William Letchworth Hurst

The depot name outgrew the depot. The Handbook of Texas says that in 1951, with Bell Aircraft announcing a helicopter plant, Hurst voted 36 to 24 to incorporate, partly to keep Fort Worth from annexing it and to help secure water. By 1958 an estimated 8,500 people lived there, half of them working in Dallas and 40 percent in Fort Worth. From 1956 to 1958 Hurst's annexations set off tensions with neighboring mid-cities towns. During the Vietnam War the Bell helicopter workforce topped 11,000.

What the plaque says

William Letchworth Hurst (1833-1922) A native of Tennessee, William Letchworth "Uncle Billy" Hurst (1833-1922) served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. As a member of the Sixty-First Tennessee Infantry, he was involved in fighting near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Following the surrender of his unit to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in 1863, and his subsequent release, he joined in the reorganization of his outfit as the Sixty-First Tennessee Mounted Infantry. Captured in December 1863 near Tazewell, Tennessee, Hurst spent the remainder of the war in military prisons in Kentucky and Illinois. In 1870 Hurst and his wife Mary (Lynch) (1835-1908) joined other residents of Claiborne County, Tennessee, who had migrated to Texas. By adding property to his first land purchase in 1872, Hurst became a prominent land speculator in the area. In 1903 he granted a right-of-way across his farm for the construction of a Rock Island rail line. In exchange, the company named a rail stop and depot for him. Later it became the town of Hurst. Honored for many years by his friends and relatives with festive birthday celebrations, Hurst was the father of 14 children and had over 100 grandchildren. Many family descendants still live in the area. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 9.4 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 — 9.5 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 — 11 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 — 12 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

• I. D. Parker Public Cemetery and Homestead — 1.3 mi
• Florence School — 1.7 mi
• Arwine Cemetery — 2.0 mi
• Alfred Madison Hightower — 3.4 mi