The modern city is largely the work of one long-serving mayor, Tom Vandergriff, who set out at mid-century to turn a town of a few thousand into something far bigger. The pivotal stroke came in 1961, when the first of the regional theme parks in the United States opened in Arlington — the idea, as the story goes, of dropping a roller coaster in a cotton field and calling it the future. It worked. Major-league baseball followed, then professional football, and the stretch of ground between the old farm town and the highway became a national entertainment district. Arlington had reinvented itself as a place people drove to for a big weekend.
Then Arlington discovered it had water worth selling. A downtown artesian well drilled in 1892 brought up mineral water, and for nearly sixty years the town marketed itself as a health resort, with a bathhouse and pavilion and visitors who came to "take the waters." The interurban electric railway that linked Dallas and Fort Worth ran right through town, carrying day-trippers to the wells. The well stayed at the center of downtown civic life until it was capped in 1951; a memorial plaza marks the spot today. The health-resort decades gave Arlington its first taste of being a destination rather than a way station.
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.
