What made the town was cattle. From 1867, drovers pushed longhorns north out of South Texas toward the railheads of Kansas along the Chisholm Trail, and Fort Worth was the last real stop before the long dry run to the Red River. Cowboys laid in supplies, watered their herds, and blew off steam in the saloons and dance halls of a rowdy district that earned the name Hell's Half Acre. Over some seventeen years more than five million cattle walked through town. Fort Worth fed them, outfitted their drovers, and took a nickname it has never shed: Cowtown.
The railroad turned the cattle stop into a cattle capital. The first Texas & Pacific locomotive rolled in on July 19, 1876, and within a generation Fort Worth had built the Union Stockyards north of the river, where longhorns could be penned, sold, and shipped by rail instead of driven on foot. The great packing houses of Swift and Armour followed, and the Stockyards became one of the busiest livestock markets in the country. The brick Exchange building, the cattle pens, and the coliseum that still stand on Exchange Avenue date from that era — the heart of Cowtown, preserved as a living National Historic District where the longhorns still walk twice a day.
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.
