Tarrant County Courthouse

The courthouse stands on the bluff where a company of the Second Dragoons under Ripley Arnold set up a post in 1849, named for General William Jenkins Worth. The county was created that December and named for Edward H. Tarrant. In May 1841 Tarrant led Texas volunteers against the villages on Village Creek. The Handbook of Texas says they housed Caddos, Cherokees and Tonkawas and puts Tarrant's force at sixty-nine men; the county's courthouse tour says seventy-six. The attackers burned huts, the Handbook says at least twelve Native people died, and a treaty in 1843 removed the Village Creek peoples to a reservation on the upper Brazos.

Birdville was the first county seat. In 1856 Fort Worth won it by a handful of votes after charges of fraud, and fights and duels over the question went on for four years. A courthouse begun in 1859 stood half-built through the Civil War and burned on March 29, 1876.

The present building, by Gunn and Curtiss of Kansas City, won a competition drawing eighteen firms. It opened on July 3, 1895, in Texas pink granite from the Capitol's quarry, with walls five feet thick at the base. It came in nearly 20 percent under budget, yet voters, angered by what they saw as extravagance, ousted the county judge and the whole commissioners court at the next election. A 1980 bond vote paid for the restoration finished in 1983, and the county publishes a self-guided tour.