The blackland prairie here was Caddo country long before the town. In 1841, in the Republic of Texas years, frontiersmen built Bird's Fort near present-day Arlington, and the Bird's Fort Treaty was signed in the area in 1843 — a frontier accord between the young republic and Native nations on land that had been inhabited for centuries. Settlement followed slowly, with scattered farms and the small community of Johnson Station out on the Cross Timbers.
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.
