Irving, Texas map

Irving is wedged between Dallas on the east and the airport on the west, with Coppell to the north, Grand Prairie to the south and the Tarrant County line just beyond the runways. Downtown Dallas is 12 miles east; downtown Fort Worth is about 25 miles west on SH-183. The Elm Fork of the Trinity River runs down the city's east side, and the levees, lakes and greenbelts along it are what separate Irving from Dallas on the map.

The town was platted in 1903 along the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway and incorporated in 1914. It was a modest railroad suburb until two projects changed the scale of the place: DFW Airport, which opened in 1974 on land partly annexed by Irving, and Las Colinas, begun on the Carpenter family's El Ranchito land at about the same time.

Las Colinas covers several thousand acres north of SH-114 and west of Loop 12. Its Urban Center is a cluster of office towers around Lake Carolyn, linked by the Mandalay Canal walkway and served by an elevated automated people mover built into the development in the 1980s. The Mustangs of Las Colinas, installed at Williams Square in 1984, are nine bronze horses at larger than life size crossing a granite stream. The Irving Convention Center and the Toyota Music Factory entertainment complex sit at the eastern edge of the district beside SH-114.

Corporate offices in and around Las Colinas include Fluor, Kimberly-Clark, McKesson, Caterpillar, Vistra and Christus Health. Just east of the district, at the interchange of SH-114, SH-183 and Loop 12, stood Texas Stadium, the Dallas Cowboys' home from 1971 until 2008 and the source of the hole-in-the-roof line; it was imploded in 2010 and the interchange still carries its name. The team's old headquarters and practice fields were in Valley Ranch, in the northern part of Irving, until the move to Frisco in 2016.