Monday is Memorial Day, and around DFW that means two different days happening at once: a solemn one, with flags at half-staff until noon at cemeteries across North Texas, and a practical one, where half the errands on your list hit a locked door. Before you drive to the library or wait on a mail delivery that isn’t coming, here’s the rundown of what closes Monday, May 25, and what quietly keeps running.
The city of Dallas posted its official closure list Thursday, and a few items on it will surprise people, starting with the trash.
Government offices and courts: closed
Memorial Day is both a federal holiday and a national holiday under Texas law, so federal and state offices are dark Monday, and city and county governments across the metro follow suit. In Dallas, all city offices are closed, along with the municipal court building at 2014 Main Street. Suburbs from Arlington to Frisco run the same playbook, so anything involving a permit counter, a clerk or a courtroom waits for Tuesday.
One around-the-clock exception in Dallas: full payments and attorney or cash bonds for arrested defendants still process 24/7 at the Dallas Marshal’s Office at 1600 Chestnut Street, holidays included.
No mail, but your bills don’t pause
The Postal Service observes all federal holidays, so there’s no regular mail delivery Monday and post offices are closed. Banks generally close too. Neither fact moves your due dates, so anything that must arrive or clear by Monday should really move by Friday or Saturday.
The Dallas trash surprise: collection runs anyway
Here’s the one that catches longtime residents. Dallas Sanitation’s administrative offices close Monday, but garbage, recycling and brush and bulky item collection all run on their normal schedule. If Monday is your alley’s pickup day, roll the carts out like any other week. The McCommas Bluff Landfill and the city’s transfer stations also stay open regular hours for residents hauling their own loads.
That’s Dallas. Fort Worth, Arlington, Plano and the rest each set their own holiday collection rules, and some do slide pickup a day, so check your own city’s sanitation page before assuming either way.
Libraries and rec centers closed, but 311 still answers
Every Dallas Public Library location is closed Monday, though the digital branch never observes holidays; ebooks, audiobooks and streaming keep working at DallasLibrary.org. Recreation centers are closed as well, and most cultural facilities, including the Latino Cultural Center and the Bath House Cultural Center, take the day, though the city’s closure list notes the South Dallas Cultural Center stays open Monday.
The 311 line keeps taking service calls through the holiday for problems that can’t wait: water main breaks, downed limbs, dead traffic signals, loose animals. Water customer service is closed, but water emergencies go through 3-1-1 as usual. Dallas Animal Services’ shelter also keeps normal hours Monday, and police and fire run normal operations, with only their administrative offices closed.
State services take the day too
Because Memorial Day is on the state holiday calendar, the offices North Texans deal with for licenses and benefits pause along with city hall. Driver license offices, state benefits offices and other state agencies are closed Monday, though the online versions never blink: driver license renewals, vehicle registration renewals and benefit applications all keep working at their usual state websites through the weekend. County offices around the metro, including tax offices where folks handle registration and title work in person, observe the holiday as well, so a Monday errand at a county window becomes a Tuesday errand.
The commercial world mostly shrugs. Grocery stores, pharmacies and restaurants around DFW generally keep holiday hours of some kind Monday, but the smaller the shop, the more it pays to call before driving.
Getting around: check before you ride
Toll roads, obviously, don’t take holidays, and neither do the tags that pay for them. Transit does adjust. DART riders should expect reduced holiday-level service Monday rather than a full weekday schedule; the agency posts its official holiday alert on its service alerts page in the days before the holiday, and in recent years Memorial Day has meant Sunday-level bus service and weekend rail schedules. If Monday’s plan involves a train to the airport, look up the holiday timetable first rather than trusting a weekday habit.
What the day is for: parks, pools and remembrance
What stays open is most of what the day is actually about. City parks and trails don’t close, lake day-use areas fill early on a warm holiday, and Memorial Day weekend is traditionally when seasonal pools and aquatic centers around the metro begin their summer schedules; hours vary by city, so check yours before loading the car. For many North Texas families, the day starts at a cemetery: flags on headstones, a bugler, half-staff until noon, and then the cookout.
The practical summary fits on an index card. Closed Monday: government offices, courts, libraries, rec centers, mail, banks. Open: parks, trails, the landfill, the animal shelter, 3-1-1, and, in Dallas at least, your regular trash pickup. Plan the errands for Tuesday, and give Monday to the people it’s named for.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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