With summer vacation season quickly approaching, many of us will soon be jetting off to exotic-and perhaps not so exotic-locales far and near which means embarking on an odyssey through DFW International Airport. As you’re navigating through the perils of parking, the joys of security, and the pageantry of sitting at a gate for hours upon end, you may take a moment to ponder the sprawling 1970s-era structures all around you and the development of DFW as one of the world’s major transportation hubs. The third busiest airport in the world, DFW International Airport covers nearly 27 square miles of North Texas land between Dallas and Ft. Worth and handles upwards of 60,436,000 people annually. The planning and development of DFW International Airport including original planning documents and booklets is well documented in the archive of the Texas Metro magazine and in the papers of Dr. John T. Thompson (1966-1975), both of which comprise part of the Post-War Industry and Development of the Southwest Metroplex Project currently underway at UNT. These and the other collections of the Southwest Metroplex Project relate to the urban planning, politics, industry, industrial education and major infrastructure projects in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area of North Texas and help to shed light on the explosive growth experienced within the DFW region over the past 60 years.