When was ft worth founded

The couple donated millions to different Fort Worth institutions over their lifetimes. Carter started making plans for a celebration in Fort Worth.

During this time, Carter also wrangled funds for the city to build Will Rogers Auditorium and Coliseum on the centennial grounds. Broadway Producer Billy Rose was hired by Carter to produce a show like no other with a midway of exhibits, a Wild West presentation and musical circus. Pastureland was quickly transformed into the original site that included a restaurant and could seat 4, people for dinner and a show.

Its revolving stage was surrounded by a large moat, and fountains projected a wall of water that acted as the stage curtain. Performing behind big feathers and translucent bubbles, it was rumored to be one of the most-visited performances by Carter. Thanks to its great success, the plan was to bring the show back each summer for the next four years, but due to rising costs and threats of war, eventually the complex was torn down. Snowden Jr.

After getting the project approved by the city council, construction began on a fully enclosed, air-conditioned aluminum-domed theater-in-the-round. The season debut show was the Can-Can. Then in , the interior underwent a renovation to create a more traditional proscenium stage configuration. Billy Bob's Texas Billy Bob Barnett knew that the authentic charm of the Stockyards and the size of the space that used to be a department store would be well-suited for a nightclub. Licensing issues caused Barnett to add his namesake to the club.

Cook Memorial Hospital opened on Lancaster Street. Originally offering only 55 beds, the hospital was designed in Italian Renaissance architecture. In a special grant was given from the Tom B. Owens Trust, and the hospital changed its mission to care exclusively for the needs of children. The trustees renamed the facility Cook Children's Hospital.

Cannon St. Harris also had Fort Worth's first intensive care unit. Texas Health Huguley Herbert T. Huguley, D. Commander in the Navy. Texas Health Huguley was opened in In the facility changed to the Moncrief Cancer Center. The new building in the block of West Magnolia was opened in with another new name of the Moncrief Cancer Institute.

He opened the first school in an abandoned army hospital and went on to become a teacher, Texas Ranger, banker and six-term mayor. Smith donated five acres for a county hospital that later became named after him. Meacham, the general aviation airport is used for corporate aircraft, commuter flights and student pilot training. Young for help in helicopter research and development. Textron bought Bell Aerospace, which was composed of three divisions, in The helicopter was renamed Bell Helicopter Company and because of the Vietnam War, it was the largest division of Textron.

Lockheed Martin After the famous first flight of the Wright brothers in , inventors and mechanics everywhere tried their hands at aviation. Martin were among these new aviation pioneers.

In Glenn Martin set off to break the record for distance by flying across open water to Catalina. Acclaim followed as Martin succeeded, and soon he created the Glenn L. Martin Company in Los Angeles, Calif. That same year, the Loughead brothers were building a seaplane, which they later launched from a boat ramp in the San Francisco Bay. Six months later when they damaged the plane, they were forced to buy it outright from their investors. They repaired the craft in time for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which was a successful revenue generator.

Using their profits and capital from investors, the brothers created Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company in Sales of its F-1 flying boat were poor, which led to the company's liquidation in The spelling of Loughead was changed to match its pronunciation.

After their initial financial triumphs, Loughead and Martin merged their companies, Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta in Today it is known as Lockheed Martin, a global aerospace, security, defense and advanced technologies powerhouse. The overwhelming majority of the buying public whites would not consider patronizing their businesses.

Due to Jim Crow restrictions, black business owners and professionals could serve only black customers and clients. In there were just two black-owned drugstores to serve a black population of 7, The entrepreneurial spirit burned brightly nonetheless. In , E. Ripley Arnold Place was reserved for whites and H.

Butler Place was designated for blacks. The Butler Projects are still standing today, hemmed in by three freeways and still a monument to racial segregation. Although the U. However, when the Cats played on their home field, LaGrave Field, only white fans could attend the games. For blacks who were not talented ball players, life could be a lot harder. In , when a black couple attempted to move into the all-white Riverside neighborhood, protestors took to the streets to taunt them even before they finished unloading their belongings.

The Fort Worth police refused to intervene. Most blacks from long experience knew to stay in their own neighborhoods and keep a low profile in public. By , every department store, theater, and restaurant downtown had been fully integrated. In , the Fort Worth Star-Telegram became the first big-city newspaper in the state to hire a black reporter Cecil Johnson.

Ironically, the break-down of Jim Crow laws in the s led to the collapse of the small black business district that had flourished on the edge of downtown. Now black customers could shop in the up-scale department stores, bank in the major banks, and get their hair cut at the same barber shops as whites.

Black-owned businesses were unable to compete, and one-by-one they closed down, leaving empty store fronts and deserted blocks. In , Fort Worth got its first black elected political figure, Dr. Edward Guinn, who came to politics after a successful career as a physician. It is known today as Texas Wesleyan University. It was a large, two story structure with eight towers and a dome. One May night in , the band concert had ended and the grand ball was about to begin.

The fire, starting on the second floor, advanced with breath-taking swiftness among the highly flammable decorations. There was not time to combat flames, but members of the fire department and others directed the panic-stricken to the exits. Though several firemen were scorched and others were injured by the rushing thousands, everyone escaped death except for Al Hayne.

Hayne was a civil engineer who worked tirelessly to save those in danger during the incident. He remained in the building too long, dying from severe burns next day. In , the population was 6,; the census counted 26, In spite of the impressive growth, streets were muddy, and sidewalks were made of wood.

One was a packing house handling only hogs but the supply was small and the enterprise soon ended. Another was a refrigerating plant; beef was shipped to Liverpool but did not arrive in good condition and that venture failed.

The Board of Trade, of which W. Stock yards and packing plant were built and the business started. Fort Worth became the packing house center of the southwest. Employment for thousands resulted and the payroll of the packing houses has been a great factor in the prosperity and progress of Fort Worth ever since. The full impact of the packing houses was revealed in the census figure: 76,, an increase in of almost percent. The Fort Worth Gas Company was organized in and began serving 3, customers by means of a mile pipeline from Petrolia.

World War I broke out in and, three years later, the Canadian government established three flying fields in the vicinity of Fort Worth. The mild climate made year-round training possible. Seven thousand workers constructed the fields: Taliaferro 1, 2 and 3. In Greenwood Cemetery is a plot where 11 members of the Royal Flying Corps and the daughter of an enlisted man are buried. A monument bears the names and a tribute to the gallant dead.

When our nation entered the war, the fields were taken over by the United States, and two were renamed Carruthers and Barron. More than 5, workers erected 1, buildings on the 1, acres.

Gordon, superintendent of the Texas Pacific Coal Company of Thurber, believed there was oil at Ranger and began testing. On an October day in , a gusher roared in on the McCleskey farm. Ranger was transformed into a boom city of 30, Then came the discovery of oil in Desdemona, south of Ranger.

Then Breckenridge, 30 miles northwest of Ranger, scored with big wells. Meanwhile, a test was going down just outside Burkburnett, miles northwest of Fort Worth. A sensational well came in on the Fowler farm touching off yet another boon. Hundreds of wells were drilled in the Ranger-Desdemona-Breckenridge district and hundreds more at Burkburnett. The two major oil rushes focused national attention on Texas. Fort Worth, strategically located between the two areas, experienced an oil boom, too.

The Westbrook Hotel lobby was the center of the activities. All the chairs were removed to make room for the throngs of operators, promoters and speculators. Even then, there was not sufficient space, and the sidewalks were so packed that one could hardly get in or out of the hotel. Even before the rush, Fort Worth had three refineries. In the city adopted the commission form of government , replacing aldermen with commissioners elected at-large, each focusing on a particular aspect of municipal administration.

From no more than citizens recorded at the beginning of the Civil War, to approximately 2, before incorporation and then to possibly 4, or more in the fall of after incorporation. The coming of the Texas and Pacific Railway in spurred growth to 6, by , 23, by , and 26, by The city expanded its territory from an original size of a little more than one-third square mile that constituted the original townsite to a metropolitan area of square miles in Most of the early growth was to the south and east.

The drives continued to come through seasonally every year until the early s. By that time Fort Worth had built its own stockyards and was shipping cattle north on rail lines. That event evolved into the annual Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show , which was still going strong in the twenty-first century. Fort Worth was on the way to becoming the rail center of the Southwest. The railroads not only brought wealth and population; they also brought a veneer of civilization.

The town built a waterworks, a gasworks, and a streetcar line and made a beginning on a sanitary sewage system. City fathers also created a public school system, organized a volunteer fire department, and began paving the main streets. The local community came together to create a kind of Xanadu on the prairie. The exhibition ran for two seasons —90 and challenged the State Fair in Dallas. Unfortunately the Texas Spring Palace closed in spectacular fashion at the end of May when it burned to the ground in a matter of minutes.

Citizens talked of rebuilding, but nothing came of it in the years that followed, mostly for financial reasons. Opportunities for higher education came to Fort Worth with the establishment of Fort Worth University in , which included schools for law and medicine. Local businessmen W. Hall, A. Hall, and George Tandy donated a large tract of land southeast of the city for the establishment of Polytechnic College forerunner to Texas Wesleyan University , which opened in It sprang up in the s after the city incorporated to serve the cowhands that converged on the city with the cattle drives and continued to grow and drive the economy for the next two decades.

The ill-defined district housed illegal activities such as gambling and prostitution that operated openly with the connivance of the authorities. Local citizens expressed disgust over the immorality and violence that was endemic to the district. Upchurch and J. Frank Norris , as well as the U. Army in Local newspapers, specifically the Democrat , Standard , and Gazette , routinely referred to African Americans in demeaning terms.

Fort Worth newspapers reported little about lynchings and claimed that there had been only a handful of legal hangings in the town. The hangings of White abolitionists William H. Crawford and Anthony Bewley were reported in greatest detail.

The record suggests, however, that there may have been several deaths that were more lynching than lawful execution. Isom Capps also spelled as Isham Kapp , a former Buffalo Soldier , was convicted of the rape of an Anglo woman and on May 7, , hanged from a gallows erected in Ham Branch, an African American residential area.

Rush Loyd, also accused of rape in , narrowly avoided being lynched when law enforcement held off a mob that attempted to take him from the jail. Loyd was later acquitted of the charges. Fort Worth had a small Black population from the beginning.

After the end of slavery , Whites and Blacks lived in separate communities, in fact if not by law. By the early twentieth century, however, Jim Crow segregation reigned supreme, with the Black population consigned to the river bottoms or the southern edge of town.

The opening of the Swift and Armour plants a mile north of the river in also sparked a population boom north of the Trinity River. They replaced an earlier, failed meat-packing plant. In the connection between the two sides of the river was improved when the Paddock Viaduct , now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, replaced a much smaller iron bridge. The packing plants more than any other factor brought ethnic diversity to Fort Worth, not just Mexican immigrants but also Eastern Europeans.

The newcomers settled in neighborhoods north of the river, and the North Side was still the most ethnically-diverse section of Fort Worth in the early twenty-first century. City fathers successfully negotiated with Uncle Sam by leasing to the government a large piece of empty land on the heights west of town. The resulting Camp Bowie opened in the summer of Before it closed two years later, it trained more than , soldiers, including 3, Blacks. That massive operation built the infrastructure west of town that brought the development of Arlington Heights in the years that followed.

Fort Worth prospered in the s thanks to the railroads, meat packing, oil, and the beginnings of aviation , which was built on the foundation of World War I pilot training in the area. The city was home to two early airlines—Bowen Air Lines, formed in , and Texas Air Transport , which began flying in and was acquired a year later by Southern Air Transport, a forerunner of American Airlines.