Castleberry School District

Castleberry ISD is among the smallest districts in Texas by area, bounded by the Trinity River, Lake Worth and Fort Worth. The Handbook of Texas explains its growth. In 1941 the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce deeded 1,450 acres to the federal government for a B-24 bomber plant and landing field, later Carswell Air Force Base, and River Oaks voted to incorporate that year. The base spurred development, and the town went from about 2,000 people at the end of the 1940s to more than 8,000 by 1960. The district dates its independence to 1956.

What the plaque says

Castleberry School District Certified by the State of Texas as a common school district in 1898, the Marine School No. 3 was housed in a small frame structure erected on land given by local resident Ike Vinchinor. May Manning was the school's first teacher. In 1902 a second room was added, and the school was known as Rosen Heights School No. 2 from that time until 1919. A three-room brick structure was erected in 1919 and the name was changed to the Castleberry Common School District in honor of Zack and Fanny Castleberry, who provided well water to the school. The first parent-teacher association was organized in 1922, beginning a long tradition of cooperation and support between families and faculty members. The area grew rapidly in the next decade, and by 1932 another room was added to the schoolhouse. A new two-room frame building was added in 1934, and an additional one-room building was erected in 1936. Matching bonds, Works Progress Administration projects, and other federal programs enabled the district to expand as necessary, including the erection of a large main building in 1938. Air Force personnel, aircraft mechanics, and their children arrived at nearby Carswell Air Force Base during World War II, and the school district expanded to accommodate them. In the 1950s local high school students were transferred to the Fort Worth Independent School District. When Fort Worth announced in 1956 its intent to charge tuition for the education of Castleberry students, the Castleberry School District became independent and added a high school to its facilities. By 1998 the Castleberry Independent School District served almost 3000 students in seven schools. (1998) Incise: Character builder, Irma Marsh, teacher-principal; first superintendent of C.I.S.D., 1924-1972.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kimbell Art Museum — 2.8 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 — 2.9 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.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 3.2 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 — 4.1 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.

More markers nearby

• Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion — 1.2 mi
• Fort Worth Army Air Field — 1.6 mi
• Horace Seaver Carswell, Jr. — 1.6 mi
• Lawrence Clifton Elliott — 1.9 mi