Historical Marker
James M. Benbrook
Benbrook, Tarrant County · Texas
Erected 1982
Benbrook was not always Benbrook. The Handbook of Texas says settlers from Tennessee and other Southern states founded the place about 1857 as Miranda, which the plaque spells Marinda. The Texas and Pacific Railway extended its tracks through in 1876, and James M. Benbrook, who came to the county about 1874, is credited with helping persuade the railroad to build there. A post office opened in 1880. The community then stayed tiny, with only twenty people counted in the mid-1920s, until the war years and the building of Benbrook Reservoir in the early 1950s started its growth.
What the plaque says
James M. Benbrook In 1876 Indiana native James M. Benbrook brought his family to this settlement, then known as Marinda. A veteran of the Union Army during the Civil War, he became a prominent area farmer and landowner. In 1880, when rail lines were completed here and a depot was constructed, the community was renamed Benbrook in his honor by the Texas and Pacific Railroad Company. Twice married, Benbrook was the father of six children. Recorded - 1982.
Where it stands
32.67953, -97.45404 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 6.6 miA 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.
- Kimbell Art Museum — 7.0 miLouis 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.
- Tarrant County Courthouse — 8.9 miA 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 — 9.8 miThe 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.