Fort Worth Stockyards

The Fort Worth Stockyards Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 29, 1976, for its place in industry, commerce and agriculture and for its Mission and Spanish Revival buildings. The district's own history says drovers trailed more than four million cattle through Fort Worth between 1866 and 1890, and the Handbook of Texas says the city was nicknamed "Cowtown" soon after the Civil War. The Texas and Pacific Railway arrived on July 19, 1876, and the Union Stock Yards opened north of the Trinity River in the summer of 1889.

A Boston investor, Greenleif Simpson, bought the yards in 1893. In 1902 Armour and Swift agreed to build packing plants beside them, and Central European workers settled in a town the stockyard company incorporated as North Fort Worth. Armour closed its Fort Worth plant in 1962 and Swift in 1971. The last livestock auction was held in December 1992, and the Handbook of Texas ties the district's revival to a city restoration committee formed in 1972.

The Livestock Exchange Building, which the district's history calls "The Wall Street of the West," houses a Stockyards Museum opened in 1989. The Cowtown Coliseum is dated differently by two sources: the district says construction began in 1907, and the Handbook says a new coliseum opened in March 1908. The Fort Worth Herd, a longhorn drive, runs at 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. weather permitting, and the district says viewing is free.