Irving

Welcome to Irving

Irving sits right in the middle of the Metroplex, between Dallas and Fort Worth, with part of DFW International Airport inside its city limits. That location is the whole pitch. You're 15 to 20 minutes from either downtown and a few minutes from one of the busiest airports in the country, and the DART Orange Line runs from the airport through Las Colinas into downtown Dallas. Housing runs the full range, from Las Colinas high-rise condos and lofts to single-family homes in Valley Ranch and the older neighborhoods of south Irving. Median sale prices ran roughly $420,000 to $425,000 in late 2025. The trade-off: parts of Irving sit under airport flight paths, and the main corridors (114, 183, 635) carry real traffic.

Irving is not one school district. Most of the city is Irving ISD, but the northwest corner splits into two others, which matters when you're picking a house.

• Irving ISD (most of the city): the comprehensive high schools are Irving High, MacArthur High, and Nimitz High, plus the career-focused Jack E. Singley Academy, which is open district-wide.
• Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD (Valley Ranch and western Las Colinas): Ranchview High School, which sits inside Valley Ranch.
• Coppell ISD (northern Valley Ranch): Valley Ranch Elementary feeds Coppell Middle School West and Coppell High School.

The spine of Irving's green space is the Campion Trail, a 22-mile greenbelt that follows the Elm Fork and West Fork of the Trinity River through the middle of the city. In Las Colinas, the Lake Carolyn loop gives you a 3.1-mile paved waterfront path. South and west, the Trinity River Mountain Creek Preserve adds about four miles of trail plus a playground, picnic pavilions, and a cricket field. Sam Houston Trail Park anchors the Valley Ranch end of the greenbelt.

The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory is the big draw, an 8,000-seat indoor-outdoor amphitheater the Dallas Observer named the best music venue of 2025, with a restaurant and entertainment complex around it. Down at the Levy Event Plaza on Lake Carolyn, Canal Fest runs each spring with music, food, and boats on the Mandalay Canal, and the Irving Farmers Market sets up on Sundays in season. The rest of the calendar fills in with Frost Fest in January, Laughs by the Lake in August, and the DFW Dragon Boat, Kite and Lantern Festival.

The signature stop is the Mustangs of Las Colinas at Williams Square, nine bronze horses running through a fountain and billed as the largest equine sculpture in the world. A few steps away, the Mandalay Canal runs past shops and restaurants with gondolas on the water. Irving Arts Center is a Smithsonian-affiliated complex with free galleries and two theaters, and the Irving Archives and Museum runs the Ruth Paine House, the restored 1963 home tied to the Kennedy assassination investigation.

Two railroad surveyors, J.O. Schulze and Otis Brown, platted Irving in 1903 while scouting a Rock Island line between Dallas and Fort Worth. They named it after the writer Washington Irving, and the first town lots sold at auction that December. Irving incorporated in 1914 with Brown as its first mayor. It stayed a small railroad town until the modern era rewrote it twice. The Dallas Cowboys played at Texas Stadium here from 1971 until 2008, and in 1973 Ben Carpenter announced Las Colinas on his family's old Hackberry Creek Ranch, one of the first master-planned mixed-use developments in the country at 12,000 acres. Las Colinas turned Irving into a corporate address, and today it holds headquarters for companies like McKesson, Kimberly-Clark, and Fluor.

Irving is for buyers who want to sit at the center of the Metroplex instead of picking a side, whether that's a lock-and-leave high-rise in Las Colinas near the corporate campuses or a single-family home in Valley Ranch. The first thing we check here is the school district, because a Valley Ranch or Las Colinas address can land in Irving ISD, Carrollton-Farmers Branch, or Coppell depending on the block. And if quiet matters to you, walk the property once with the flight paths in mind before you commit.

• City of Irving: irvingtx.gov
• Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce: irvingchamber.com
• Irving ISD: irvingisd.net
• Visit Irving (events and attractions): irvingtexas.com