Armour and Company

The packing plants drew people as well as cattle. The Handbook of Texas says Armour and Swift, opening in 1903, brought more ethnic diversity to Fort Worth than any other factor: Mexican immigrants, drawn by the jobs and the 1910 revolution, and Eastern Europeans, who settled north of the river. The work was not shared equally. In December 1921, during a strike at Swift, a Black worker named Fred Rouse, shut out of the whites-only union, was beaten by strikers, hospitalized in a segregated ward, then dragged out by a mob and lynched.

What the plaque says

Armour and Company In 1901, local business leaders G. W. Simpson and L. V. Niles began negotiating with Armour & Co. one of the nation' four largest meatpacking firms, to encourage establishment of a branch plant in Fort Worth. The Fort Worth Stock Yards Co. offered land and other incentives and by 1902, construction of a plant just north of this site was underway. The new operation was instrumental in the city's development as the livestock center of the Southwest, creating a number of support businesses. It remained in operation for over 50 years, closing in 1962. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — steps away
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 2.3 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 3.0 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 3.5 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• Niles City — steps away
• Fort Worth Stockyards Hog and Sheep Markets — steps away
• Fort Worth Stockyards Horse and Mule Barns — steps away
• Fort Worth Stock Yards Company — steps away