Population: 2,345,815

Increase (July 2005 - July 2006): 37,288

Dallas is a business-friendly city that has become a center for the petroleum industry, telecommunications and banking. Because of its importance in the computer industry, the area is sometimes referred to as Silicon Prairie.

It's also a transportation center; the city of Dallas expanded around a nexus of 19th-century rail lines. Today, a network of interstate highways funnels shipping from southern Texas and Mexico through the county and north into America's heartland.

The state of Texas ranked twelfth among the 50 states for incidences of crime, according to Morgan Quitno Press, an independent researcher in Lawrence, Kansas, which publishes the rankings annually.