Hell's Half Acre

By 1900 the Acre reached from Seventh to Fifteenth streets across Main, Rusk, Calhoun and Jones. Reform came in rounds. Longhair Jim Courtright, elected marshal in 1876 to tame it, let the gamblers alone. He died in a February 8, 1887 shootout with the gambler Luke Short, and weeks later a woman known only as Sally was found murdered there. A campaign closed its worst excesses in 1889. In 1911 the Rev. J. Frank Norris began naming its property owners from his pulpit, and his church burned in 1912. Excluded elsewhere, Black residents settled the south end.

What the plaque says

Hell's Half Acre A notorious red light district known as Hell's Half Acre developed in this section of Fort Worth after the arrival of the Texas and Pacific Railway in 1876 launched a local economic boom. Fort Worth was soon the favorite destination for hundreds of cowboys, buffalo hunters, railroad workers, and freighters eager to wash off the trail dust and enjoy themselves. To meet the demand, a large number of saloons, dance halls, gambling houses, and bordellos opened between the Courthouse Square and the railroad depot. Illegal activities in Hell's Half Acre were tolerated by city officials because of their importance to the town's economy. The district prospered in the 1880s and added to Fort Worth's growing reputation as a rowdy frontier town. Famous gamblers Luke Short, Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp and outlaws Sam Bass, Eugene Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are known to have spent time in Hell's Half Acre. A 1906 newspaper headline calling the district Fort Worth's den of sin and refuge of criminals was representative of periodic efforts to clean up the district. These efforts proved unsuccessful until Army officials at Camp Bowie, established here during World War I, helped local officials shut the district down. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 0.7 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 — 2.2 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 — 2.4 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 — 3.0 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

• Site of Saint Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church — steps away
• Texas Spring Palace — steps away
• John Peter Smith — steps away
• Ephraim Merrill Daggett — 0.2 mi