Fort Worth

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Fort Worth Texas bills itself as the "City where the West Begins". With a population of 653,000, it forms part of a single metropolitan area with the neighboring city of Dallas. The Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area reached 6,145,000 million population in 2007 and ranks #6 in size in the U.S.

History

The town was founded in 1849 in conjunction with an Army installation. It declined during the Civil War to just another small settlement clinging to the edges of the Texas frontier. Local lore has constructed a legendary version of Fort Worth as an isolated frontier outpost complete with rugged dragoons, land barons, hostile Indians, and famous visitors. In reality, new civic-minded settlers and promotion people envisioned Fort Worth's potential and made a concerted effort to improve things. Finally in 1876 a railroad rescued the town from oblivion. By 1900 it was a flourishing West Texas marketing and trade center.

Dallas-Ft. Worth area in 1905; the solid line is the inter-urban trolley

Transportation

The railroad enabled Fort Worth to build the largest cattle stockyards in the West. Fort Worth owed much of its late 19th-century economic growth to the cattle industry and especially to the 'Big Five' meat packers - led by Swift and Armour - who controlled the Fort Worth Stockyards Co. after 1902. Beginning in the 1920s, legalistic efforts to break the monopoly of the Big Five gradually accomplished that goal, but by the 1950s, the major packers faced a declining business and subsequently trimmed their operations. Recent efforts to renovate the stockyards and restore the Exchange Building have proven successful as numerous small businesses have opened in the area. The local butchers struck during the nationwide strike by the Amalgamated Butcher Workman Union against the 'Big Five' meat packers of Chicago during 1921-22. The strike failed, devastating the union; skilled workers were able to go back to their jobs, though many unskilled laborers could not.

As a transportation hub, the city had a notorious red light district. The prostitutes worked in parlor houses, dance halls, or independent shacks, did not make much more money than a local domestic servant, were subject to arrest in periodic crackdowns, suffered from disease, and frequently committed suicide.[1]

The railroad station in 1909

The Dallas-Fort Worth airport is one of the world's largest airports, and the hub of American Airlines.[2]

General Dynamics built huge airplane plants in World War II; they now form part of Lockheed Martin. Bell Helicoptr is another major presence.

Hispanics

The Hispanic population grew slowly from the town's founding in 1849 to become 2.9% of the population by 1949.

Religion

Southern Baptists are strong in Fort Worth, where the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is based. J. Frank Norris, a Baptist, was a major leader of Fundamentalism from 1920 to 1950. He was pastor of First Baptist Church from 1909 to 1952. Through his influential newspaper, the Baptist Standard, Norris attacked the evils of racetrack betting and succeeded in getting the practice outlawed in 1908. His greatest political triumph came in 1928 when he waged a vigorous partisan attack against the Catholic Democratic presidential candidate, Al Smith, and helped in getting staunchly Democratic Texas to go for Republican Herbert Hoover.

Conservatives

Ida Darden published the conservative weekly newspaper Southern Conservative from 1950 to 1961. Her early political views were influenced by Texas senator Joe Bailey, who opposed women's suffrage, taxes, labor unions, prohibition, and Woodrow Wilson. The Southern Conservative championed anti-Communist politicians such as Senator Joe McCarthy and excoriated civil rights, minorities, unions, the UN, and the liberal wing of the Texas Democratic Party. Funded by a few wealthy Texas businessmen, the newspaper struggled financially and ended in 1961, when Darden left to care for her terminally ill only child.[3]

Culture

Founded in 1961, the Amon Carter Museum houses the nation's finest collection of paintings, sculpture, and photography of Western subjects. Based on the late Amon G. Carter's collection of original works by Charles M. Russell (1865-1926) and Frederic Remington (1861-1909). The museum also has a theater, bookstore, and research library that stress history as well as art.[4]

Sports

After 1957 the city collaborated with Dallas to attract a major league team. Though civic and structural preparations fell into place rather quickly, Byzantine political processes frustrated the acquisition of a team to represent Texas. The Washington Senators' relocation in 1972 finally fulfilled the community's aspirations.

See also

Further reading

  • article in Handbook of Texas
  • Cuéllar, Carlos E. Stories from the Barrio: A History of Mexican Fort Worth (2003). 240 pp.
  • Garrett, Julia Kathryn. Fort Worth: A Frontier Triumph (1972) 366 pp.
  • Hankins, Barry. God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (1996)
  • Myres, Sandra L. "Fort Worth, 1870-1900," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1968 72(2): 200-222,
  • Oates, Paula, ed. Celebrating 150 Years: The Pictorial History of Fort Worth, Texas, 1849-1999 (1999). 226 pp.
  • Pate, J'nell L. Livestock Legacy: The Fort Worth Stockyards, 1887-1987 (1988) 332 pp
  • Rich, Harold W. "Beyond Outpost: Fort Worth, 1880-1918" PhD dissertation Texas Christian U. 2006; Dissertation Abstracts International; 67(2): 693-A. DA3207513, 319p.
  • Sanders, Leonard. How Fort Worth Became the Texasmost City, 1849-1920 (1986) 201 pp.
  • Selcer, Richard F. "Setting the Record Straight: Fort Worth and the Historians," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1997 100(3): 361-379,
  • Sherrod, Katie, ed. Grace and Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women (2007). 308 pp.

references

  1. ↑ Richard F. Selcer, "Fort Worth and the Fraternity of Strange Women," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1992 96(1): 54-86,
  2. ↑ Darwin Payne and Kathy Fitzpatrick, From Prairie to Planes: How Dallas and Fort Worth Overcame Politics and Personalities to Build One of the World's Biggest and Busiest Airports (1999). 317 pp.
  3. ↑ George N. Green, "Ida Darden and the Southern Conservative", Gulf South Historical Review 2001 16(2): 6-33
  4. ↑ Patricia Junker et al., An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum (2001). 288 pp.
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