OUR HISTORY

It was a time of frontier past and booming future, and Frank Ragsdale imagined he could wrestle a living from the Texas soil with his bare hands. The Daisy Bradford well had just blown, gushing East Texas black gold amid thunderous applause from Dallas banks that had bet heavily on what was in the hole. Ragsdale envisioned buildings sprouting up on the Dallas prairie – what would become an international finance and banking hub, centered in the Southwest – and he forecast a need for hand-crafted stone.

The region drew wide-eyed men with high hopes – Hunt, Bass, Thornton, Hoblitzelle, later Perot and Hicks – men tireless in their pursuit of greatness for their cities. Libraries, hospitals and parks, the structures of commerce and the gardens of play, would rise as testament to their vision. Dallas and Fort Worth would call for such monuments.

Frank Ragsdale’s own vision lives on in the details and the trim, the cornices and capstones, the large scale and small touches of these great structures throughout the Southwest. His family’s Dallas Cast Stone, which he founded in1922, celebrates the beauty of architecture and the hope of a community where trust is expected and workmanship reflects pride.

The third and fourth generation of Ragsdale's are now at the helm, perfecting the founder's dream: maintaining fierce pride of the company's past, hope for the future and serving as unrelenting guardian of a brilliant professional reputation for highest integrity, fair dealing and sound business decisions.

Cast stone is both craft and passion. Its permanence speaks for itself; its timeless beauty speaks to us all.

Kirk Ragsdale, third generation of Dallas Cast Stone