City of Arlington

One of Arlington's popular early landmarks began as a municipal disappointment. In 1892 contractors finished a well at Main and Center streets, paid for by a public subscription that merchant Rice Woods Collins began to get the town a water supply. The water was mineral and judged poor for drinking, so townspeople bottled it and called it medicinal. The fountain over the well grew more ornate and became a gathering place, until 1951, when it was closed and paved over as a traffic hazard. The Handbook of Texas ties early growth to produce shipping.

What the plaque says

City of Arlington The city of Arlington developed along the juncture of two distinct ecological regions, the Blackland Prairie and the Eastern Cross Timbers. The West Fork of the Trinity River and its area tributaries flow through the city, and one such stream, Village (Caddo) Creek, was the site of a series of Native American communities. The 1841 Battle of Village Creek and the 1843 Bird's Fort Treaty between the Republic of Texas and the Delaware, Chickasaw, Waco, Tawakoni, Keechi, Caddo, Nadako, Ionie, Biloxi and Cherokee tribes opened the region to pioneer settlement, led by Col. Middleton Tate Johnson and Patrick Watson. In 1876, the Rev. A. S. Hayter helped survey the area for a new townsite and rail stop for the Texas and Pacific Railroad. Named Arlington for the Virginia home of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the town became a regional cotton distribution center. Incorporation occurred in 1884, the year after its first newspaper, The World, was first published. At the turn of the 20th century, the city's more than 1,000 residents supported several churches and schools, including Arlington College, an institution that became the University of Texas at Arlington in 1967. Arlington residents adopted a city manager form of government in 1949. The municipality, situated between Fort Worth and Dallas, served as an interurban rail hub and as a stop along the Bankhead Highway. It became a statewide destination for amusements beginning in the 1920s with gambling at Top O' Hill Terrace and horseracing at W.T. Waggoner's Arlington Downs. Later attractions included Six Flags Over Texas amusement park, established in 1961, and the Texas Rangers baseball team. Today, Arlington remains a viable part of one of the nation's largest metropolitan areas. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 11 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 13 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.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 14 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.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 15 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.

More markers nearby

• Colonel Neel E. Kearby — steps away
• North Side School — steps away
• P.A. Watson Log House — steps away
• Jopling-Melear Log Cabin — steps away