Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misidentified the age of Burnett Field. It was 36 years old in 1960.
The Dallas Cowboys opened The Star in Frisco four years ago, putting the team’s offices and practice facilities in a $1.5-billion sports and hospitality complex that includes a 12,000-seat stadium.
In 1960, when the brand-new NFL team paid its players $5,000 a year, they practiced in Oak Cliff. Burnett Field, which went by several other names over the years, including Gardner Park, was built in 1924. That means it was 36 years old by the time Tom Landry and the ’boys arrived.
They worked out there because it was one of a few practice fields available, along with P.C. Cobb, the bygone Dallas ISD stadium where the Dallas Infomart now stands. Former Cowboys executive Gil Brandt told The Dallas Morning News in 2016 that Burnett Field was infested with rats.
“Guys had to hang their jerseys on pipes so the rats didn’t eat them,” he told the newspaper.
Burnett Field was a baseball stadium on the old Dallas streetcar line at Colorado and Eighth, backing up to the Trinity River. Minor league baseball games were played on that site starting around 1910.
Burnett Field wasn’t torn down until the minor-league Dallas Rangers moved to Arlington Stadium in 1965. The land is still undeveloped. Cienda Partners purchased it, along with the bygone Oak Farms Dairy, in 2014.
The G. William Jones Film & Video Collection at SMU recently digitized this film of Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys practicing at Burnett Field in August 1962.
