Bransford

Colleyville was assembled from hamlets like this one. The Handbook of Texas says the area was first settled in the 1850s and that Spring Garden, Pleasant Run, Pleasant Glade and Red Rock, later Bransford, all grew up within what are now the city limits. The St. Louis Southwestern Railway ran through, yet the Handbook says the main reason for the city's growth has been its closeness to Fort Worth, where most residents have worked. Colleyville's earliest reported population, in 1936, was just twenty-five people with two businesses.

What the plaque says

Bransford A post office with the name Bransford opened in this vicinity in the late 19th century. In 1889 the post office was moved to Red Rock on the route of the St. Louis, Arkansas, and Texas Railroad. Named for pioneer Felix Grundy Bransford (1828-1898), the post office name eventually replaced the name of Red Rock and the town of Bransford became the center of a large farming community. Early residents of the area remembered a post office, two daily passenger trains, four doctors, two blacksmith shops, a livery stable, four general stores, and lodge hall in the town. The railroad depot provided a passenger and supply center for the surrounding agricultural communities. The Bransford Lodge Hall, built in 1911, provided a meeting place for four groups: The Odd Fellows, Woodmen of the World, Knights of Modern Macabees, and the Farmers Union. It was also a gathering place for many community activities. The closing of the Bransford Post Office in 1913 and the advent of highway travel contributed to the decline of Bransford. By the time the city of Colleyville was incorporated in 1956, most reminders of the hamlet called Bransford had disappeared. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 13 mi
  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 — 14 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 — 16 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 — 16 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

• Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley — 0.9 mi
• White's Chapel United Methodist Church — 3.0 mi
• Jellico — 3.1 mi
• Alfred Madison Hightower — 3.4 mi