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Fort Worth

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

a city of Texas, the county-seat of Tarrant co. It is on the Texas and Pacific, the International and Great Northern, the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe, the Fort Worth and Denver City, the St. Louis and San Francisco, and other railroads. It is also on Trinity river. Fort Worth is the center of a large stock-raising and agricultural district and has a large , jobbing trade in general commodities and in hogs, sheep and cattle, grain, fruit, and produce. It has large stock yards with a daily capacity of over 30,000 head of cattle, and large packing houses. It has several important industries, including flour and stock-feed mills, rolling mills, railroad repair shops, foundries, cotton and oil mills, clothing factories, chemical works, etc. There has been built, at a cost of nearly $1,500,- 000 a large storage dam on the west fork of the Trinity river, 7 miles from the city, with a storage capacity of 30 billion gallons of water. Fort Worth is the seat of the Fort Worth University, the Texas Christian University, and the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has a Masonic Orphans' Home and School, several academies, a number of denominational schools, schools, and technical, art, and music schools. There are a public library and the Medical Library. The city is supplied with an excellent system of roads and has over 30 parks or park places; about 100 churches; and 10 hospitals. There were in 1920 5 National banks. Fort Worth was founded as a military post in 1849, becoming the county-seat in 1860, and was incorporated in 1873. Pop. (1910) 73,312; (1920) 106,482.

What Has Changed in the Last Century

When Collier's wrote this in 1921, Fort Worth was a railroad and livestock town of 106,482, boasting stock yards that could handle 30,000 head of cattle a day and the packing houses to match. The big packers pulled out in the 1960s and early 1970s, and the Stockyards survive as a preserved historic and tourist district rather than a working slaughter center; the city's economy now rests on aviation and defense manufacturing, oil and gas, and finance, with Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport opening in 1974 to become one of the busiest airports in the world. Population is now roughly a million, close to nine times the 1920 figure, making Fort Worth one of the dozen largest cities in the United States. Of the schools listed, Texas Christian University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary remain; Fort Worth University had in fact already left the city, and the storage dam on the west fork of the Trinity is now only one of several reservoirs supplying the region.

Written for this edition, 2026.