|
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
|
 | |
Welcome to Cowtown It was cattle that made Fort Worth, and Forth Worth isn't about to forget it. By Richard F. Selcer
"I never would give the boys more than ten dollars apiece when we got to town," recalled a trail boss named Frank Graham. "They generally thanked me later on." Although Hell's Half Acre has been replaced by the more sedate Tarrant County Convention Center, visitors to Fort Worth will find that the city hasn't forgotten its Western heritage. In downtown's Sundance Square there's a Texas-sized mural (three stories tall) depicting a cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail. One block over on Main Street you'll find the Sid Richardson Art Gallery, which has one of the world's largest collections of the Western art of Frederick Remington and Charles Russell. In the city's northern portion you'll find the Stockyards National Historic District, a working testament to the cattle business. It's no wonder Fort Worth became known as Cowtown. It began as an actual fort, named for Major General William Jenkins Worth in 1849. Worth never saw the place, never even knew it was named in his honor, for he had died of cholera at San Antonio just a few weeks before. From those humble beginnings, "The City Where the West Begins" has grown up to become part of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area and now has a population of almost half a million. No trace of the original fort remains, but where it sat on the bluffs overlooking the Trinity River you can find the Tarrant County Courthouse, one of the finest historic courthouses in the nation. Built of native red granite and completed in 1895, it later suffered the indignities of urban architectural swings until it was restored in 1982 to its original grandeur, horse fountain and all. A large stone marker across the street commemorates the Eastern Cattle Trail, which 125 years ago came right up Commerce Street from the south on its way to the Trinity River crossing.
After their last job at Winnemucca, Nevada, in 1900, Butch, Sundance, and their Wild Bunch headed for Fort Worth, where they lingered long enough to buy some fancy duds and have their picture taken at John Swartz's photo studio. According to one story, they sent a copy to the bank in Winnemucca, a bit of cheekiness that got the Pinkertons on their trail. On the side of Sundance Square's Jett Building you can see Richard Haas' massive Chisholm Trail Mural, which celebrates the great cattle drives that helped the town grow. The trail, blazed by Jesse Chisholm, a half-Scottish, half-Cherokee trader, became the route Texas cattlemen used to drive their cattle north to the railroads in Kansas, and the cowboys using it spent their time in Fort Worth going a little crazy in Hell's Half Acre. "Pretty soon that part of town got to be Hell's Whole Acre," recalled a former cowpoke named Tom Blevens, "but the first time I seen it the section was smallish and all anybody talked about was The Two Minnies." The Two Minnies was a fabulous establishment, perhaps in all senses of the word. "No man ever downed his first drink in The Two Minnies," Blevens claimed in an account in J. Frank Dobie's Cow People. "When I throwed back my head to dreen the poison down, I seen the ceiling was glass and there was anyways forty girls walking around up there with no clothes. They was playing tenpins."
|
|  |
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |
|
Copyright © 2001: Primedia Enthusiast Publications, Inc. and Away.com. All Rights Reserved Image: Corel | |
| ||||
