This is our top ten things we bet you didn’t know about Fort Worth!
1. Fort Worth was founded as a military camp in 1849, named after General William Jenkins Worth.
2. In 1849, during the closure of the Mexican-American War, Major Ripley Arnold established a fort, named in honor of General William Jenkins Worth near a high bluff where the West Fork and Clear Fork of the Trinity River merge together. The fort was flooded the first year and was moved to the top of the bluff where the courthouse sits now.
3. Fort Worth was once a key stop along the famed Chisholm Trail. From the 1860s to the 1880s, more than 10 million head of cattle were driven through the town as ranchers took herds to be sold in Kansas stockyards.
4. Fort Worth’s downtown has the Sundance Square, named after the infamous Sundance Kid. The Sundance Square is a 16 block entertainment center for the city.
5. The Fort Worth Stockyards offer a taste of the old west and the Chisholm Trail at the site of the historic cattle drives and rail access. The District is filled with restaurants, clubs, gift shops and attractions such as daily longhorn cattle drives through the streets, historic reenactments, the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame and Billy Bob’s, the world’s largest country and western music venue.
6. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, founded in 1892, is the oldest art museum in Texas.
7. Fort Worth is home to Thistle Hill Mansion, one of the last remaining examples of Georgian Revival architecture in the Southwest. This home provides a glimpse of the 20th century’s early decades. The mansion’s Quality Hill neighborhood was also home to a number of entrepreneurs who made their money in the cattle trade.
8. The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is the only museum in the world that is solely dedicated to honoring women of the American West who have demonstrated extraordinary courage and pioneer spirit in their trail blazing efforts.
9. Fort Worth has had the following nicknames over the years: Cowtown, Queen City of the Prairie, “Where the West Begins,”
and Hell’s Half Acre
10. Fort Worth’s central location has made it a transportation hub from its early days, including cattle trails (the Chisholm Trail), stage lines (the Yuma Stage Line), interstate highways (Interstates 20, 30, and 35W), airports (Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and Meacham Field), and numerous railroads.
Sources: Wikipedia and the Texas State Historical Association