National Historic Landmark District where President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963; ghost-tour operators report shadow figures and cold spots near the stockade fence on the Grassy Knoll.
500 Main St, Dallas, TX 75202
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The outdoor plaza and Grassy Knoll are free to visit. The Sixth Floor Museum (inside the former Texas School Book Depository) charges separate admission.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved downtown plaza with grassy slopes and sidewalks. The Grassy Knoll area has a mild incline. Fully accessible for mobility devices on the primary paths.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1937 · Site of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963 · National Historic Landmark District · WPA-era public park construction · Texas School Book Depository — sixth-floor sniper's nest · One of the most visited dark-tourism sites in the United States
Dealey Plaza was built in the 1930s as a Works Progress Administration project on the site of Dallas's original commercial district, named for Dallas Morning News founder George Bannerman Dealey. The three-acre park sits at the convergence of Main, Commerce, and Elm Streets at the western edge of downtown, just east of the Triple Underpass beneath the railroad viaduct.
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy's motorcade traveled through downtown Dallas along a route approved by the Secret Service. The motorcade turned right from Main Street onto Houston Street and then left onto Elm Street to pass through Dealey Plaza toward the Stemmons Freeway. At approximately 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, shots were fired. Kennedy was struck by two bullets — one entering the base of his neck and one striking the rear of his head. He was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital at 1:00 p.m.
The Warren Commission, appointed to investigate the assassination, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository at the northeast corner of Houston and Elm. Oswald was arrested that afternoon at the Texas Theatre in the Oak Cliff neighborhood; he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later in the Dallas Police headquarters.
The plaza has been a major destination for researchers, tourists, and conspiracy theorists since the day of the assassination. In 1963, before the motorcade's arrival, approximately 50,000 people lined the streets of Dallas to see the president. Today, the two X marks painted on Elm Street indicate the approximate positions of the two shots that struck Kennedy.
Dealey Plaza was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1993, encompassing the plaza, the Texas School Book Depository building (now home to the Sixth Floor Museum), and the surrounding streetscape. It receives approximately one million visitors per year.
Sources
Dealey Plaza's paranormal reputation is an extension of its status as one of the most emotionally and historically charged outdoor sites in the United States. The assassination of a sitting president in a public downtown plaza, witnessed by hundreds of people and recorded on multiple cameras, has generated sixty years of psychological weight concentrated in a three-acre space.
US Ghost Adventures dedicates a page on its website to the Grassy Knoll as a haunted location, citing reports of shadow figures seen moving near the stockade fence at the top of the knoll — the fence that forms the backdrop for one of the enduring visual images of the Kennedy assassination photographs. Cold spots have been reported on Elm Street near the painted X markers, particularly in the area where the second shot struck the president.
The dark-tourism documentation site dark-tourism.com covers Dealey Plaza in depth as one of the premier dark-tourism destinations in the United States, noting that the concentration of assassination-site tourism infrastructure — the Sixth Floor Museum, the X marks, the Book Depository building — makes the plaza unusual among trauma sites in its degree of public memorialization.
Paranormal accounts at Dealey Plaza are difficult to distinguish from the general atmosphere of the site, which functions simultaneously as a functioning public park, a daily media backdrop for news and documentary productions, a conspiracy-theory research destination, and a site of ongoing civic grief. Ghost tours include it as a stop in the broader context of Dallas's dark-history landscape.
Notable Entities
Dealey Plaza is a free outdoor National Historic Landmark District. Visitors walk the route of the motorcade on Elm Street, stand at the two X marks painted on the pavement marking the shots fired, climb to the Grassy Knoll and the stockade fence at the top, and view the Texas School Book Depository from street level. Informal guides and independent researchers are typically present during daylight hours.
Ticketed evening ghost tour operated by US Ghost Adventures that includes Dealey Plaza and the Grassy Knoll as a primary stop, covering the JFK assassination, reported shadow figures near the stockade fence, and paranormal accounts filed by investigators and tourists.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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