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Hurst, Texas

Everything Hurst is known for

1 song mention this city

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Music in Hurst

Songs About Hurst

Hurst Girl
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Rivers & Roads in Song near Hurst

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

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 Hurst

The Helicopter Plant that Built a City RoadyGoat

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 people. Bell needed thousands of workers to build helicopters, and those workers needed homes. Hurst boomed, its population skyrocketing by thousands of percent in just two decades. Many of the homes and neighborhoods you see around you were built in the 50s and 60s for Bell employees. The plant became famous for producing the UH-1 Iroquois, better known as the 'Huey,' the iconic helicopter of the Vietnam War. Imagine, the sound of those rotor blades, so familiar from movies and newsreels, originated with the engineering and labor that happened right here, transforming this patch of Texas prairie into a vital cog in the nation's aerospace industry.

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Engineering the Huey RoadyGoat

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 picked Bell's Model 204 to become a new kind of aircraft - a turbine-powered, single-rotor utility helicopter. The prototype first flew at Fort Worth in October 1956, and the result was a machine that changed modern warfare and civilian life: the first turbine-powered helicopter in U.S. military service. The key innovation was the two-bladed, semi-rigid 'teetering' rotor, with pre-coned and underslung blades, which gave the Huey its stability and that distinctive thump. That engineering made it a reliable workhorse for everything from troop transport and medical evacuation to search and rescue. The manufacturing itself was a feat of industrial engineering - a massive factory floor, complex supply chains, and a skilled workforce to assemble thousands of these aircraft. The technology born in this facility didn't just build a city; it defined an era of aviation.

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The Plant That Turned Farmland Into a Boomtown RoadyGoat

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 lit a fuse under the sleepy community. That same year residents voted to incorporate, partly to keep Fort Worth from annexing the prize, and the population began an explosion that took it from a few hundred souls to tens of thousands within a generation. Bell's timing was historic. The plant became the heart of American helicopter manufacturing, and when the Vietnam War demanded rotorcraft by the thousands, Bell's Hurst-area operations rolled out UH-1 Hueys at a staggering pace, eventually building more than 15,000 of them. The roar of test flights became the soundtrack of the Mid-Cities. Every strip mall, school, and subdivision that followed traced back to that one factory decision. Hurst is, quite literally, a town that a helicopter built. (Source: Handbook of Texas; City of Hurst.)

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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.

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Judge Benjamin Franklin Barkley

1855

(1822 - 1882) In 1855 Benjamin F. Barkley, a Kentucky physician, with his wife Malinda Elizabeth Duncan (1827-1917) and their children settled on a farm at Birdville. There he practiced medicine, became a lawyer, and a charter member of Masonic Lodge No. 148 in Fort Worth. In 1856 Dr. Barkley tried unsuccessfully to keep the county seat at Birdville. As a Republican leader, he spoke out against slavery and secession. Barkley was admired for donating land for Birdville's cemetery and participating in Indian campaigns, but his strong will and pro-Union stand stirred anger in the area. He barely escaped death several times. Barkley treated wounded Confederate soldiers and aided their families despite his opposition to the Civil War, and served as local postmaster during the war. During Reconstruction, Barkley headed the county registration board which denied the vote to former Confederate supporters. He was appointed county judge in 1867 and used federal troops to maintain order. With great courage he fought to protect the rights of the ex-slaves. He left office after Democrats won all county offices in 1873, but remained active in law and medicine throughout North Texas for the remainder of his life. (1979)

Historical Marker → · 4.7 mi away

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 →

Parker Cemetery

1836

Land for cemetery donated by Isaac Duke Parker, Jan. 14, 1901. He was son of Isaac Parker, pioneer politician for whom Parker County was named and who was the uncle of Cynthia Ann Parker, white girl captured by Comanche Indians in 1836 and reared as an Indian. She was the wife of Comanche Peta Nocona and mother of Quanah Parker, the last great Comanche war chief. Both Isaac Parker and Isaac Duke Parker served as members of the Texas Legislature. Isaac Duke Parker is buried here. Cemetery also contains a public burial section.

Historical Marker →

Hurst, TX

1870

Hurst, just to the north of Fort Worth, is on State Highways 121 and 10, north of the West Fork of the Trinity River in the northeastern quadrant of Tarrant County. By the middle or late 1840s farmers were beginning to settle within what are now the confines of Hurst. Isaac Parker's log cabin, purchased in 1853, lay just outside what is now the southwestern corner of Hurst, and the Parker family cemetery is now within the city limits. Important among the settlers who moved there after the Civil War were Tennessee families, especially that of William L. Hurst, and Indiana families, including those of Daniel Arwine and Jeff Souder. The Indiana clans established a church and school at the site in the late 1870s and thereafter the community always supported at least one church and one school. The Arwine farming and ranching community grew slowly until the Rock Island line was built through in 1903. William Hurst donated land in exchange for the establishment of a depot named for him. The Rock Island at first labeled the site Hurst, but there was already a Hurst in Coryell County that had a post office. So the budding Tarrant County community was soon named Ormel; it had a post office from 1904 to 1909. The community was renamed Hurst in 1909. The depot and its stationmasters and telegraphers operated for some thirty years. Yet there were probably no more than twenty people in downtown Hurst between 1910 and 1920, and the area's agricultural products-cotton, grain, and cattle-were not enough to make the train stop regularly. Sand and gravel excavations began south of Hurst in the Trinity riverbottoms early in the 1900s; larger round-the-clock operations began in the 1920s. Illegal whiskey was brewed along the wooded river too, selling for about $10 a gallon during prohibition , 1919-1933. After 1903 there was at least one general store in the community, and during the 1930s and 1940s a handful of grocery stores, filling stations, and cafes opened. The Work Projects Administration erected a brick school in 1940, and the population of Hurst numbered perhaps 100. By the 1940s Hurst was becoming a bedroom community for Fort Worth. Its post office was revived in 1949. Old State Highway 183 (now State Highway 10) was paved with concrete in 1950, and in 1951 Bell Aircraft (Helicopter) announced it would build a plant in Hurst. To prevent Fort Worth from annexing it and to help secure a water supply, Hurst in 1951 voted, 36 to 24, to incorporate. A shopping center and apartments were being built before that year was out. A chamber of commerce organized at Hurst in 1952 and merged with the Euless chamber in 1955; the Bedford chamber joined in 1969. The Hurst and Euless school districts merged in 1955, joined by Bedford in 1958. It was estimated in 1958 that of the 8,500 people living in Hurst, 50 percent worked in Dallas and 40 percent in Fort Worth. Blocked from growing to the south by Fort Worth, Hurst from 1956 to 1958 overzealously pursued annexations in other directions; this triggered intercity tensions and defensive reactions by other "mid-cities" communities. The northeast campus of Tarrant County Junior College (now Tarrant County College ) opened in Hurst in 1968, prompting more growth and jobs. During the height of the Vietnam War, the Bell Helicopter workforce topped 11,000, many of them building Hueys. Hurst, Euless, and Bedford formed a hospital district in 1969. By 1970 the population of Hurst was more than 27,200. The North East Mall arrived in 1972, doubling retail sales in Hurst in a month, and in the early 1990s it remained the largest mall in Tarrant County. The construction of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and its January 1974 opening further stimulated the local economy, but in the 1970s the town had almost reached the limits of possible expansion, and its population growth inevitably slowed. Many of the newcomers were professionals and members of the Republican party , which changed the character of the

Tsha Handbook →

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 Hurst

historical 22.0 mi away
The Sixth Floor Museum

Where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from. The JFK assassination site at Dealey Plaza.
historical 22.0 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…
quirky 22.9 mi away
Chewbacca's Grave — May the 4th

May the 4th be with you — and with the Wookiee. Peter Mayhew the seven-foot-three British actor who brought Chewbacca to life in every Star Wars film from 1977…
food 10.1 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 10.2 mi away
Fort Worth Stockyards

Daily cattle drives down the street. Honky-tonks and rodeos in the old West.
historical 10.2 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…
historical 21.6 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 21.6 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 Hurst

1504 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Hadley, Erma Jean Chansler Johnson · 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…

  • Hurst, TX · Tsha Handbook

    Hurst, just to the north of Fort Worth, is on State Highways 121 and 10, north of the West Fork of the Trinity River in the northeastern quadrant of Tarrant County. By the middle or late 1840s farmers were beginning to…

  • William Letchworth Hurst · 0.4 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…

  • Florence School · 0.8 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 · 1.1 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 · 1.1 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…

  • The Plant That Turned Farmland Into a Boomtown · 1.1 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 · 1.1 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 · 1.1 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 King of the Malls · 1.1 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 · 1.1 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 Tri-City Partnership · 1.1 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…

Show all 200 nearby places
  • Isham Chapel Methodist Church · 1.1 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…

  • Before Fort Worth, the County Capital Was Birdville · 1.7 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 · 1.7 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…

  • A Park Named for the Cattle-Drive Road · 1.7 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…

  • Arwine Cemetery · 1.8 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 Town That Carried Tennessee in Its Name · 2.2 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 · 2.2 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 · 2.2 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 Graveyard That Started With a Buried Thief · 2.2 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 · 2.2 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…

  • Parker, I.D., Public Cemetery and Homestead · 2.3 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,…

  • Site of Oak Grove Methodist Church · 2.3 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…

  • The Schoolhouse That Survived Fire, Then Arson · 2.4 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…

  • Parker Cemetery · 2.4 mi · Historical Marker

    Land for cemetery donated by Isaac Duke Parker, Jan. 14, 1901. He was son of Isaac Parker, pioneer politician for whom Parker County was named and who was the uncle of Cynthia Ann Parker, white girl captured by Comanche…

  • Bedford School · 2.4 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,…

  • North Richland Hills, TX · 2.6 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 · 2.6 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 · 2.6 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 · 2.6 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…

  • The 30-Vote Victory That Created a City · 2.6 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…

  • Bedford, TX · 2.7 mi · 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…

  • Smithfield Baptist Church · 2.7 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. · 2.7 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…

  • The Day Evel Knievel Jumped Eleven Mack Trucks Here · 2.8 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…

  • The Dairy Farm That Became a City of Seventy Thousand · 2.8 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 · 2.8 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 · 2.8 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 · 2.8 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 · 2.8 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 · 2.8 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,…

  • Hightower, Alfred Madison · 2.8 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 · 2.8 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 · 2.8 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 Church of Christ · 2.8 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…

  • North Richland Hills, TX · 2.8 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,…

  • Richland High School — State Softball 2026 · 2.9 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 Freeway That Built a City · 2.9 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 Boys Ranch · 2.9 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 · 2.9 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…

  • Bedford, TX · 2.9 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…

  • Bedford Cemetery · 2.9 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…

  • Smithfield Methodist Church · 2.9 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…

  • Bedford Reunion · 3.0 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…

  • Bedford Church of Christ · 3.0 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…

  • The Iron Horse Returns · 3.1 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 · 3.1 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…

  • The Town the Railroad Left Behind · 3.4 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…

  • When This Was the Dairy Center of Tarrant County · 3.4 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…

  • The Schoolhouse Saved by Two Votes to Spare · 3.4 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…

  • Colleyville, TX · 3.4 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.…

  • The Farmer Behind Rufe Snow Drive · 3.4 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 Fire Hall a House Fire Built · 3.4 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 · 3.4 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…

  • Spring Garden School · 3.4 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…

  • A Homesick Name From Tennessee · 3.5 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 · 3.5 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 · 3.5 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…

  • The Doctor Who Named the Town After Himself · 3.6 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,…

  • Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley · 3.6 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…

  • A Farmhouse Cast From Concrete, Block by Block · 3.7 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 · 3.7 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…

  • The Bidault House · 3.7 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.…

  • Randol Mill · 3.7 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;…

  • Spring Garden Community · 3.7 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…

  • Mosier Valley Fought to Keep Its School · 3.8 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…

  • Mosier Valley School · 3.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Euless, near where Mosier Valley began. Back in 1870, former slaves Robert and Dilsie Johnson got this 40-acre plot as a wedding gift. Soon, other freedmen settled here, forming a community. By…

  • Saint John Missionary Baptist Church · 3.9 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.…

  • Colleyville, TX · 4.0 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 · 4.0 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 · 4.0 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 · 4.0 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 Vote for Independence · 4.0 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…

  • Pleasant Run School · 4.0 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,…

  • Colleyville, TX · 4.2 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…

  • The Railroad Town That Colleyville Erased · 4.3 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…

  • A Golf Course Built Around the Railroad That Made the Town · 4.3 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…

  • Bransford · 4.3 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…

  • Witten Cemetery · 4.4 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…

  • Pleasant Run Baptist Church · 4.4 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 Name That Traveled From a Tennessee River · 4.5 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 · 4.5 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 · 4.5 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 · 4.5 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 Seventy-Year Wait · 4.5 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 · 4.5 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 · 4.5 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…

  • From 65 People to a City in One Generation · 4.5 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…

  • Watauga, TX · 4.5 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…

  • The Five-Star Restaurant Inside a Gas Station · 4.6 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…

  • Judge Benjamin Franklin Barkley · 4.7 mi · Historical Marker

    (1822 - 1882) In 1855 Benjamin F. Barkley, a Kentucky physician, with his wife Malinda Elizabeth Duncan (1827-1917) and their children settled on a farm at Birdville. There he practiced medicine, became a lawyer, and a…

  • Birdville Cemetery · 4.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Birdville Cemetery, the final resting place for generations of Tarrant County pioneers. Look for the oldest marked grave here: Wiley Wilda Potts, born in <say-as interpret-as="date"…

  • Birdville, Site of Tarrany County's First Courthouse · 4.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Birdville, Tarrant County's very first county seat! Back in 1849, this spot was chosen, with 80 acres set aside for public use. A courthouse foundation was even laid here. But things got…

  • Archibald Franklin Leonard · 4.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Archibald Franklin Leonard. A native of Pennsylvania, Archibald Franklin Leonard (1816-1876) moved to Missouri in the 1830s where he married Mary Ann Foster (1822-1904) in 1839. In 1845, along with…

  • West Fork Baptist Association · 4.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Haltom City, right where Texas Baptists were organizing back in the 1850s. On October 12th, 1855, delegates from twelve frontier churches gathered at Birdville. Their mission? To form the West…

  • Pioneer Birdville Schools · 4.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Haltom City, and right here is the site of Birdville Hill. This spot was the heart of Tarrant County for a few years, serving as its first county seat from 1851 to 1856. But it's also where…

  • Birdville Baptist Church · 4.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Birdville Baptist Church. This congregation got its start way back in 1853, organized by five founding members. It hit a bit of a rough patch, lapsing for a few years, but ten dedicated…

  • Birdville Church of Christ · 4.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Birdville Church of Christ in Haltom City. It all started on February 26, 1852, when twelve charter members held the first service, just after Birdville became the Tarrant County…

  • Isham Cemetery · 4.8 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…

  • Watauga, TX · 4.8 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…

  • The Texas Football Team That Dances a War Chant · 4.9 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) · 4.9 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…

  • Garage Bands at the Roller Rink · 4.9 mi

    Haltom City's loudest contribution to Texas music started a block from the high school, at the Holiday Roller Skating Rink at 2920 Carson Street. Beginning in May 1964, the local Jaycees and KFJZ disc jockey Mark…

  • Nine Springs That Still Earn the Town Its Name · 5.0 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…

  • The Night a Tornado Came in a Winter Storm · 5.1 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…

  • The City Hall Built by Hand for $1,200 · 5.1 mi

    When Watauga incorporated in 1958 it had almost nothing a city is supposed to have, no real budget, no staff, and certainly no money for a fire truck or a municipal building. So the new town did the only thing it could:…

  • Euless, Elisha Adam · 5.1 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…

  • Site of Ray-Manship Cemetery · 5.1 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…

  • Named for Fossils, Remembered for a Flood · 5.2 mi

    The creek slipping through the east side of Haltom City wears its origin story in its name. Big Fossil Creek was christened by an early settler who found fossils along its banks, the petrified leftovers of an ancient…

  • Pleasant Glade Baptist Church · 5.2 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…

  • Willow Springs: The Congregation Older Than the Town · 5.3 mi

    The oldest institution tied to Watauga isn't in Watauga at all anymore. It's the Willow Springs congregation, gathered by settler families in this area in the years around the Civil War and formally reorganized in 1867…

  • The Wartime Highway Name That Waited Sixty Years · 5.3 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…

  • Watauga Presbyterian Church · 5.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Watauga Presbyterian Church, though you won't see much here today. This congregation started way back in the 1850s as the Willow Springs Cumberland Presbyterian Church. It was reorganized…

  • St. Luke United Methodist Church · 5.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Haltom City, and right here is the site of St. Luke United Methodist Church. It began in 1928 as Birdville Methodist Church, with just seventeen members. For years, services were sporadic, but by…

  • Tomlin Cemetery · 5.4 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…

  • G.W. Haltom's Picture Palace on Belknap · 5.5 mi

    At 5601 East Belknap Street sits the Haltom Theater, the one landmark the town's namesake actually built here himself. George W. Haltom spent about thirty-five thousand dollars to put up the 716-seat single-screen movie…

  • The Stage Manager Who Never Left · 5.5 mi

    If you pass the old Haltom Theater on East Belknap after dark, the people who run it will tell you it isn't quite empty. The legend attached to the restored 1940s movie house holds that it's haunted by J.P. Harrison,…

  • The Rise of Little Saigon · 5.6 mi

    As you drive down Belknap Street, you’re witnessing a story of urban transformation. In the 1970s and ‘80s, this was a commercial strip in decline, full of aging buildings and struggling businesses. But a new community…

  • Engineered at the Crossroads · 5.6 mi

    Haltom City is a textbook example of a city engineered by its highways. Its very existence is owed to the civil engineering that created the modern commuter suburb. It started with two key arteries. The Denton Highway,…

  • The Haltom Theatre · 5.6 mi

    If you look for it at Belknap and Denton Highway, you can still see a lit piece of Haltom City's past: the Haltom Theater. G. W. Haltom built it for thirty-five thousand dollars and opened the doors at six o'clock on…

  • Haltom City, TX · 5.6 mi

    Haltom City is home to a public library that serves as the regional library for the city. It's a well-known partner of the Fort Worth Public Library. In 2011, an extension of Tarrant County College Northeast Campus, the…

  • Gibbins Cemetery and Homestead Site · 5.6 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,…

  • Calloway Cemetery · 5.6 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…

  • A Slice of Tonga in the Mid-Cities · 5.7 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…

  • The Jeweler Who Named a Town · 5.7 mi

    The town spreading out around you carries the name of a Fort Worth jeweler who never really lived here. George Washington Haltom was born in an Arkansas log house in 1872, decided as a boy picking cotton that he would…

  • When This Was the County Seat (Before the Whiskey) · 5.7 mi

    Tucked inside today's Haltom City is the old community of Birdville, named for Texas Ranger captain Jonathan Bird, and in 1850 it won the vote to become Tarrant County's very first seat of government. For a few years it…

  • The Shortstop Who Went Second in the Draft · 5.7 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…

  • Where the Bear Creeks Meet · 5.7 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…

  • The First Courthouse Site and the Pioneer Graves · 5.7 mi

    Near 6108 Broadway Avenue stands a marker noting the spot where Tarrant County's first courthouse once stood in Birdville, back when this ground governed the whole county. A short walk away is Birdville Cemetery, the…

  • From the Haltom Buffaloes to a Super Bowl Ring · 5.7 mi

    The Haltom High School Buffaloes have sent players to the pros, and the most decorated of them is offensive lineman Halapoulivaati Vaitai, who suited up here in the orange and black alongside his two younger twin…

  • From Lightly Recruited Panther to NFL Sack Machine · 5.7 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…

  • Euless, TX · 5.7 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…

  • Where Worn-Out Jet Brakes Get a Second Life · 5.7 mi

    Behind an unassuming industrial wall in Haltom City is one of the more specialized engineering shops in North Texas: a 110,000-square-foot Collins Aerospace facility that opened around 2020 as a hub for aircraft wheel…

  • Haltom City, TX · 5.7 mi

    Nestled in the heart of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Haltom City is an inner suburb of Fort Worth with a unique geographic advantage. Just six miles from downtown Fort Worth, 30 miles from the American Airlines…

  • Commercial Horticulture in Euless · 5.7 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…

  • Harrison Cemetery · 5.7 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…

  • First United Methodist Church of Euless · 5.7 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…

  • The Thunder of the Trinity Haka · 5.8 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 · 5.8 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…

  • The Cheneys Built the Garden of Eden · 5.8 mi

    Straddling the line between Fort Worth and Haltom City, in a bend of the Trinity River, the Cheney family had farmed this land since arriving from Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1830s. After emancipation, Major Cheney,…

  • Jesse Chisholm · 5.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Jesse Chisholm. 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…

  • Euless, TX · 5.8 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…

  • Bird's Fort · 5.8 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 · 5.8 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…

  • Arbor Daze: The Tree Festival · 5.8 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…

  • Euless School · 5.8 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…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Lamar (Arlington) · 5.9 mi

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

  • Belknap's Little Saigon · 5.9 mi

    Drive the East Belknap corridor through Haltom City and the storefronts tell a quieter chapter of Texas history. Beginning in the late 1970s, after the end of the Vietnam War, Southeast Asian refugees resettled across…

  • The Creek That Named, Watered, and Washed the Town · 5.9 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…

  • Euless, TX · 6.0 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…

  • A Star in the Window, a Marker by the Road · 6.0 mi

    This road carries a Blue Star Memorial Highway designation, one of a string of them across Texas. The name comes from a family tradition. When someone in a household was serving in the armed forces, the family displayed…

  • Site of Bird's Fort · 6.2 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…

  • Parker Memorial Cemetery · 6.2 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…

  • A 1950s Burger Joint That Survived · 6.5 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…

  • Post Malone Grew Up Here Before the World Knew the Name · 6.5 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…

  • Country Breakfast in a Room Full of Lucy · 6.6 mi

    For a plate of food that tastes like a Texas grandmother's kitchen, locals point to the Bluebonnet Cafe at 2223-A Haltom Road. The family-owned diner opened in July 1994 and has spent three decades serving the kind of…

  • Harper's Rest Cemetery · 6.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Harper's Rest Cemetery, a final resting place with a story that begins with a stranger's loss. In 1894, Henry Jackson Harper and his family settled here. Their peaceful farm became a place of…

  • New Trinity Cemetery · 6.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Haltom City, and right here is the New Trinity Cemetery. When Rev. Greene Fretwell, a former slave, died in 1886, there was no burial ground for Black residents in this part of Tarrant County. His…

  • The Plant That Built a City · 7.0 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:…

  • Double Springs to Athol to Keller in One Decade · 7.0 mi

    The town you're rolling into changed its name twice before it stuck. Settlers first gathered a few miles west at a spot called Double Springs, named for the two springs that watered an early cluster of families, a…

  • Old Town Keller, Built Around a Boxcar Stop · 7.0 mi

    This stretch of Old Town Keller, running along US 377 just north and south of FM 1709, is the original townsite, and it was laid out for one reason: to sit on the railroad. After the Texas and Pacific stop opened in the…

  • The Widow Who Led 25 Families to Bear Creek · 7.0 mi

    Out where Bancroft Road meets J.T. Ottinger Road lies Mount Gilead Cemetery, the resting place of the pioneers who settled this corner of Tarrant County years before there was a Keller. The burial ground grew out of a…

  • Stone Cairns Over the Pioneer Dead · 7.0 mi

    Walk the older rows of Mount Gilead Cemetery and you'll notice something you won't see in a modern memorial park: low piles of stacked stone heaped over some of the oldest graves. These are burial cairns, mounds the…

  • From a Keller Diamond to the Big Leagues · 7.0 mi

    The ballfields at Fossil Ridge High School here in Keller produced a genuine major leaguer. Sheldon Neuse, born in 1994, came up through Fossil Ridge before heading to the University of Oklahoma, where he hit well…

  • The Quiet Engineering That Keeps Keller's Taps Pressurized · 7.0 mi

    Keller has no river running through it and no big reservoir of its own, so getting water to roughly 45,000 people is a feat of plumbing on a city scale. The city doesn't treat its own supply; it buys finished drinking…

  • Ransom, Dr. Riley Andrew · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're passing through Haltom City, but the story of Dr. Riley Andrew Ransom takes us back to Fort Worth. Born in Kentucky, he studied medicine and then came to Gainesville, Texas, in the early 1900s. There, he opened…

  • The Peters Colony in Tarrant County · 7.0 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.…

  • 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…

  • Alexander Dobkins Family Cemetery · 7.0 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 · 7.0 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,…

  • The Dragons: Eight Titles and a 72-Game Win Streak · 7.1 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…

  • Top O' Hill Terrace · 7.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising past a spot in Arlington that was once a wild mix of fun and vice! It started in the 1920s as a tea room, but by 1926, it became the Top O' Hill Terrace casino. Imagine this place buzzing with gamblers,…

  • Keller, TX · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Keller, Texas, a town that owes its name to a railroad official. Back in 1879, settlers were moving their homes closer to where the Texas and Pacific Railway was expected to build. They called…

  • Quinn Ewers at Southlake Carroll · 7.3 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…

  • White's Chapel United Methodist Church · 7.3 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…

  • Handley United Methodist Church · 7.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Handley, a town that started with the railroad back in 1877. And right here, you're passing the Handley United Methodist Church. This congregation began the same year, with Reverend J.J. Cannafax…

  • Forty Wagons From Georgia, and a Chapel That Named a Road · 7.4 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…

  • A 19-Million-Dollar Cathedral to High School Football · 7.4 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…

  • Keller · 7.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Keller, a town born from the railroad. Look around, and imagine a time when the Texas & Pacific Railroad was the lifeblood of this region. Back in 1881, a druggist named H.W. Wood laid out 40…

  • Handley Church of Christ · 7.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Handley, a Fort Worth neighborhood that got its name from the Texas & Pacific Railroad back in 1876. Before that, it was called Turkey Knob! For a few years, Protestants here shared a union church…

  • White's Chapel Cemetery · 7.4 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…

  • Texas HS Baseball Playoff Leaders 2026: Keller (Keller) · 7.6 mi

    Keller put 3 players on the statewide leaderboards of the 2026 Texas high school baseball playoffs. Cole Koeninger had 56 strikeouts (2nd in the state), 16 hits (15th in the state), 15 runs (17th in the state), 3 home…

  • Texas HS Baseball Playoff Hits 2026: Keller (Keller) · 7.6 mi

    Keller, TX placed on the Texas high school baseball PLAYOFF HITS leaderboard for the 2026 postseason: Cole Koeninger (16 hits, #15 in TX).

  • Fielder House · 7.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past what was once known as "The Home on the Hill" in Arlington. This distinctive Prairie-style house, built in 1914 by local leader James Park Fielder and his wife Mattie, was a true landmark. They used…

  • Mount Olive Baptist Church · 7.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Arlington, and right here is the story of Mount Olive Baptist Church. It started small, with just a handful of folks led by Rev. Mr. Squires back in the summer of 1897. They organized this church,…

  • The Town That Named Itself After a Lake It Couldn't Touch · 7.7 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 · 7.7 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 · 7.7 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 · 7.7 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…

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