Lone Star Adventure: Southfork Ranch - Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com

Lone Star Adventure: Southfork Ranch

Decades after the original series ended rabid fans of the legendary prime time soap opera "Dallas" never really stopped making the pilgrimage to Southfork Ranch. But the steady stream has suddenly tripled in volume, filling trams for the short ride from the Visitor Center to the house where J.R. and the TV Ewings fussed and fought.

Among the visitors, Mildly McColloch from Los Altos, California. "I just loved the show. I watched it every week when I was a teenager. The one thing I wanted to do when I came to visit my nephew was to come see Southfork."

It's the re-incarnated Dallas series -- on cable's TNT - that has viewers and tourists riding back to Southfork. They filmed on location for the new show last fall. And with the success the show has had so far and Southfork's Sally Peavy is pretty optimistic they'll be back to shoot again this fall.

"They did a lot of scenes here and I think that's something the original cast was real adamant about. They wanted to film Dallas in Dallas. We're delighted that they did that."

The new series, mixing old characters with new, had its red carpet premiere in Dallas and the first episode was a ratings smash.

Southfork has long been a global tourist destination. Re-runs of Dallas have aired in nearly 100 countries. The series re-boot is part of what brought Ken Gibson, Motoring Editor of the Sun Newspaper in London, here for a photo shoot and feature.

"We're big Mercedes fans in the UK but we're also huge Dallas fans and when I heard that Dallas was coming back and at the same time the iconic SL was coming back there seemed only one place to come and do it and that was in Southfork."

Ken Gibson says the buzz on the new Dallas is growing in Great Britain -- where the show premieres later this summer. "Everybody watched Dallas in the UK and it's getting a fever pitch now about people saying, 'Dallas is back!'"

www.southfork.com