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    Rails Around Fort Worth
    Rails Around Fort Worth
    Rails Around Fort Worth
    Ebook146 pages48 minutes

    Rails Around Fort Worth

    By Ian Taylor

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    About this ebook

    Railways played a central role in the development of the American West. The railroad came to Fort Worth in 1876, and with it came the boom that transformed a city into a metropolis. From the arrival of the Texas & Pacific Railroad to the streamliners of the postwar era, Fort Worth has always seen the railroad as a vital part of its character. From transcontinental locomotives to the construction of elegant architectural landmarks and to small but convenient interurban passenger lines, railroad history is central to Fort Worth s development. This is the story of a city s love affair with technology, transportation, and industry. Through its connection to an emerging country via the railroad, the young frontier town of Fort Worth came to offer as much to the nation s development as it benefited from it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 21, 2014
    ISBN9781439642757
    Rails Around Fort Worth
    Author

    Ian Taylor

    Ian Taylor writes about an Egyptian girl who becomes a queen due to her goddess. The cat goddess based in ancient Egypt and being reborn in Victorian times.

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      Book preview

      Rails Around Fort Worth - Ian Taylor

      it.

      INTRODUCTION

      Americans have long had an interest in the railroad and the role it played in the story of the Old West. From the moment the first transpacific line was complete to now, locomotives have traveled across the immense plains of the American West, bringing people and freight across the landscape. Each city sought and jockeyed for railroad connections, and the city of Fort Worth fought hard for the Texas & Pacific to come to town.

      Few places in America could have gathered a coalition of city leaders, workers, and politicians to come out to ensure the laying of a track to connect the small town. When the Texas & Pacific Railroad connected to Fort Worth in 1876, little of what was to come to the city could have been envisioned. Just as in other frontier towns, the railroad was like a river coming to quench the thirst of townspeople wanting a taste of the markets and goods that traveled across the tracks.

      The city of Fort Worth has always taken great pride in being known as the Gateway to the West, and the railroads made that possible. Rail lines coming from the East connected in Fort Worth before moving across the wide plains of Texas and on to California. Some of the most famous railroads in history ran through the city and carried what was probably the most coveted good that the city had to offer, livestock. From the famous Fort Worth Stockyards came cattle that were shuttled northward to Kansas City and Chicago. Later, when oil was discovered, Fort Worth became a transit point for oil found in West Texas and carried to energy-hungry markets across the country.

      Just as Fort Worth contributed to the growing appetites of the young American nation, so it also reaped the rewards that the railroad brought. The Texas & Pacific Railroad established its headquarters in the city and constructed a station that the city counted as one of its finest landmarks. The city needed all the clothes, goods, food, and amenities that the trains hauled into Fort Worth and filled the stocks and shelves of drugstores, hardware stores, and department stores.

      Yet there are also plenty of other dimensions to the story of the railroad in Fort Worth. The interurban railroad connected Fort Worth with its rival, Dallas, in the east. It allowed the people of Fort Worth to travel across town and visit the parks and recreational areas. The story of the interurban is the city’s first form of public transportation as it changed from a mule-driven cart to electrification in the first decades of the 20th century. This early precursor to the modern local passenger train was a custom sight in the city in its early years.

      The railroads connected Fort Worth to the rest of the nation in prestigious ways as well. Cowboy celebrities and gunslingers came to the town that established itself as a landmark in the Old West. Both Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt made visits to the city along the railroad more than once during their administrations. During World War I, Americans arrived on the trains to train at Camp Bowie to prepare for the battlefields of Europe.

      Fort Worth citizens could observe all the striking models of locomotives that passed through town. The steam locomotives that chugged through town grew in size and accelerated to greater speeds. Gradually, they were replaced by the diesel locomotives that came around in the 1930s and the postwar years. By the 1950s, the streamliner railroads shuttled passengers and freight with a slick, contemporary design across the wide expanses of the state.

      In the decades following the end of World War I, alternative modes of transportation emerged that would eventually eclipse the railroad. Aviation came to Fort Worth with the building of Meacham Field, and automobiles gradually gained momentum as the streets that were once thronged with horse-driven carriages made way for cars and trucks. With the establishment of the bomber plant in World War II, the city became a vital manufacturing center for the Allied war effort.

      Though the quantity of freight and passengers fell in the postwar years, the railroad was never forgotten in the role it played in developing the city. The Texas & Pacific station with its Art Deco design still stands over the Fort Worth downtown, and trains still pass through the city regularly. The railroad is as important to the city’s success as livestock and played a more important role in building the city into the vibrant metropolis it is today than aviation has.

      The American West has for long been dotted with cities that each have beginnings that trace back to the first railroads that came to small, beleaguered communities. Yet not many towns brought their railroads through sheer will and muscle like Fort Worth. The townspeople could not have known what a metropolis a modest-sized town could become, and though future technologies will change the city in

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