Cedar Springs is evolving. But The Crossroads remains. It always will.