Fort Worth "Where the West Begins"

Fort Worth's boldest piece of boosterism lasted two seasons. The Texas Spring Palace opened on May 29, 1889, built in thirty-one days to advertise Texas to settlers and investors, with exhibits from more than fifty counties under a bronze-green dome. A second season in May 1890 was popular, but on the night of May 30 a flash fire leveled the building in minutes during a dance. One life was lost, the Englishman Al Hayne, who died helping women and children escape. Rebuilding never happened, and the Fat Stock Show grew from the same rivalry with Dallas.

What the plaque says

Fort Worth "Where the West Begins" Founded June 6, 1849, as frontier post of Co. F., 2nd Dragoons, 8th Dept., U.S. Army. The commander, Maj. Ripley Arnold, named camp for his former superior officer, Maj. Gen William Jenkins Worth. In 4 years of operations, the post had but one serious Indian encounter. A town grew up alongside the fort, as center for supply stores and stagecoach routes. In 1856 Fort Worth became county seat of Tarrant County. A boom started after 1867 when millions of longhorns were driven through town en route to Red River Crossing and Chisholm Traill. Herds forded the Trinity below Courthouse Bluff, one block north of this site. Cowboys got supplies for the long uptrail drive and caroused in taverns and dance halls. After railroad arrived in 1876, increased cattle traffic won city the nickname of "Cowtown". By 1900, Fort Worth was one of world's largest cattle markets. Population tripled between 1900 and 1910. Growth continued, based on varied multimillion-dollar industries of meat packing, flour milling, grain storage, oil, aircraft plants and military bases. Fort Worth also has developed as a center of culture, with universities, museums, art galleries, theatres and a botanic garden. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — steps away
  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 — 1.9 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 — 2.2 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 — 2.3 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.

More markers nearby

• Eastern Cattle Trail — steps away
• Paddock Viaduct — steps away
• First Christian Church of Fort Worth — 0.4 mi
• Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church — 0.4 mi