That reinvention is why Arlington calls itself "The American Dream City." Today it is the third-largest city in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, a city of nearly 400,000 sitting squarely between Dallas and Fort Worth, with a General Motors assembly plant, the University of Texas at Arlington, Lake Arlington, the Trinity River woods of River Legacy Parks, and an entertainment district that draws visitors from across the country. The prairie practicality is still there underneath the bright lights — a hardworking Texas city that also happens to throw a very large party.
The town itself began with the railroad. In 1876 a market stop was laid out along the new Texas & Pacific Railway and named Arlington, after the Arlington estate in Virginia; it incorporated in 1884. For its first half-century it was a quiet North Texas farm town — cotton, corn, and cattle hauled to the rail line — the kind of place that measured itself by gins and grain, not grandstands. Nothing about it yet suggested the spectacle to come.
Why People Visit Arlington
Arlington rewards travelers who want big-event energy with Texas convenience — the stadiums and theme parks of the Entertainment District, set between Dallas and Fort Worth and easy to reach from either. People come for the games, the coasters, and the concerts, and stay for the river-and-lake parks and the offbeat heritage of a prairie town that talked itself into becoming the American Dream City.
