What's with "Where the West Begins"? Fort Worth sits on a low rise above the Trinity River where the wooded country of East Texas runs out and the open plains take over — the literal seam between the timbered East and the rolling West. Locals have called it "Where the West Begins" for more than a century, and they mean it geographically: this is the edge of the Cross Timbers, the last stand of oak before the grassland opens toward the horizon. It is no accident that the cattle drives, the Stockyards, and the cowboy culture all took root here. Fort Worth is where the map stops being one thing and starts being another.
The fort came first. On June 6, 1849, a company of U.S. Army dragoons under Major Ripley Arnold raised a camp on a bluff above the Clear Fork of the Trinity, one of a line of frontier posts strung along the edge of settlement. That autumn it was named Fort Worth, for Major General William Jenkins Worth, a hero of the recent war with Mexico who had died earlier that year. The soldiers stayed only a few years — by 1853 the frontier had moved west and the army moved with it — but the civilians who took over the empty buildings stayed, and a town grew up around the old parade ground.
Why People Visit Fort Worth
Visitors come to Fort Worth for the rare combination it offers: a real working cowboy past in the Stockyards, where the longhorns still walk, and a world-class art scene minutes away in the Cultural District. Add Sundance Square, the Water Gardens, the Botanic Garden, and the winter rodeo, and a single day can hold cattle pens and fine paintings. Proud, friendly, and unmistakably Texan, Fort Worth rewards anyone who wants the West and the wider world in the same town.
