The Stockyards
Fort Worth, Texas
The Fort Worth Stockyards
"Where the West Begins"
Have you been to the Fort Worth Stockyards?
The Stockyards are a historic district located in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
When you step onto the sidewalks of The Stockyards, you feel as if you've stepped back into a time where the West was still wild.
With the daily cattle runs, scheduled shootouts, and the old style rustic shops, its not hard to get a grasp on how cowboys and their lil' doggies gave Fort Worth its nickname.
As a native of Fort Worth, I grew up walking the streets of The Stockyards. It was every year, around February, the Stock Show would be up and going and school would give us a holiday to go. I never knew exactly what the purpose was, but it was right up there with going to see the Easter Bunny and Santa.
Having done my share of yearly Stock Shows, I honestly took them for granted, they were simply my normal. I just assumed everyone did this.
Having said all that, I never realized how pivotal they were in the history of the great Wild West and the history they represented. My ignorance spurned me on to look into some of the history behind Fort Worth’s Stockyards and I must say, I was surprised.
The trail known as The Chisolm Trail, was the Western-most cattle trail of the Great Plains. This trail ran right through Fort Worth on its way north up to Abilene, Kansas.
A part of the attractiveness of Fort Worth was that it was a centralized hub for the cattle market, which started with ranchers like W.T. Waggoner, in 1866, who brought his cattle to sell from his ranch twenty miles away and John Peter Smith.
John Peter Smith built an open air market where livestock could be bought directly from the ranch, eliminating the middleman.
He later built a hotel called The Chisolm, where buyers stayed while they negotiated prices with ranchers.
In a short time, these stockyards became one of the largest in the state.
It was in 1876, a short decade later, that the railroad arrived in Cowtown and everything changed. Fort Worth then served as a major shipping point to where Cattlemen could now ship their herds directly from their ranches to Chicago or New York.
In 1877, only 10 years after these changes were made, there were more than 300 million head of cattle roaming the western plains.
By the 1920's, the Stockyards were attracting thousands of visitors each day and soon became known as "COWTOWN".
The Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo began as a livestock show in 1886 but expanded into one of the largest rodeos in Texas. by 1910.
Today, it remains as one of the largest in the world and draws thousands of visitors each year.
