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Bedford, Texas

Everything Bedford is known for

5 songs mention this city

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Music in Bedford

Songs About Bedford

Sun & Moon (Original Mix) [feat. Richard Bedford]
Above & Beyond
80%
"Song about Bedford"
Bedford
Ginesse
80%
"Song about Bedford"
Bedford
Stephan Bodzin
80%
"Song about Bedford"
Bedford
D.E.L
80%
"Song about Bedford"
Bedford (Avenue)
Eleni Mandell
80%
"Song about Bedford"

Artists From Bedford

No artists from Bedford in the database yet.

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Bedford

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Bedford.

Interstate 20 13 songs Texas State Highway 199 8 songs Trinity River 11 songs Interstate 45 8 songs Interstate 35 45 songs Chisholm Trail 8 songs

History of Bedford

The Schoolhouse That Survived Fire, Then Arson RoadyGoat

At 2400 School Lane stands the Old Bedford School, and the ground under it has watched buildings burn before. Bedford College, a combination high school and junior college, opened on this site in 1882 and burned in 1893. The two-story brick schoolhouse you see was built in its place in 1914 and 1915, paid for by a modest $5,000 bond that local voters approved 28 to 2. It taught Bedford's children until 1969, when the consolidated Hurst-Euless-Bedford district finally retired the small building. Then, in January 1991, fire struck again. It started on the second floor, where police records were being stored, and arson was the suspected cause, gutting walls, finishes, and the entire roof. Rather than bulldoze a landmark, the city poured more than $500,000 into a faithful restoration, and the old school reopened as a community center, its lower floor serving senior programs and its upper floor still hosting community arts groups in the auditorium. It is, in every sense, a building that refused to stay burned. (Source: City of Bedford; Texas Historical Commission.)

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The Freeway That Built a City RoadyGoat

The road you may be driving on right now, Highway 183, is the single most important piece of engineering in Bedford's history. For decades this was an ordinary two-lane highway stitching small towns together. But transportation engineers had a bigger vision: a multi-lane, high-speed freeway between Dallas and Fort Worth, running past the front door of a new international airport. The project was enormous — huge right-of-way purchases, dozens of overpasses and interchanges, millions of tons of earth and concrete. The Texas Legislature named it the Airport Freeway in 1973, D/FW opened the next year, and the route through Euless and Bedford was formally set in law by the end of the decade. That freeway acted like an aqueduct for commuters. Suddenly living in Bedford and working twenty miles away was easy, and a rural crossroads became prime suburban ground. Nearly every neighborhood and shopping center out here owes its existence to that one piece of civil engineering.

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The Town That Carried Tennessee in Its Name RoadyGoat

The suburb spreading around you got its name homesick. Farmers began settling this stretch of northeast Tarrant County in the late 1840s, and a good share of them had come from Bedford County, Tennessee, so that is what they called the new place. The community really took shape in the 1870s when Weldon Bobo, himself a Tennessean, put up a general store and a gristmill where neighbors could grind their corn and trade. In 1877 a post office opened inside Bobo's own home, the surest sign a wide spot in the road had become a town. By the 1880s and 1890s Bedford was booming, with a population said to run between 1,000 and 2,000 and roughly 28 businesses, second only to Fort Worth in the county. It was the kind of confident young farm town that fully expected the railroad to come knocking. That expectation, as it turned out, was exactly where the trouble started. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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Jesse Chisholm

1843

Founder of World-Famous Cattle Trail Jesse Chisholm (1805-1868) Represented the Republic of Texas and President Sam Houston in many negotiations with Indians. Half Scotsman, half Cherokee, a scout, hunter, trader and trailblazer. Spoke 40 Indian languages and dialects and was a respected influence among southwestern tribes, including the wild Kiowas and Comanches. In 1843, near here at Bird's Fort on the Trinity, was interpreter for a peace conference; in 1849 was in negotiations at Grapevine Springs, to the north. He is best known for marking the Chisholm Trail across Oklahoma and Kansas. Cowboys driving cattle north to seek favorable markets used his direct route which avoided deep rivers and lay in grassy, watered land. He thus helped rebuild Texas economy that had been wrecked in 1861-1865 by Civil War. Cattle had increased greatly in wartime. Texas had no market; drives were necessary so $5 longhorns could go to northern markets to bring $30 or more per head. In 1867 the Chisholm Trail was extended to Abilene, Kansas, where cattle loading pens and railroad shipping cars were provided. This was the best known of several cattle trails from Texas over which some 10,000,000 beeves were driven from the state during the years 1866-1884. Incised in base: Erected in commemoration of Chisholm Trail Centennial, 1967

Historical Marker → · 4.5 mi away

Hadley, Erma Jean Chansler Johnson

1968

Erma Jean Chansler Johnson Hadley, born on October 6, 1942, in Leggett, Texas, daughter of Leondus "Leon" H. and Thelma (Davis) Chansler, was the first African American from Leggett to graduate from college. She was also the first woman and first African American to lead Tarrant County College (TCC, known until 1999 as Tarrant County Junior College). She graduated from Dunbar High School in Livingston in 1959 and received her bachelor's degree in business education from Prairie View A&M University. Although her courses were intended for teachers, and although she received a teaching certificate, Erma Chansler studied business education because she wanted to become a secretary. Upon graduating, she began working for an income tax accountant. She soon discovered that being a secretary was not her true passion, so she went on to teach business education at the all-Black Turner High School in Carthage, Texas. She earned her master's degree in business education from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She also took graduate courses in business education at the University of Texas at Austin and post-graduate studies in higher education administration at the University of North Texas. On December 27, 1971, Erma Chansler married Lawrence Eugene Johnson, with whom she had one daughter, T. Ardenia. Following her husband's death in 1996, she married Bill J. Hadley. In 1968 she began teaching business at Tarrant County Junior College's Northeast Campus in Hurst in its inaugural semester. Across her decades-long career with TCC, she held numerous administrative positions, including director of personnel, vice chancellor for human resources, and vice chancellor for administrative and community services before being appointed interim chancellor in 2009 and then chancellor in 2010. She established several organizations and initiatives for college employees, such as Leadership TCC; the TCC Institute; and the TCC Employee Scholarship Program, which provided stipends to TCC staff taking TCC classes. She also established the district's call center; the District Fulfillment Center, which handled bulk mailing; and the TCC campus copy centers. Erma Hadley markedly improved diversity in both the student body and the staff at TCC following her appointment as chancellor. Enrollment also grew considerably under her leadership. She belonged to several community-focused organizations. She was appointed to the Trinity River Authority of Texas by Governor Bill Clements and to the Texas Governor's Committee of Volunteerism by Governor George W. Bush. She was a member of the North Texas Commission, the Tarrant County Hospital District board of directors, the Rotary Club of Fort Worth, the Texas A&M Research Foundation board of directors, and the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine advisory council. She chaired the JPS Health Network; the United Way Marketing Committee; and the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport board of directors, where she was the first woman and first African American to be appointed chair of the board-a noteworthy accomplishment for a woman during a time when White men controlled many of these businesses and organizations. She ran for Fort Worth city council in 1997 but lost. Her many awards and honors included an honorary doctorate in education from Paul Quinn College in Dallas and induction into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 2010. She was an active member of the Mount Rose Baptist Church in Fort Worth. Erma Johnson Hadley died of pancreatic cancer on October 1, 2015, at the age of seventy-two.

Tsha Handbook →

Euless, TX

1949

Euless is at the intersection of State highways 10 and 183, on the southwest side of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, north of the West Fork of the Trinity River in Tarrant County. Bird's Fort was established at a site just south of the present city limits in 1841. The community began by 1845, when a small party of pioneers led by Isham Crowley reached the confluence of Big Bear and Little Bear creeks. There on the eastern edge of the site of present Euless, on the current airport grounds, a post office was founded in 1857, named Estill's Station, and a school, a church, a store, and a cotton gin were established. The post office closed in 1868. It reopened, 1881-1904, under the name Estelle. Most of the community gradually dissipated and moved to present Euless and Irving. A mile or more to the southwest, around 1876, a community hall-church-school building was erected. In 1881 Elisha Adam and Julia Euless from Tennessee built a home and cotton gin nearby, and the community began to thrive. Local farmers decided to honor the young man whose presence seemed to coincide with better times, and the community was named for him. The Euless post office opened in 1886 and closed in 1910. Euless farmers usually journeyed to Dallas to buy supplies and sell produce and cotton. In 1903 the Rock Island Railroad built a depot two miles south of Euless at Candon, whose name changed to Tarrant by 1905. Tarrant had a post office, 1905-23, and in the 1910s Tarrant may have had 100 people and Euless twenty-five. The Rock Island soon discontinued regular service, and the depot closed in the 1930s. By then Euless may have attained a population of 100, while Tarrant's was perhaps twenty-five. Tarrant gradually merged with Euless. From the early twentieth century to the mid-1930s Euless community life revolved around the general store run by the Fuller family, the Baptist and Methodist churches, and the Euless School, erected in 1913. The Tennessee Dairies receiving plant in Euless and the Fort Worth Sand and Gravel Company just south of town in the Trinity bottoms opened operations in the 1920s, aiding a number of local farm families in supplementing meager farm incomes. The brewing and sale of illegal whiskey during prohibition, 1919-33, was another economic stimulus in the area. Electricity arrived in 1929, and the school achieved high school status in 1934. After the stimulus of World War II there were perhaps 300 people in Euless and Tarrant by the end of the 1940s. The Euless post office reopened in 1949. A crisis moved the community to the edge of violence. In 1949 Black parents in Mosier Valley refused to obey new orders from the Euless school superintendent, which called for the busing of their children outside their district to Fort Worth ( see EDUCATION FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS ). There were closer schools in Euless, but they had always been for Whites only. The Mosier Valley elementary school was a tattered branch of the Euless district. A district judge ruled that Texas law provided that students had a right to be educated in their own districts and that a district's schools were supposed to be funded impartially. Texas at the time had some 1,100 districts that bused Blacks to other districts, and it appeared for some months as though segregation in Texas might stand or fall on the Euless case. Blacks entered the Euless school on September 4, 1950, in an attempt at enrollment, and the building was soon surrounded by a hostile crowd of some 150 Whites. The school superintendent informed his Black audience in the auditorium that he had to enforce the state's segregation laws. Blacks returned to the Mosier Valley school, which was quickly refurbished by White authorities. The village incorporated in 1951, disincorporated in 1952 over water and sewer taxes, and reincorporated in 1953. The Euless school district merged with Hurst in 1955 and was joined by Bedford in 1958. The HEB district desegregated in 1968. Growth was enhanced in the early 19

Tsha Handbook → · 3.3 mi away

Mosier Valley School

1870

In 1870, former slaves Robert and Dilsie Johnson received a 40-acre tract of land here as a wedding gift from plantation owner Lucy Lee. Soon other freedmen settled in Mosier Valley, and in 1883 a community school was organized. A schoolhouse, built at this site about 1924, served as a focal point for the surrounding area. It was replaced by a brick structure in 1953. Mosier Valley students were integrated in 1969. Today the site serves as a reminder of the area's earliest citizens and as a symbol of the community's rich heritage. (1983)

Historical Marker →

William Letchworth Hurst

1861

(1833-1922) A native of Tennessee, William Letchworth "Uncle Billy" Hurst (1833-1922) served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. As a member of the Sixty-First Tennessee Infantry, he was involved in fighting near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Following the surrender of his unit to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in 1863, and his subsequent release, he joined in the reorganization of his outfit as the Sixty-First Tennessee Mounted Infantry. Captured in December 1863 near Tazewell, Tennessee, Hurst spent the remainder of the war in military prisons in Kentucky and Illinois. 
 In 1870 Hurst and his wife Mary (Lynch) (1835-1908) joined other residents of Claiborne County, Tennessee, who had migrated to Texas. By adding property to his first land purchase in 1872, Hurst became a prominent land speculator in the area. In 1903 he granted a right-of-way across his farm for the construction of a Rock Island rail line. In exchange, the company named a rail stop and depot for him. Later it became the town of Hurst. 
 Honored for many years by his friends and relatives with festive birthday celebrations, Hurst was the father of 14 children and had over 100 grandchildren. Many family descendants still live in the area. (1981)

Historical Marker → · 3.0 mi away

Bedford, TX

1870

Bedford, bisected by State Highway 121, is northeast of Fort Worth in the northeast quadrant of Tarrant County, north of the West Fork of the Trinity River. The first settlers arrived in the late 1840s in the Bedford area, located strategically between Fort Worth and Grapevine. Milton Moore of North Carolina established the community's first school in his log cabin in 1861 with a dozen or more students. A settlement developed in the 1870s, after Weldon Bobo moved from Tennessee and established a general store and gristmill to serve area farmers. Bobo and a group of farmers agreed to name their community Bedford, after the county in Tennessee from which many of them had come. Bobo, Moore, and others founded New Hope Christian Church in 1874, and the first official post office opened in Bobo's home in 1877. In the 1880s and 1890s Bedford was a booming town, with a population of 1,000 or possibly even 2,000 that surpassed that of all other Tarrant County towns except Fort Worth. In addition to the alleged twenty-eight businesses that served the town, the community was also the home of Bedford College, founded in 1882. The college, which was something of a combination high school-junior college, survived until fire gutted the building in 1893. Shortly after 1900 the prosperity ended. In 1901 the Dallas-Fort Worth Interurban rail line was built south of the Trinity, and, closely paralleling it, U.S. Highway 80 was also soon completed through Arlington and Grand Prairie. The two new arteries diverted traffic away from Bedford Road. In 1903 the Rock Island Railroad also bypassed Bedford. Businesses and residents moved, and the post office closed in 1909. Though only Bobo's store and perhaps fifty residents were left in the business district, in 1912 the town built a new two-story brick school on the site of the old college. Truck farming and dairying were prevalent from 1910 through the 1930s, and there were no more than eighty residents in Bedford as late as 1940. The community's general store was maintained by the related Bobo and Fitch families from the 1870s to the 1960s. World War II and the construction of nearby military bases and defense plants caused Bedford's population to swell to something over 400 by 1953; 100 of the residents lived at Bedford Boys Ranch, a home for wayward boys aged ten to fourteen. The post office reopened in 1950. In fear of being swallowed up by burgeoning Hurst or Euless, the town voted 55 to 20 to incorporate in 1953. In 1955 Bedford voted against merging with the new Hurst-Euless School District, but in 1958 residents narrowly approved the school merger by 212 to 189. Between 1955 and 1960 Bedford increased its size from two square miles to just over ten, and the population increased to more than 2,700. But the 1961 master plan zoned everything as residential or agricultural, presaging painful political clashes in the 1960s between newcomers demanding services and old-line settlers resisting suburbanization and taxes. Newcomers launched a movement to merge Bedford with the more populous Euless in 1967. It passed in Euless, but was beaten in Bedford by 975 to 422. Bedford apartment zoning, however, began in 1968, and in 1969 the Bedford Chamber of Commerce merged with the Hurst-Euless chamber and the three towns established a hospital district. By 1970 Bedford had more than 10,000 residents. In 1974 the old Boys Ranch became the town's biggest park. The decade of the 1970s saw the establishment of an industrial park, shopping centers, and restaurants, as well as the completion of the nearby Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport . There was a tremendous growth spurt from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. Thousands of urbanites were seeking a small-town life; most were professionals and Republicans, and many were northerners. Battles over apartment and commercial zoning marked the 1970s and 1980s. The population increased to some 20,800 in 1980 and about 44,000 in 1990, with 400 businesses. The

Tsha Handbook →

Things to Do in Bedford

historical 19.5 mi away
The Sixth Floor Museum

Where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from. The JFK assassination site at Dealey Plaza.
historical 19.5 mi away
Dealey Plaza

On November 22 1963 President John F Kennedy rode through Dealey Plaza in an open Lincoln convertible and was shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas…
food 12.8 mi away
Joe T. Garcia's

Joe T opened his little family restaurant behind the packing plant in the Fort Worth Stockyards in 1935. There was no menu. His wife Jessie served whatever she…
historical 12.9 mi away
Fort Worth Stockyards

Daily cattle drives down the street. Honky-tonks and rodeos in the old West.
historical 12.9 mi away
Billy Bob's Texas

Billy Bob's opened in 1981 in an old cattle barn in the Fort Worth Stockyards and at one hundred twenty-seven thousand square feet it is the largest honky-tonk…
quirky 22.2 mi away
Big Tex at the State Fair

A fifty-five-foot cowboy named Big Tex has welcomed visitors to the State Fair of Texas in Fair Park Dallas every fall since 1952. He booms howdy folks over a…
historical 24.1 mi away
WWII Marine Glider Base at Eagle Mountain

In 1942 the United States Marines bought 2931 acres of ranchland on Eagle Mountain Lake for a purpose that sounds almost unbelievable now — training pilots to…
quirky 24.1 mi away
The Azle Earthquake Swarm

Starting in November 2013 the ground beneath Azle started shaking and it did not stop for 84 days. Twenty-seven earthquakes rattled windows cracked foundations…

Everything Near Bedford

1638 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Bedford, TX · Tsha Handbook

    Bedford, bisected by State Highway 121, is northeast of Fort Worth in the northeast quadrant of Tarrant County, north of the West Fork of the Trinity River. The first settlers arrived in the late 1840s in the Bedford…

  • Bedford Cemetery · 0.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bedford, and right here is the old Bedford Cemetery, likely first used by pioneers in the 1860s. The earliest marked grave belongs to Elizabeth Bobo, who died in 1871. For decades, this was the…

  • The Schoolhouse That Survived Fire, Then Arson · 0.3 mi

    At 2400 School Lane stands the Old Bedford School, and the ground under it has watched buildings burn before. Bedford College, a combination high school and junior college, opened on this site in 1882 and burned in…

  • Bedford School · 0.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bedford, and right around here, education has a fiery past. The first school in this area met in a log building way back in the early 1860s. After the Civil War, classes moved to a frame building,…

  • Bedford Church of Christ · 0.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bedford, and right here is the site of the Bedford Church of Christ. It started around 1874, born from the Spring Garden Church of Christ. Originally called New Hope, the first meetinghouse went…

  • Bedford Reunion · 0.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bedford, where settlers from Tennessee arrived in the 1870s. They quickly established New Hope Church in 1874, which also served as a school. By 1882, they even founded Bedford College, a private…

  • The Freeway That Built a City · 0.5 mi

    The road you may be driving on right now, Highway 183, is the single most important piece of engineering in Bedford's history. For decades this was an ordinary two-lane highway stitching small towns together. But…

  • The Town That Carried Tennessee in Its Name · 0.5 mi

    The suburb spreading around you got its name homesick. Farmers began settling this stretch of northeast Tarrant County in the late 1840s, and a good share of them had come from Bedford County, Tennessee, so that is what…

  • Bypassed Twice, and Nearly Erased · 0.5 mi

    For a town that had grown to nearly the size of a small city, Bedford's fall was fast and entirely about transportation. The trade and the people followed the rails, and twice the rails went around Bedford. In 1901 the…

  • Bedford's Heisman Quarterback · 0.5 mi

    One of the most electric quarterbacks of his generation got his start right here. Kyler Murray was born in Bedford on August 7, 1997, into a football family, and even though he became a Texas high school legend up the…

  • The Boys Ranch · 0.5 mi

    As you drive around Bedford, you'll see signs for Boys Ranch Park, one of the city's largest green spaces. The name isn't a rustic theme - it comes from a real place that shaped this community. In 1949 the Variety Club…

  • The H-E-B Partnership · 0.5 mi

    You're currently in Bedford, but you're also in a place locals call 'H-E-B.' That stands for Hurst, Euless, and Bedford, three neighboring cities that share a unique identity. While they are independent municipalities…

Show all 200 nearby places
  • Bedford, TX · 0.5 mi

    Prominent highways in Bedford include State Highway 121 and State Highway 183, also known as Airport Freeway. This highway was the main thoroughfare to the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in the early years of…

  • The Town the Railroad Left Behind · 0.7 mi

    Hard as it is to believe driving through the suburb today, Bedford was once a boomtown. In the 1880s and 90s it grew to a thousand or even two thousand people, larger than any town in Tarrant County except Fort Worth…

  • The Schoolhouse Saved by Two Votes to Spare · 0.7 mi

    In 1914, the people of Bedford voted on a bond to build themselves a proper school. The measure passed by the narrowest of margins, twenty-eight votes to two, and the Old Bedford School opened the next year, in 1915. It…

  • A Homesick Name From Tennessee · 0.8 mi

    Bedford carries a name brought west by homesick settlers. In the 1870s a Tennessee man named Weldon Bobo moved to this part of Tarrant County and set up a general store and a gristmill. When he and the surrounding…

  • The Boys Ranch in the Suburbs · 0.8 mi

    For nearly a decade, one of the largest things in Bedford was a home for boys. Starting in 1949, a Dallas charity ran the Bedford Boys Ranch, a working farm and dairy spread across more than two hundred acres, with…

  • The Suburb Built by an Airport · 0.8 mi

    Bedford's modern existence is owed largely to one enormous piece of engineering just to its east. When Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport opened in 1974, it sprawled across about seventeen thousand five hundred…

  • Spring Garden School · 1.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bedford, Texas, where a little schoolhouse once stood, serving the children of early settlers. In the fall of 1865, Samuel Witten, Levin Moody, Milton Moore, and Caleb Smith came together to build…

  • Site of Oak Grove Methodist Church · 1.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Oak Grove Methodist Church, founded back in early 1886. Named for the trees that surrounded it, this church started with 30 members and was part of the Keller Circuit. They even built a…

  • Spring Garden Community · 1.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Spring Garden, a community that started in 1854 when Samuel Cecil Holiday Witten arrived from Missouri. He and Milton Moore built a schoolhouse in 1865, naming it for his hometown. This…

  • The Graveyard That Started With a Buried Thief · 1.9 mi

    Riley Cemetery's origin story is one of those frontier tales that's hard to pin down but too good to lose. Jonathan Riley, born around 1791, brought his family from Kentucky to this corner of the prairie around 1856.…

  • Riley Cemetery · 1.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Colleyville, past the site of Riley Cemetery. Legend says this burial ground began around 1856 when Jonathan Riley, who received this land grant in 1863, gave permission to bury a thief killed…

  • Arwine Cemetery · 2.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Arwine Cemetery, a final resting place for early Tarrant County settlers. Daniel Arwine, a former deputy U.S. Marshall, arrived here from Indiana in 1865. In 1879, he deeded land for a school,…

  • The Texas Football Team That Dances a War Chant · 2.3 mi

    At Trinity High School, 500 North Industrial Boulevard, Friday night football comes with something no other Texas powerhouse can match: a war dance rooted in the South Pacific. Drawing on the school's large Tongan…

  • Trinity High School, Euless (Myles Turner) · 2.3 mi

    Trinity High School in Euless, Texas is where Myles Turner was rated the number-two prospect in the country and a McDonald's All-American, averaging about 18 points, 12 rebounds, and 7 blocks as a senior. He played at…

  • A Park Named for the Cattle-Drive Road · 2.3 mi

    Hurst's biggest park, the 50-acre Chisholm Park at 2200 Norwood Drive, carries the name of one of the most famous cattle routes in American history. The Chisholm Trail was the highway of the open range from 1867 to…

  • Witten Cemetery · 2.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Witten Cemetery, a final resting place for a family with deep Texas roots. Samuel Cecil Holiday Witten arrived in Texas in 1854, becoming a successful landowner and serving as Justice of the…

  • A Farmhouse Cast From Concrete, Block by Block · 2.5 mi

    The Bidault House at 1416 Glade Road is the rare farmhouse you could call an engineering experiment. When French farmer Anthelm Bidault started building it in 1905, he didn't frame it in wood like his neighbors. He…

  • The Frenchman Who Planted a Vineyard on the Prairie · 2.5 mi

    Long before this was a suburb of luxury rooftops, a Frenchman was growing wine grapes out here. Anthelm Bidault, born in France in 1862, settled near the Pleasant Run community and began cultivating orchards and…

  • Euless, Elisha Adam · 2.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Euless, a town named after the man who settled here in 1867. Elisha Adam Euless bought land in this area, and a community grew up around his farm, a cotton gin, and a grange hall. That hall, built…

  • The Plant That Turned Farmland Into a Boomtown · 2.6 mi

    Hurst stayed a dusty crossroads of sand pits and a fading rail line until one announcement changed everything. In 1951 Bell Helicopter said it would build a $3 million plant right here, north of Fort Worth, and the news…

  • The Spinning Bar That Made Helicopters Behave · 2.6 mi

    The reason a Bell helicopter could hover steadily instead of pitching itself out of the sky comes down to one elegant piece of engineering, and the company that perfected it built its empire here in Hurst. In 1941 Larry…

  • The Man Who Traded Land for a Train Stop · 2.6 mi

    This whole city is named after a horse trader who knew the value of a railroad. William Letchworth Hurst, born in 1833, came from Tennessee and settled north of Fort Worth, making his living trading and speculating in…

  • The Bidault House · 2.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Bidault House in Colleyville, built by a French immigrant with a unique vision. Anthlem Bidault, a farmer and winemaker, designed and constructed this home himself using molded concrete blocks.…

  • Saint John Missionary Baptist Church · 2.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Saint John Missionary Baptist Church in Euless. Back in 1874, a small group of former slaves gathered at a home to organize this congregation, originally called Oak Grove Baptist Church.…

  • Mosier Valley Fought to Keep Its School · 2.7 mi

    On the north bank of the Trinity River, south of Euless, Hurst, and Bedford, Robert and Dilsie Johnson and ten other emancipated families founded Mosier Valley in the 1870s, on bottomland the Mosier and Lee plantation…

  • When This Was the Dairy Center of Tarrant County · 2.7 mi

    The shopping district around Colleyville Town Center sits on what was once the engine of one of Texas's biggest dairy regions. William Henry Bogart started milking cows here on a 158-acre farm his father Aiken had…

  • Colleyville, TX · 2.7 mi

    Once a small farm town in the 19th century, Colleyville has come a long way. It was originally known as Bransford when Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley, a prominent area physician and Union Army veteran, settled there in 1880.…

  • Hadley, Erma Jean Chansler Johnson · 2.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Erma Jean Chansler Johnson Hadley, born on October 6, 1942, in Leggett, Texas, daughter of Leondus "Leon" H. and Thelma (Davis) Chansler, was the first African American from Leggett to graduate from college. She was…

  • Mosier Valley School · 2.7 mi · Historical Marker

    In 1870, former slaves Robert and Dilsie Johnson received a 40-acre tract of land here as a wedding gift from plantation owner Lucy Lee. Soon other freedmen settled in Mosier Valley, and in 1883 a community school was…

  • The Fire Hall a House Fire Built · 2.7 mi

    Colleyville's first fire hall exists because a house burned to the ground with nothing to stop it. In February 1954, a two-story home on McDonwell School Road caught fire and was a total loss, and the helplessness of…

  • Barbecue in Colleyville's Oldest Storefront · 2.7 mi

    If you want a meal with some Colleyville history baked in, Red Barn Bar-B-Que at 4913 Colleyville Boulevard is the spot. When Von Husbands opened it in 2005, fulfilling a longtime dream of running his own place, he set…

  • Hurst, TX · 2.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Hurst, Texas, a community with roots stretching back to the 1840s. But this town really got its start thanks to a railroad and a man named William L. Hurst. When the Rock Island line came through…

  • Florence School · 2.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Florence School, which began in 1890 as 'Green Glade.' In 1903, a trustee donated land for a new schoolhouse. This one-room building served grades one through eight and even hosted…

  • The Helicopter Plant that Built a City · 2.9 mi

    Right near the edge of Hurst sits the single most important reason the city exists in its modern form: the Bell Helicopter plant. When it opened in 1951, it was a game-changer. Hurst was a village of a few hundred…

  • Engineering the Huey · 2.9 mi

    The explosive growth of Hurst was powered by a marvel of aerospace engineering built right here: the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, or 'Huey.' Bell's plant opened in 1951, and four years later, on February 23, 1955, the Army…

  • Colleyville, TX · 2.9 mi

    On January 15, 2022, a significant event unfolded in Colleyville when a hostage crisis occurred at Congregation Beth Israel, a local synagogue. Four hostages were held for several hours before police intervened, fatally…

  • The Yankee Doctor of Colleyville · 2.9 mi

    The man this town is named for was a bit of a paradox. Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley came to Texas from Missouri in 1880, a trained physician ready to serve a new community. He was also a Union Army veteran — he enlisted at…

  • The Standoff at Congregation Beth Israel · 2.9 mi

    On a quiet Saturday in January 2022, the world’s attention turned to Colleyville. A man armed with a gun entered the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue during services and took four people, including the rabbi, hostage.…

  • From Iron Horse to Bicycle Path · 2.9 mi

    The path of a key piece of 19th-century technology still shapes your drive through Colleyville. In 1888 the Cotton Belt — the St. Louis Southwestern — pushed its line between Fort Worth and Grapevine straight through a…

  • The King of the Malls · 2.9 mi

    If Bell Helicopter built Hurst's neighborhoods, North East Mall built its commercial identity. It opened on March 25, 1971, anchored by a Leonard's that had been dedicated the summer before, with eighty stores inside -…

  • Hurst, TX · 2.9 mi

    One of Hurst's most notable landmarks is the North East Mall, which opened in March 1972 and is the third largest mall in the state of Texas. This premier shopping center is owned by the Indianapolis-based Simon…

  • The Vote for Independence · 2.9 mi

    Why is Colleyville its own city, and not a piece of somebody else's? The answer lies in a decision made in January 1956. After World War II, cities across Tarrant County were racing to grow by annexing the…

  • The Tri-City Partnership · 2.9 mi

    You'll often hear Hurst mentioned in the same breath as its neighbors, Euless and Bedford. Locals don't just say 'Hurst'; they say 'HEB.' This isn't just a casual nickname; it's a unique and defining feature of this…

  • Pleasant Glade Baptist Church · 2.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Colleyville, and right here is the site of the Pleasant Glade Baptist Church, organized way back on September 19, 1923. Fourteen members, all from the older Pleasant Run Baptist Church, started…

  • The Doctor Who Named the Town After Himself · 3.0 mi

    The town you're rolling through carries a country doctor's name. Lilburn Howard Colley, born in 1843, was a Missouri native and a Union Army veteran who earned his medical degree and brought his family to Texas in 1880,…

  • William Letchworth Hurst · 3.0 mi · Historical Marker

    (1833-1922) A native of Tennessee, William Letchworth "Uncle Billy" Hurst (1833-1922) served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. As a member of the Sixty-First Tennessee Infantry, he was involved in fighting…

  • Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley · 3.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the namesake of Colleyville! This town owes its name to Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley, a Civil War veteran who moved his family from Missouri to Texas in 1880. They settled near what would become…

  • Isham Chapel Methodist Church · 3.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Hurst, and just off to the side of the road is the site of Isham Chapel Methodist Church. This congregation got its start back in the 1870s with just eleven members. It was named for its founding…

  • The Thunder of the Trinity Haka · 3.1 mi

    In Euless, the sound of Friday night is more than just cheering; it's the thunder of the Haka. At Trinity High School, home of the Trojans, the football team has a pre-game ritual that has become legendary across the…

  • The Airport That Built a City · 3.1 mi

    The single greatest engineering feat to shape Euless is the massive machine humming just north of the city: Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. When it opened in 1974, it was the largest airport ever built. The…

  • A Slice of Tonga in the Mid-Cities · 3.1 mi

    Euless holds one of the most unexpected cultural concentrations in Texas: one of the largest Tongan communities anywhere outside the kingdom of Tonga itself, estimated at several thousand people. The story traces to the…

  • Where the Bear Creeks Meet · 3.1 mi

    Long before there was an airport runway or a freeway interchange, a pioneer named Isham Crowley led a small party to this land around 1845 and stopped where two streams came together, Big Bear Creek and Little Bear…

  • Euless, TX · 3.1 mi

    Euless, Texas, has a rich history that began with Elisha Adam Euless, a Tennessee native who moved to Texas in 1867. He purchased 170 acres of land where he started a cotton gin and a community center, quickly becoming…

  • Euless, TX · 3.1 mi

    Euless, Texas, was named after Elisha Adam Euless, a Tennessee native who moved to Texas in 1867. He bought 170 acres of land at the intersection of North Main St. and West Euless Boulevard, where he started a cotton…

  • Arbor Daze: The Tree Festival · 3.1 mi

    Every spring, Euless celebrates trees. Arbor Daze is the city's signature event, and Euless has earned the right to it — more than thirty years running as a Tree City USA. The festival grew straight out of that: since…

  • First United Methodist Church of Euless · 3.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past First United Methodist Church of Euless. In the late 1860s, families began moving to this area from Bedford and Coffee Counties, Tennessee, areas steeped in Methodism. Local Methodists believed to…

  • Pleasant Run School · 3.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Pleasant Run School, a place that educated Tarrant County kids for nearly a century. Early settlers remember a log schoolhouse here as early as 1870. By 1877, 45 students were learning,…

  • Euless, TX · 3.3 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Euless is at the intersection of State highways 10 and 183, on the southwest side of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, north of the West Fork of the Trinity River in Tarrant County. Bird's Fort was established at a site…

  • Commercial Horticulture in Euless · 3.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Euless, a town whose economy has been deeply rooted in growing things since the 1800s. It's all thanks to the sandy soil, perfect for nurseries. Back in 1879, Ambrose Boyd started Tarrant County…

  • Euless School · 3.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Euless, and right here is the site of the original Euless School. Back in 1913, folks in the area decided to combine three small school districts into one: the Euless Common School District. They…

  • Colleyville, TX · 3.3 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Colleyville, a suburb of Fort Worth. This town owes its name to Dr. Hilburn Howard Colley, who moved here from Missouri in 1880. He practiced medicine in this area for forty years. A community…

  • Before Fort Worth, the County Capital Was Birdville · 3.4 mi

    Just off the southwest edge of North Richland Hills lies a name that once outranked Fort Worth: Birdville. When the Texas legislature created Tarrant County in 1849, it ordered that the winning site in the first…

  • Seven Votes, Some Fistfights, and a Stolen County Seat · 3.4 mi

    The fight over which town would rule Tarrant County turned ugly right near here. By the mid-1850s, fast-growing Fort Worth wanted the county seat that Birdville held, and legislator Isaac Duke Parker pushed through a…

  • The Shortstop Who Went Second in the Draft · 3.5 mi

    If you're near Colleyville Heritage High School, you're at the launch pad for one of baseball's brightest young stars. Bobby Witt Jr. starred as a shortstop here before the Kansas City Royals took him with the second…

  • From Lightly Recruited Panther to NFL Sack Machine · 3.5 mi

    Colleyville Heritage High School turned out a second pro standout to go with its baseball star. Maxx Crosby, born in Lapeer, Michigan, moved to Colleyville as a teenager and played defensive end and tight end for the…

  • Calloway Cemetery · 3.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Calloway Cemetery in Euless. The earliest marked graves here belong to brothers Richard and Joseph Calloway, who owned this land in the 1860s. Richard's widow deeded land in 1886 for a public burial…

  • Pleasant Run Baptist Church · 3.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Pleasant Run Baptist Church. This congregation got its start way back on April 7, 1877. For its first few years, the members gathered in borrowed spaces – first a lodge hall, then the…

  • The Railroad Town That Colleyville Erased · 3.9 mi

    There used to be a busier town than Colleyville right here, and almost nobody remembers it. Bransford grew up around 1870 around a general store and post office run by Felix G. Bransford, and for a stretch it was the…

  • Bransford · 3.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Colleyville, but just a few miles back, you passed the site of Bransford. It started as a post office in the late 1800s, named for Felix Grundy Bransford. In 1889, the post office moved to a new…

  • Parker Memorial Cemetery · 3.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Parker Memorial Cemetery, a resting place with roots stretching back to the mid-19th century. The first burial here is believed to be Christina Driskill, who died in 1862. Her son-in-law, Isaac Green…

  • The Night a Tornado Came in a Winter Storm · 4.1 mi

    Tornadoes are a spring problem in North Texas, which is exactly what made this one strange. On a night in March 2009, in the middle of a savage winter storm, a tornado dropped down into Colleyville, a rare cold-season…

  • Site of Bird's Fort · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Bird's Fort, established in 1840 by Jonathan Bird. This wasn't just any outpost; it sat on the Military Road connecting Red River to Austin. More importantly, this area was the site of a…

  • Alexander Dobkins Family Cemetery · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Euless, near where Alexander Dobkins settled in 1852. He was an ordained minister and served as postmaster for Estill's Station during the Civil War. His grave is the earliest marked here, on what…

  • Bear Creek Cemetery · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Bear Creek Cemetery, a burial ground that's been serving eastern Tarrant County since the late 1800s. The earliest marked grave here is that of Hiram Jackson Farris, who died in 1858. Isham Crowley,…

  • Jesse Chisholm · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker

    Founder of World-Famous Cattle Trail Jesse Chisholm (1805-1868) Represented the Republic of Texas and President Sam Houston in many negotiations with Indians. Half Scotsman, half Cherokee, a scout, hunter, trader and…

  • Bird's Fort · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Bird's Fort, the very first attempt at Anglo-American settlement in what is now Tarrant County. Back in 1841, General Edward H. Tarrant authorized Jonathan Bird to build this military…

  • Sloan-Journey Expedition of 1838 · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Arlington, but imagine this landscape over 180 years ago. In the spring of 1838, Captains Robert Sloan and Nathaniel Journey led about 90 frontiersmen north. Their mission: to strike back at…

  • Smithfield Baptist Church · 4.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Smithfield Baptist Church. It got its start way back in 1895 with just 12 charter members and Reverend G.W. Green at the helm. They built their first sanctuary right here in 1902, thanks…

  • Smithfield Masonic Lodge No. 455 A.F. & A.M. · 4.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Smithfield Masonic Lodge, a fraternal organization that started right here in 1875. Originally called the Grand Prairie Lodge, they met in a church until they built their first lodge…

  • Hightower, Alfred Madison · 4.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the spot where Alfred Madison Hightower settled in Smithfield back in 1858. He arrived from Illinois with his family and quickly became a rancher. When the Civil War broke out, Hightower, despite…

  • Smith, Eli · 4.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site where Eli Smith, a Missouri native, settled with his family in Tarrant County back in 1859. He married Sarah Hightower in 1868. But Eli's real legacy began around 1876, when he donated part…

  • Smithfield Cemetery · 4.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Smithfield Cemetery, a final resting place with roots stretching back to the 1870s. It all started when Eli Smith, who came to Texas from Missouri around 1859, donated part of his farm for this…

  • Smithfield Methodist Church · 4.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Smithfield Methodist Church, but its story starts way back in 1856. William and Mary Turner settled here, and legend says William built simple log benches at his home for neighbors to…

  • Smithfield Church of Christ · 4.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Smithfield Church of Christ, a congregation with roots stretching back to October 25th, 1888. That's when J.E. and Mary E. Turner deeded land to trustees for a new Christian Church in the…

  • Parker Cemetery · 4.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Parker Cemetery in Hurst. This isn't just any graveyard; it's tied to one of the most famous stories in Texas history. The land for this cemetery was donated in <say-as interpret-as="date"…

  • Parker, I.D., Public Cemetery and Homestead · 4.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the I.D. Parker Homestead and Cemetery, a symbol of a prominent pioneer family right here in Hurst. Isaac Duke Parker arrived in 1853, settling down with his family. During the Civil War,…

  • Post Malone Grew Up Here Before the World Knew the Name · 4.9 mi

    Long before he was a face-tattooed superstar, Post Malone was Austin Richard Post, a kid from Grapevine. Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1995, he moved here with his family around age nine after his father took a job…

  • North Richland Hills, TX · 5.0 mi

    North Richland Hills, or NRH, has a rich history that began with W.S. Peters' agreement to bring 600 families into the area within three years as part of a land grant. Families started arriving in the summer of 1848.…

  • The Ghost Town Inside the Suburb · 5.0 mi

    As you travel through the tidy neighborhoods of North Richland Hills, you're driving through what's left of another town. Before any of this there was Smithfield, and before that it was called Zion, after the Methodist…

  • The Highway That Sculpted a Suburb · 5.0 mi

    As you drive Interstate 820 through North Richland Hills, you're on a road that drew the city around it rather than the other way around. The federal Bureau of Public Roads laid out I-820 in October of 1959 as a…

  • The Water Park That Built a City's Pride · 5.0 mi

    You might drive by the NRH2O Family Water Park and see just a fun summer spot, but it represents a major turning point in this city’s history. For decades, North Richland Hills wrestled with its identity as a 'bedroom…

  • Randol Mill · 5.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Randol Mill, a vital hub for this community back in the day. In 1856, Archibald Leonard built a dam and a grain mill right here. It quickly became more than just a place to grind grain;…

  • The 30-Vote Victory That Created a City · 5.0 mi

    The existence of North Richland Hills as a city comes down to one dairy farm and one rejection. In 1952 Clarence Jones began subdividing his 268-acre dairy farm out here, back when this was open country northeast of…

  • North Richland Hills, TX · 5.0 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Richland Hills, a city that owes its existence to a farmer's vision. Back in 1950, Clarence Jones decided to develop his farmland into a residential area. He named it North Richland Hills,…

  • Tomlin Cemetery · 5.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Tomlin Cemetery, a final resting place for some of Arlington's earliest settlers. This ground was first used in the 1870s by the Wilkinson family, marked by simple rock clusters. Look for the…

  • Minter's Chapel Cemetery · 5.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're passing Minter's Chapel Cemetery, a place that holds a story of faith and resilience. Around 1854, Lay Minister Green Minter helped start the Minter's Chapel Methodist Church right here. His son-in-law donated…

  • Minters Chapel Methodist Church · 5.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Minters Chapel Methodist Church, a community cornerstone established way back in 1854. Four pioneer families banded together, holding early services in a log cabin on land donated by…

  • Gibbins Cemetery and Homestead Site · 5.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Gibbins family homestead, just outside modern-day Arlington. James Gibbins arrived in Texas back in 1857, and by 1863, he'd bought land right here. His son, Thomas Jefferson Gibbins,…

  • The Peters Colony in Tarrant County · 5.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Tarrant County, a place that was once part of the massive Peters Colony. Back in 1841, W.S. Peters and his partners struck a deal with the Republic of Texas to bring settlers to this very region.…

  • The Day Evel Knievel Jumped Eleven Mack Trucks Here · 5.5 mi

    Where there are now houses and an elementary school, there used to be one of the loudest places in North Texas. Green Valley Raceway opened in 1960 on Bill McClure's old dairy farm in Smithfield, a combined road course…

  • Richland High School — State Softball 2026 · 5.5 mi

    Richland High School in North Richland Hills, Texas qualified for the 2026 UIL state softball championships, reaching the state tournament (final four) in Class four A, Division One.

  • The Dairy Farm That Became a City of Seventy Thousand · 5.5 mi

    The streets and strip centers around you sit on what was, within living memory, open dairy pasture. This corner of northeastern Tarrant County traces back to the Peters Colony, where empresario W.S. Peters agreed to…

  • Zion, the Railroad, and the Birth of Smithfield · 5.5 mi

    The Smithfield part of North Richland Hills started life under a different name: Zion, a small farming settlement here before 1870. The thing that made it a town was iron. When the St. Louis and Southwestern Railway,…

  • The Pioneer Cemetery That Outlived Its Town · 5.5 mi

    At 6704 Smithfield Road sits the quiet ground that anchors the whole Smithfield story. Eli Smith, the Missouri-born farmer for whose family the town was named, came to Texas around 1859 and in the early 1870s gave part…

  • Texas's First City-Owned Water Park · 5.5 mi

    When NRH2O opened on Boulevard 26 in 1995, North Richland Hills did something no other Texas city had done: it built and ran its own water park. It started modestly, with three body slides, a river, and a wading pool,…

  • Bird's Fort: The Outpost That Named a County · 5.5 mi

    The name stamped on Birdville, on Bird's Fort, and ultimately on this whole stretch of Tarrant County belonged to one frontier soldier. In 1841, following the Battle of Village Creek, Major Jonathan Bird built a…

  • How a Texas City Manufactures the Ocean on Boulevard 26 · 5.5 mi

    The waves rolling across NRH2Ocean at NRH2O Family Water Park are not nature's work, they are a controlled blast of compressed air. The wave pool here covers about 12,000 square feet and holds roughly 225,000 gallons,…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Lamar (Arlington) · 5.6 mi

    Lamar (Arlington, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Colton Quesada (4 HR).

  • The Plant That Built a City · 5.6 mi

    When General Motors opened an assembly plant in Arlington in 1954, it was the first automobile factory in Texas, and the first car to roll off the line was a Pontiac Chieftain. The plant transformed the town:…

  • Hitch Cemetery · 5.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Hitch Cemetery, once part of a vast farm. William Henry Hitch brought his family here from Tennessee in 1855, settling this land. The oldest marked grave belongs to his young son, Haden, who died…

  • The Creek That Named, Watered, and Washed the Town · 5.7 mi

    Bear Creek has shaped this place from the start. Its springs gave the original Double Springs settlement its water and its name, and the modern city wears the creek everywhere, from Bear Creek Parkway running past Town…

  • The Iron Horse Returns · 5.8 mi

    Richland Hills was built around the automobile, but for a while it had something most Fort Worth suburbs never got — its own commuter rail platform. The Trinity Railway Express station here opened on September 16, 2000,…

  • The Man Named Rich · 5.8 mi

    Imagine it is 1950. Where you are now was open Tarrant County ground, eight miles northeast of downtown Fort Worth. What put houses on it was work. The defense plants around Fort Worth had boomed through the Second…

  • A 19-Million-Dollar Cathedral to High School Football · 5.8 mi

    When a Texas suburb spends like a small college on a high school football field, you get Dragon Stadium. Carroll ISD opened it in 2001 at a cost reported between 15 and 19 million dollars, an enormous sum for a high…

  • The Farmer Behind Rufe Snow Drive · 6.1 mi

    If you've driven Rufe Snow Drive, you've used a road named for a man who spent his life serving this rural community long before it was a city. Rufus Snow, who lived from 1867 to 1957, was a local farmer who also gave…

  • The Easter Sunday Ambush of Bonnie and Clyde · 6.3 mi

    On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1934, this area became a bloody footnote in the story of Bonnie and Clyde. Two young state highway patrolmen, E.B. Wheeler and H.D. Murphy, stopped to check on what they thought was a stranded…

  • The Airport That Changed Everything · 6.3 mi

    Look to the sky. Chances are, you’ll see a plane. The story of modern Grapevine is inseparable from the giant next door: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Before 1974, this area was mostly farmland and prairie.…

  • The Railroad That Rebuilt Itself · 6.3 mi

    As you pass the tracks running through Grapevine, you're looking at the town's 19th-century lifeline and its 21st-century showpiece. The railroad first arrived in 1888, connecting Grapevine's farms to the rest of the…

  • Engineering a Lake to Tame a Creek · 6.3 mi

    If you see the vast expanse of Grapevine Lake, you might think it’s a natural feature. But it’s actually a massive feat of civil engineering, designed to solve a serious problem. The creeks in this area, especially…

  • Grapevine, TX · 6.3 mi

    In 1843, a significant meeting took place near Grape Vine Springs, where General Sam Houston and Republic of Texas commissioners met with leaders of 10 Indian nations, resulting in a treaty that opened the area for…

  • When Grapevine was the Cantaloupe Capital · 6.3 mi

    It's hard to imagine now, but for forty years the fields around Grapevine were famous for one thing: cantaloupes. Cotton had carried the town until the market fell out from under it, and Texas A&M told these farmers to…

  • A 1950s Burger Joint That Survived · 6.4 mi

    Amid all of Arlington's stadiums and theme parks, one of the most beloved spots in town is a humble burger joint that has outlasted nearly everything around it. Al's Hamburgers opened in 1957 as a drive-in, started by a…

  • White's Chapel United Methodist Church · 6.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of White's Chapel United Methodist Church, founded by settlers who arrived by wagon train all the way from Georgia in 1871. They first met in the home of S. B. Austin, who then donated land…

  • The Town That Named Itself After a Lake It Couldn't Touch · 6.6 mi

    For more than a century, the rolling country west of Grapevine wasn't one town at all but a scatter of farming communities, each clustered around its own one-room school: Dove, White's Chapel, and Old Union. People here…

  • Southlake, TX · 6.6 mi

    The name Southlake has a charming origin story. When the town was incorporated in 1956, the residents, who had voted against annexation by Hurst, needed a name for their new town. The first mayor, Anthony Gail Eubanks,…

  • The Cast Iron Forest at the Edge of Town · 6.6 mi

    On the wooded land along Grapevine Lake's southern shore, the Bob Jones Nature Center preserves a patch of one of the strangest ecosystems in Texas: the Cross Timbers. This is a long band of gnarled woodland that runs…

  • The Quarterback Who Reclassified to Cash In · 6.6 mi

    Some of the most-watched high school football in the country has been played on Southlake Carroll's field, and few players drew more eyes than quarterback Quinn Ewers. As a Dragons sophomore in 2019, Ewers threw for…

  • Forty Wagons From Georgia, and a Chapel That Named a Road · 6.6 mi

    In the spring of 1871, twelve families and a handful of single travelers loaded everything they owned into roughly forty wagons and rolled out of Rising Fawn, in Dade County, Georgia, bound for Texas. When they settled…

  • From Farm Communities to the Richest Address in America · 6.6 mi

    It's hard to overstate how fast Southlake transformed. As late as 1980 it was a quiet town of fewer than 3,000 people, the descendants of those Dove and White's Chapel farm families. Then North Texas exploded around the…

  • Before the City, the Schools Were the Towns · 6.6 mi

    Stand anywhere in modern Southlake and it's easy to forget that not so long ago there was no town here at all, only a handful of tiny farm communities that each revolved around a single building: the schoolhouse. West…

  • Ford Cemetery · 6.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Grand Prairie, past a small patch of history. This is the Ford Cemetery, a remnant of the old Watson Community. Pinkney Harold Ford and his family arrived here from Kentucky in 1855, settling in…

  • Harrison Cemetery · 6.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Harrison Cemetery, a small burial ground that started as a private family plot. The earliest grave here dates back to 1864, for Mary E. Harrison. Later, R.A. Randol, operator of Randol Mill, bought…

  • Isham Cemetery · 6.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Isham Cemetery, a resting place founded by a Georgia preacher named W. Marion Isham. He and his family arrived in Tarrant County around 1870, and Isham immediately donated an acre for a community…

  • White's Chapel Cemetery · 6.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past White's Chapel Cemetery, a quiet resting place that began with a tragedy on the Texas frontier. Local legend says it started around 1851, when a child traveling in a wagon train died and was buried…

  • Thomas Easter Cemetery · 6.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Southlake, passing the site of the Thomas Easter Cemetery. Thomas Easter, a Virginia native, settled here by 1848, patenting over 600 acres. After his death in 1862, a portion of his land became…

  • They Built a Downtown Where There Had Never Been One · 6.7 mi

    Most American suburbs grow outward from an old main street. Southlake never had one, so in the 1990s it built a downtown from scratch on open farmland. The developers Cooper & Stebbins, led by Brian Stebbins, hired…

  • Nash Farm · 6.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past what was once the Nash Farm, established way back in 1859. This was one of the last 19th-century farms in North Texas, a real relic from a time when this whole area was dotted with homesteads. Thomas…

  • The Dragons: Eight Titles and a 72-Game Win Streak · 6.8 mi

    Few high school football programs in America have a record like the one built here. The Southlake Carroll Dragons have won eight Texas state championships across four decades. The foundation was laid under coach Bob…

  • Quinn Ewers at Southlake Carroll · 6.8 mi · Sports Alumni

    Quinn Ewers put up video-game numbers for the Southlake Carroll Dragons. As a sophomore in 2019 he threw for about four thousand yards and forty-five touchdowns against just three interceptions and was named his…

  • The Oldest Working Farm in Tarrant County · 6.8 mi

    At 626 Ball Street, a few blocks off Main, sits a working slice of the Grapevine Prairie as it looked before the railroad and the airport. Thomas Jefferson Nash bought 110 acres of farmland here in 1859, moving in with…

  • The Wartime Highway Name That Waited Sixty Years · 6.8 mi

    The World War Two Veterans Memorial Highway is a name with an odd history. On August first, nineteen forty four, a Texas highway minute order named U S Highway Eighty the Veterans of World War Two Highway, all the way…

  • Choosing a Vineyard · 6.9 mi

    You're in Grapevine, Texas, so here's the grapevine tangent behind the name: vineyards balance climate, season length, freeze and hail risk, rainfall, drainage, soil depth, slope, disease pressure, labor, and market.…

  • The Prairie That Named the Town · 6.9 mi

    You're in Grapevine, Texas, so here's the grapevine tangent behind the name: town founders proposed Grape Vine because the settlement stood on Grapevine Prairie. Native mustang grapes grow across Texas, producing small…

  • How Wine Ferments · 6.9 mi

    You're in Grapevine, Texas, so here's the grapevine tangent behind the name: yeast converts grape sugars primarily into ethanol and carbon dioxide, while temperature, oxygen exposure, grape microbes, nutrients, skins,…

  • The Little Church That Named a Pulitzer Novel · 6.9 mi

    When the Missouri families reached the Cross Timbers, they didn't just build farms, they built a faith community, and on February 21, 1846, Joshua Hodges organized Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, the oldest Baptist…

  • Fresh Grape, Raisin, or Seedless Grape · 6.9 mi

    You're in Grapevine, Texas, so here's the grapevine tangent behind the name: a raisin is a grape with most water removed, concentrating sugar, acid, flavor, and calories by weight. Seedless grapes are not truly seedless…

  • Through the Grapevine · 6.9 mi

    You're in Grapevine, Texas, so here's the grapevine tangent behind the name: heard it through the grapevine means information traveling informally from person to person. The phrase likely drew on the tangled, branching…

  • The Springs Where Texas Came to Make Peace · 6.9 mi

    You're standing on what the earliest maps called Grape Vine Prairie, named for the wild mustang grapes that tangled across this part of the Cross Timbers long before any town existed. In October 1843, Republic of Texas…

  • Grapevine, TX · 6.9 mi

    In October 1843, a pivotal moment in Grapevine's history occurred when General Sam Houston and Republic of Texas commissioners met with leaders of 10 Indian nations at Grape Vine Springs. This meeting resulted in a…

  • Eleven Bronze Figures Standing in for a Lost Council · 6.9 mi

    Near Grapevine Main Station, eleven bronze figures stand together in a ring, and they are not generic frontier statuary. They are an attempt to recreate the 1843 meeting between Sam Houston and the leaders of ten Native…

  • The Town That Annexed an Airport · 6.9 mi

    In 1965 Dallas and Fort Worth, two rival cities that had spent decades fighting over which would host the region's airport, finally agreed to build one giant facility together, immediately southeast of Grapevine. A…

  • A Town Named for Grapes Finally Made the Wine · 6.9 mi

    For most of its life Grapevine grew cotton and grain, not wine, despite the wild mustang grapes that gave the prairie its name. That irony finally resolved in 1986, when the town launched GrapeFest on Historic Main…

  • Puffy, the 1896 Ten-Wheeler That Still Runs the Cotton Belt · 6.9 mi

    Riding the rails out of Grapevine's Cotton Belt depot is a genuine piece of 19th-century engineering nicknamed Puffy. Officially locomotive No. 2248, she's a 4-6-0 steam engine, a wheel arrangement called a Ten-Wheeler,…

  • How a Creek Became a Lake to Save Dallas From Floods · 6.9 mi

    The big reservoir on Grapevine's northern edge didn't exist before the 1950s. Grapevine Lake is entirely artificial, built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by damming Denton Creek, a tributary that feeds the Elm Fork…

  • A Golf Course Built Around the Railroad That Made the Town · 6.9 mi

    Iron Horse Golf Course leans hard into the one thing that built this whole community: the train. Opened in 1988 to a Dick Phelps design and owned by the City of North Richland Hills, the course at 6200 Skylark Circle…

  • West Fork United Presbyterian Church · 6.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the West Fork United Presbyterian Church in Grand Prairie. It all started back in 1870 when Reverend Andrew Shannon Hayter organized a Sabbath school for the local settlers. That first…

  • The Name That Traveled From a Tennessee River · 7.0 mi

    The town you're rolling through carries a name that took a long road to get here. Settlers brought Watauga west from the Cherokee country of East Tennessee, where the Watauga River runs over the rocky rapids of Sycamore…

  • The Great Watauga Train Wreck · 7.0 mi

    Near where the tracks cross Big Fossil Creek, Watauga lived through a night the whole town never forgot. Around 1917, a Katy freight train had stopped on the line close to the Big Fossil Creek bridge. Dispatchers over…

  • Tennessee Families on the Prairie Springs · 7.0 mi

    Long before subdivisions and the U.S. 377 traffic, this corner of northern Tarrant County drew families who'd come west chasing game, fertile fields, and clear spring water. Tradition places the first Tennessee settlers…

  • The Depot That Made the Town, Then Left It · 7.0 mi

    Watauga only became a recognizable community because the railroad decided to come through. When the Texas and Pacific Railway pushed its tracks across this stretch of prairie in 1881 on the run toward Fort Worth, the…

  • The Five-Star Restaurant Inside a Gas Station · 7.0 mi

    For two decades the unlikeliest fine-dining room in Texas sat inside a working Conoco at 5901 Watauga Road. Chef Point Cafe opened in 2003, the project of chef Franson Nwaeze, who'd come to America from Nigeria meaning…

  • The Seventy-Year Wait · 7.0 mi

    The railroad tracks that run through Watauga tell a strange story of delayed gratification. When the Texas and Pacific Railway laid this line in 1881, it was a huge event. A stop was established, a name was given, and…

  • The Making of a Highway Town · 7.0 mi

    The main commercial spine of Watauga is U.S. Highway 377, better known around here as Denton Highway, and it's the reason this city looks the way it does. Watauga sat on the Texas and Pacific tracks from 1881 and barely…

  • Engineering a Creek That Floods a Town · 7.0 mi

    The same Big Fossil Creek that staged Watauga's famous train wreck is also the town's biggest engineering problem, and one of the more unusual flood-control case studies in North Texas. Big Fossil Creek is a tributary…

  • Shelton's Bear Creek Cemetery · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Shelton's Bear Creek Cemetery, a final resting place with a story stretching back to the days of slavery. African Americans settled here after the Civil War, forming a community. In 1879, Minnie…

  • From 65 People to a City in One Generation · 7.0 mi

    Watauga spent the first half of the 20th century nearly empty, just 65 residents in the mid-1930s, a farming dot the railroad had abandoned. Then Fort Worth went to war. The defense plants that ringed the city in and…

  • Jellico · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Southlake, and just ahead is the site of Jellico, a town that boomed and busted. Robert Emmett Wilson and his family settled here in the 1880s, opening a general store. By 1898, they had a post…

  • Watauga, TX · 7.0 mi

    Watauga sits on land that tells a silent story. This part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is gently rolling prairie, a landscape sculpted over millennia by the West Fork of the Trinity River and its tributaries. The…

  • Watauga, TX · 7.0 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Watauga, a community named by settlers who brought the word from Cherokee settlements in Tennessee. Watauga itself is a Cherokee word meaning 'village of many springs.' This area wasn't much of a…

  • First United Methodist Church, Grapevine · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Grapevine's first Methodist church. Lay preacher Nathan Hudgins began services in his home around 1854, and the Grapevine Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was officially organized in…

  • Site of Ray-Manship Cemetery · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the former site of the Ray-Manship Cemetery. It held twelve known burials and many unmarked graves of early Tarrant County settlers. The earliest known burial was Sarah Clark in 1883, and William Ray…

  • Dinner Inside Grapevine's First Gas Station · 7.1 mi

    Willhoite's at 432 South Main looks like a restaurant, but the building has a far greasier past. Put up in 1913 as a department store and silent-movie house, it was converted in 1919 into the Willhoite Garage,…

  • Gano, Richard Montgomery · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Dallas, and right here is where Richard Montgomery Gano made his mark. He wasn't just a doctor and a minister; Gano was a Confederate general during the Civil War. He fought alongside John Hunt…

  • Quayle, William · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Tarrant County, the heart of Texas's frontier defense during the Civil War. Right here, William Quayle, a man born on the Isle of Man, found himself leading the charge. Though he opposed…

  • WFAA · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Texas, and right here near Grapevine, you might have passed a tower that was once the tallest man-made structure in the Southwest. This was the shared transmitter for two rival radio…

  • Grapevine, TX (Tarrant County) · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Grapevine, Texas, a town that got its name from the prairie it sits on. Back in 1844, settlers from Missouri called this place the 'Missouri Colony.' They chose this spot on the Grapevine Prairie,…

  • J.E. Foust & Son Funeral Directors · 7.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of a business that's been serving Grapevine for over a century. Back in 1880, John E. Foust arrived and opened a general store that happened to stock coffins. Over time, the coffin business…

  • Leonard, Archibald Franklin · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Tarrant County, near Grapevine, where Archibald Franklin Leonard settled in 1845. He wasn't just a farmer; he helped lay out this very town and served as postmaster and justice of the peace. When…

  • Walker, Charles Edwin · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Grapevine, Texas, a town that owes much of its early 20th-century character to Dr. Charles Edwin Walker. After graduating medical school in 1898, he returned here, setting up a unique "horse and…

  • Grapevine Lake · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving near Grapevine Lake, a massive reservoir created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Construction on the dam, located on Denton Creek, began back in January of <say-as interpret-as="date"…

  • The Quarter-Mile Arches Over the Cowboys · 7.2 mi

    The enormous Cowboys stadium in Arlington is held up by two of the largest arches ever built on any structure on Earth. Each is a giant box truss spanning about twelve hundred and twenty-five feet, roughly a quarter of…

  • The Day the Cotton Belt Put Grapevine on the Map · 7.2 mi

    For four decades Grapevine was a hard-to-reach farm settlement on the prairie, until 1888, when the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, better known as the Cotton Belt Route, finally laid track through town. The railroad…

  • Nine Springs That Still Earn the Town Its Name · 7.2 mi

    If you ever wonder why a Cherokee phrase about many springs got pinned to this prairie suburb, walk over to Capp Smith Park at 5800 Robin Drive. The park's lake isn't just a hole dug and filled from a pipe. The city…

  • Cable Tool Rig · 7.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past a piece of Texas oil history! This derrick is an exact replica of the rigging used back in 1920. That year, this type of cable tool rig drilled the Crowley No. 1 well, one of the deepest in Texas at…

  • The Grapevine Sun · 7.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Grapevine Sun, a newspaper that served this town for nearly a century! It all started in 1895 with Benjamin Wall, who was just nineteen when he launched the weekly paper. It changed…

  • Carousel · 7.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past a spot where, not too long ago, the arrival of a carousel was a HUGE deal in Texas towns. These horse-drawn wonders, powered by the cheerful tunes of a calliope, weren't just for fun. They were…

  • Narrow Gauge Railway · 7.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Arlington, and you might not realize it, but this area was once home to some of the most economical railroads in Texas. Between <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1853</say-as> and <say-as…

  • P.A. Watson Cemetery · 7.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the P.A. Watson Cemetery, a final resting place with a frontier story. The first burial here was Mrs. Micajah Goodwin in 1846. Her family, new to the area, built her coffin from their wagon bed and…

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