Lost Fort Worth

By Mike Nichols

From the humble beginnings of a frontier army camp, Fort Worth transformed into a city as cattle drives, railroads, oil and national defense drove its economy. During the tremendous growth, the landscape and cultural imprint of the city changed drastically, and much of Cowtown was lost to history. Witness the birth of western swing music and the death of a cloud dancer. See mansions of the well-heeled and saloons of the well-armed. Meet two gunfighters, one flamboyant preacher, one serial killer and one very short subway carrying passengers back in time to discover more of Fort Worth. Author Mike Nichols presents a colorful history tour from the North Side to the South Side's Battle of Buttermilk Junction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Feb 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781625847126

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INTRODUCTION

Fort Worth celebrates its date of birth as June 6, 1849, because on that date U.S. Army major Ripley Arnold established a fort on the Trinity River, naming it in honor of his former commander, General William Jenkins Worth. But the birth of Fort Worth was not so short and simple. Its gestation period was six years, it had two birth certificates and it had two bicultural sets of godfathers.

Fort Worth’s first birth certificate was issued six years earlier and fifteen miles farther east: the Treaty of Bird’s Fort. In 1843, Texas was still independent, a republic. To many people back east in the United States, Texas was a vast land of opportunity. Some settlers who came to Texas were lured by the prospect of cheap land, others by the prospect of adventure. Some were running to, others were running from. But they also encountered opposition—from Indian tribes who had lived in Texas for centuries and whose attitude to immigrants understandably was a nineteenth-century version of NIMBY (not in my back yard). The Treaty of Bird’s Fort was intended to prevent hostility between those Indian tribes and white settlers. Delegates of the Republic of Texas and several Indian tribes signed the treaty on September 29 at short-lived Bird’s Fort (located four miles north of the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium). The men of those two delegations constituted an unlikely set of godfathers for Fort Worth. Among the signees were George W. Terrell and Edward H. Tarrant of the Republic of Texas and Roasting-Ear, Red Bear and Chicken Trotter of the Delaware, Caddo and Cherokee tribes, respectively.

Treaty of Bird’s Fort, 1843. Courtesy Texas State Library & Archives Commission.

With the treaty came the understanding that Indians were to stay west of a line stretching two hundred miles southwest from the confluence of the Clear and West Forks of the Trinity River to the white settlement at Menard. Likewise, white settlers were to stay east of that line.

Two years later, the United States annexed Texas. The republic was now a state. But a dispute between the United States and Mexico over the boundaries of that new state resulted in the Mexican-American War in 1846. With the end of that war in 1848 came a second birth certificate for Fort Worth—the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo—and a second set of godfathers. Signers of that treaty were Nicholas Trist of the United States and Miguel Atristain, Luis G. Cuevas and Bernardo Couto of Mexico. These men agreed, in Article XI of the treaty, that the United States would prevent Indians in west Texas from raiding northern Mexico.

So in 1849, the U.S. military established a chain of forts in Texas: 1) to protect northern Mexico from west Texas Indians and 2) to protect white settlers in Texas from hostile Indians. The army would establish its chain of forts along roughly the line of separation that the Treaty of Bird’s Fort had established six years earlier. The line would stretch from the confluence of the West and Clear Forks of the Trinity River southwest past Menard to Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande. That line was the frontier, the farthest edge of white settlement.

The fort that Major Ripley Arnold established at the confluence of the two forks of the Trinity River became the last defense of white settlers migrating through north Texas from the east. The city of Fort Worth, which grew out of the military Fort Worth, became known as Where the West Begins.

And that confluence of the two forks—just below the bluff where the fort stood—has become a metaphor for the city itself. Fort Worth is a confluence, a blending—of cowboys and culture (heifers and Heifetz), of pickups and pearls. Fort Worth is rodeo and Radio Shack, low-riders and high rollers, sweet tea and tequila, with a museum district populated by the men of western artists Remington and Russell and the women of Picasso and Degas.

Settled in the nineteenth century by men on horseback who fought hostile Indians, Fort Worth is powered in the twenty-first century by businessmen and businesswomen on smartphones who fight hostile takeovers. In between those two centuries were booms driven by the railroads, cattle drives, the stockyards and packing plants, oil and national defense.

Today, Fort Worth embraces both its modernity and its western heritage. No matter how slowly the Mustangs, Broncos and Pintos might poke along its freeways at rush hour, twice a day at the stockyards, a herd of longhorns has the right of way as cowboys on horseback drive it down Exchange Avenue.

PART I

A CALL TO ARMS

The city that began as an army post on the western frontier in 1849 continued to have military importance. During World War I, the city added two military installations (Camp Bowie and Camp Taliaferro). During World War II, the city added two more (the Bomber Plant and Carswell Air Force Base). The latter two would continue to be important during the Cold War and into today as Lockheed Martin and the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base.

THE FORT: WHERE THE WEST BEGAN

In June 1849, U.S. Army major Ripley Arnold, accompanied by Texas Ranger colonel Middleton Tate Johnson and a few soldiers of the Second Dragoons, scouted the confluence of the Clear and West Forks of the Trinity River for a site on which to establish Fort Worth.

The site Arnold selected, on the bluff above the river just northwest of today’s county courthouse, offered three advantages: the river gave the soldiers water, the plentiful trees gave them logs and fuel and the bluff’s elevation gave them a view, especially across the river to the north. With no modern obstructions and no air pollution in 1849, the soldiers could see for miles over oak thickets and prairie grass. At night, they could see the distant fires of Indian campsites.

A drawing of the army’s Fort Worth made by local artist C. MacLean. Courtesy Quentin McGown.

For about two months, Arnold and his soldiers camped a mile away, near Traders Oak in today’s Samuels Avenue neighborhood, while building the fort. They worked with hand tools of the day and a horse-powered saw.

The soldiers of the Second Dragoons built barracks, three sets of officers’ quarters, a basic hospital, an adjutant’s office and a stable—all constructed of logs, clapboards, mud and stone. They dug through the limestone of the ancient seabed until they struck water for a well. Again, by hand.

What nature did not furnish was furnished by wagon from Houston. The army also solicited bids for articles of subsistence for troops on the North Eastern Frontier of Texas. In the July 1, 1849 edition of the Clarksville Standard, the army placed an ad requesting bids for supplies. The supplies included 300 barrels Pickled Pork; 15,000 pounds Bacon Sides; 5,000 pounds Bacon Hams; 1,200 barrels Flour; 250 bushels Beans; 24,000 pounds Sugar; 200 gallons Vinegar; 200 bushels Salt. One-fourth of that order was to be delivered at or near Fort Worth, on the West Fork of the Trinity.

The fort covered a few acres, laid out around a parade ground that measured 250 by 300 feet. Fort Worth’s first skyline consisted of a makeshift flagpole planted in the parade ground. Atop the flagpole waved an Old Glory that bore only thirty stars.

Army life on the frontier was stark but not without some amenities. Mail came once a week from Dallas, bringing soldiers eagerly awaited letters, newspapers and packages. Life at the fort also was enlivened by the addition of Fort Worth’s first Renaissance man. Frenchman Adolphus Gounah had come south to the fort from the short-lived French utopian colony New Icarie in Denton County. Gounah was an artist, daguerreotypist (photographer), language and music teacher, physician, fencer, winemaker and Texas’s first state geologist. Gounah befriended fort commander Arnold and gave Arnold’s children lessons in French, riding and music. Gounah also gave the fort’s soldiers lessons in fencing.

Diagram of the army’s Fort Worth, 1853. Courtesy Genealogy, History and Archives Unit, Fort Worth Library. Fort Worth 1850–89, Map Cases.

The men of the Second Dragoons must have done their job well. During the fort’s four years of operation, few confrontations between Indians and whites were documented. Most of the interaction between Indians and whites was of a commercial nature: trading.

But the frontier was not static. By 1853, the frontier had shifted to the west as white settlement continued. The new frontier needed a new line of forts. The army abandoned Fort Worth. But so peaceful was the area by 1853 that the small civilian population that had grown up around the fort continued to grow after the soldiers left. Merchants Henry Clay Daggett and Archibald Leonard, who opened the town’s first business in 1849 at Traders Oak, moved their trading post into a barracks of the abandoned fort.

A plaque at the corner of Belknap and Houston Streets downtown marks the site of the army’s Fort Worth. Author’s photo.

Henry Clay Daggett’s brother Ephraim arrived and converted the fort’s stable into a no-frills lodging house. In 1853, John Peter Smith migrated west from Dallas and established the town’s first school in the fort’s hospital building.

Another early arrival was Julian Feild, who moved into one of the fort’s vacant buildings and set up a trading post just after the army moved out. Feild brought with him a meager inventory of goods: coffee grinders, bolts of cloth, hand tools, sugar and salt.

In 1853, Feild came down with a fever. The tiny civilian settlement had no doctor, of course, so a doctor was fetched from Dallas. The thirty-mile trip was a long house call for young Dr. Carroll M. Peak. In fact, it was a house call that lasted a lifetime. Fort Worth’s temporary doctor decided to stay and become its permanent doctor. Dr. Peak established a practice that covered a thirty-mile radius. He made his rounds on his horse, Gray Eagle. The hardware he carried included an amputation saw, a knife and a pistol.

On January 4, 1854, Dr. Peak’s wife, Florence, gave birth to daughter Clara in the abandoned officers’ quarters, where the Peaks had set up house in 1853. Clara was Fort Worth’s first child.

In 1856, Florence gave birth to son Howard, Fort Worth’s second child.

The first Fort Worth was dead, and the next Fort Worth was born.

CAMP BOWIE: CALL IT CAMP QUICK

On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. In late May, Fort Worth city officials proposed to the federal government that the army build one of its planned mobilization camps just west of town. On June 11, the War Department announced that Fort Worth had indeed been selected for a camp.