Eli Smith

The village Smith's gift started did not stay where it stood. The Handbook of Texas calls it Zion, with a post office from 1878. When the St. Louis and Southwestern Railway built through in 1887, a quarter mile south, a new settlement grew beside the tracks and took Smith's name. It drew people and businesses away from the old section, which was eventually abandoned. Smithfield shipped farm and ranch products, survived a bad fire in 1890 and grew during World War II with Fort Worth jobs. After a bitterly contested campaign, North Richland Hills annexed it in 1958.

What the plaque says

Eli Smith A native of Missouri, Eli Smith moved to Texas in 1859 with his parents. They settled in this part of Tarrant County, and in 1868 Smith married Sarah J. Hightower. About 1876 Smith donated part of his farmland to the community, then known as Zion, for a Methodist church and cemetery. Residents of the area honored Smith for his generosity and community service by renaming the settlement Smithfield. Smith remained an active Mason and a successful farmer until his sudden death shortly before his thirty-first birthday. He is buried at this site. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 9.6 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 — 10 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 — 12 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 — 13 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

• Alfred Madison Hightower — steps away
• Florence School — 2.2 mi
• Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley — 3.3 mi
• William Letchworth Hurst — 3.4 mi