Florence School

The college that bought the school's land had a quick beginning. Tarrant County voters created the Tarrant County Junior College District in a bond election on July 31, 1965, with boundaries matching the county's. The first campus, South, opened in September 1967 with 4,194 credit students. The Northeast Campus in Hurst followed in 1968, on 188 acres, and total enrollment on the two campuses that year was 7,210. The Handbook of Texas adds that the board voted in 1999 to drop the word Junior from the name.

What the plaque says

Florence School In 1890, the forerunner of Florence School in the Tarrant County Common School District No. 34 was called "Green Glade". In 1903 Thomas Richard Sandidge, a school trustee, and his wife Nannie provided one acre at this site for school purposes. The nearby Green Glade site was sold, and the Florence Schoolhouse, a one-room frame building, was erected here among a grove of post oak trees. The new institution provided grades one through eight and had an average enrollment of 30. The term ran from October, after cotton harvest, to May, the beginning of cotton chopping time. The building served as a community center where singings were held. By 1914, with declining enrollment and the need for high school curriculum, the district was abolished and Florence School students attended Bedford, Pleasant Run, and Smithfield Schools. Sandidge reclaimed the land which had been set aside for school purposes, and the property was sold several times through the years. In 1966 the Tarrant County Junior College District bought the land as part of its Northeast Campus which opened in September 1968. Among the enrollment were descendants of students who attended the old Florence School. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 10 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 — 11 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 — 13 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

• William Letchworth Hurst — 1.7 mi
• Alfred Madison Hightower — 2.2 mi
• Eli Smith — 2.2 mi
• Arwine Cemetery — 2.4 mi