COWTOWN AIN’T
In which I tell you about my hometown, Ft. Worth, Texas
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Question: “What do you call Mexican food down in Guadalajara?”
Answer: “Food.”
Once upon a time, there were indigenous people living in the Southern part of a continent not yet called America in what wasn’t yet a State not called Texas.
“Not-Yet-Texas” had about a hundred tribes of indigenous families.
These various tribes referred to themselves as ‘people’ or ‘human beings.’
Many of these tribes of “human beings” didn’t get along too well with the other “people” and I know you know what I mean, so don’t be acting confused.
Much later, invaders from other lands would arrive mistakenly convinced they’d arrived in India.
Naturally, they called the indigenous inhabitants “Indians.”
Our indigenous tribes shrugged at their ignorance.
There was competition for survival among these tribes following migrating herds of “buffalo” which weren’t really buffalo but were actually bison!
This is admittedly a lot of ain't!
Ain’t Texas
Ain’t Indians
Ain’t buffalo.
The ‘ain’t Indians regarded the invaders as ‘white men.’ These interlopers weren’t all “white” nor were they all men. They were Spanish, Italian, French, and English predominantly.
They were stubborn.
After all, by now, they might have figured out they were NOT IN INDIA!!
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Apaches dominated West Texas and their natural enemies were Comanches. It seemed prudent to these Apache warriors and braves to side with Federal troops in wiping out Comanches and somehow convincing themselves their new allies wouldn’t turn against them in the end. I think we know how that turned out!
If you’ve watched any Western movies you’re way ahead of me on the plot right now.
Let’s fast forward to a Fort called Worth and my hometown, shall we?
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To understand Fort Worth you need to be introduced to its namesake, William Worth, a General in the U.S. Army in the 1840’s.
Worth joined the Army when the War of 1812 erupted. He was only 18 years-old.
What’s odd about this?
Worth was reared by deeply religious parents who were Quakers! One suspects an 18-year-old Quaker boy was extremely anxious to get away from a fanatical religious community even if it meant physical danger!
Quakers were rigorous Pacifists. However...Great Britain had long been interfering with trade on the high seas, kidnapping Americans and impressing them into forced servitude, as well as bribing the ain’t-Indians to attack settlers.
President Madison requested Congress declare war in 1812 and the young Quaker jumped at a chance to demonstrate what a tough apostate Quaker could do to put the kibosh on ‘bad guys.’
In his first battle against the Chippewa (ain’t-Indians), Worth was almost fatally wounded and ended up being award the rank of Major for his bravery (if not effectiveness.)
In the next ten years, he fought against the Seminoles and rose in rank again to General after fighting in every major battle between the U.S. and Mexico.
Unfortunately, he died of cholera in 1849. (Drinking bad water.)
Do you suppose William Worth is buried in the city named after him? You’d be wrong. He was buried in Brooklyn, New York. (Don’t ask!)
What is important is that General Worth was considered a great military tactician. He proposed that a series of 10 protective forts be constructed in the newly won Mexican territory (ain’t-Texas) and one of those forts was named in his honor.
Why?
A young Major who hero-worshipped Worth had been dispatched to find an ideal spot for one of these forts. His name was Ripley Arnold. Arnold established a post on the banks of the Trinity and named it Camp Worth in honor of the late General Worth.
In August 1849, Arnold moved the camp to a north-facing bluff that overlooked the mouth of the Clear Fork. The US War Department officially granted the name "Fort Worth" to the post on 14 November 1849.
The trouble with ain’t-Indians continued until the U.S. Army abandoned Fort Worth in 1853 at which point it becomes an ain’t-Fort.
(Note: armies and settlers from Spain called the area belonging to them, “Tejas”.)
Why?
The indigenous people, Caddo, welcomed them as friends and “Tejas” means “allies.”
In the course of time, before Texas became a sovereign nation in 1836, Texian or Texican referred to any resident, of any color or language
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What is now called Texas existed under 6 different flags in the course of its history.
"Six countries have had sovereignty over some or all of the current territory of the U.S. state of Texas:
1, Spain (1519–1685; 1690–1821),
2. France (1685–1690),
3. Mexico (1821–1836),
4. Republic of Texas (1836–1845),
5. Confederate States of America (1861–1865),
6. The United States of America
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Here’s the part you need to understand…
The early settlers in the area around Fort Worth were rugged individualists. They flourished and built stores, schools, hospitals, department stores and all the trappings of what would become a city.
I’ve lived in Fort Worth since 1947 and I recognize the names of these founding fathers on buildings, street signs, parks and businesses as their legacy as indomitable folk who stuck with their dreams when even the U.S. Army gave up and moved on.
I like that Ft. Worth is named after an Apostate! I’m one too, after all.
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“So, Terry, is that the whole story? You didn’t explain the Cowtown Ain’t title of this tale.”
Yes, you’re right.
Hang in and hang on and you’ll be repaid for your patience, gentle reader!
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The city of Fort Worth is inside the greater County of Tarrant.
By the time the Civil War broke out in 1860, Tarrant County had 850 slaves to account for and roughly 6,000 whites (who probably were white.) The County flourished with free labor at its core and soon voted to abandon its fealty to other States in America by seceding from the Union.
Was this a prudent business decision, a good Christian decision, a patriotic decision, or just a case of CYA? (Cover yer ass.)
History tells the tale.
Judgment is rendered in the results of that decision by the founding fathers of Fort Worth and Tarrant County.
At the end of the Civil War, Fort Worth was down to a population of 175 persons. If that doesn’t teach you a lesson--you’re never going to learn one.
How did Fort Worth revive its economy?
Glad you asked!
The answer in one word is cattle.
Fort Worth became COWTOWN.
Longhorns stolen and purchased from Mexico were driven up through the middle of Texas toward the well-watered triple branched TRINITY River complex and...Cowtown (Fort Worth.)
Here’s a fast fact for you.
Texas is mostly prairie, grassland, hills and desert, forests, and only ONE natural lake: Caddo.
Texas is FLAT and DRY except for its rivers.
If you’re driving cattle, you’re compelled to follow the grass and the rivers. If you do that, you end up in Fort Worth: Cowtown.
Between 1866 and 1890, 4 million head of cattle passed through Cowtown (Fort Worth.)
Once railroads became established in 1876, the idea of a treacherous land journey through hostile territories was abandoned.
Cowboys spent their money and moved on.
When did COWTOWN become AIN’T COWTOWN?
A wealthy Boston capitalist, Greenleaf Simpson, was seduced into investing in local stockyards by some fast talk and sweet promises of wealth to come. In 1893, Simpson offered $133 thousand dollars for the local stockyards and he, in turn, lured other Northern capitalists to join him in the meat packing business. By the year 1900, both Armour and Swift had opened regional processing plants in the area.
The flow of cattle, stock exchanges, slaughterhouses, meat processing industries made Fort Worth the “Wall Street of the West.”
Feeders and Breeders convened regularly at the newly constructed Cowtown Coliseum and an annual Fat Stock Show and Rodeo commenced its tradition.
1923 arrived as $30 million dollars flowed through the local economy.
By WWII, over 5 million cattle were processed and rendered until the boom turned after the war into a bust.
The rise of Interstate highways and the trucking industry replaced transportation of goods by the railroads and the cattle markets shrunk into smaller and smaller venues.
By the 1980’s, the 5 million cattle which had once invigorated Fort Worth had shriveled into a pathetic 57 thousand annually.
Luckily, a new industry had soon replaced the old one.
This new industry didn’t have to be fed, watered or driven through prairies or slaughtered and packed for shipment.
The discovery of OIL brought a new source of revenue replacing the cattle industry.
I know I don’t need to explain the oil industry to you.
Wildcat drilling using venture capital either produced active wells or they completely failed.
The trick was finding investors to give you money.
(Historical note: George Bush the younger had a real knack for accepting millions of dollars from his father’s friends and political acquaintances to “invest” in wildcat wells. None of the wells paid off and young Bush kept the leftover slush fund!)
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Fort Worth has many nicknames such as “Where the West Begins”, “Panther City”, and “Cowtown.”
Having lived here for 70 years, I can tell you the identity of this city is pretty much a fantasy clinging to a faded past of romantic cowboys and ‘Indians’ and cattle drives, saloons, and a Hell’s Half Acre.
We are actually a metropolitan area of less than a million people, 99% of whom have absolutely nothing to do with COWS!
Fort Worth largely exists because of the largesse of billionaires such as Richard Rainwater and the four Bass brothers.
Forbes magazine published this on March 21, 2016:
“The four billionaire Bass brothers--Sid, Edward, Robert, and Lee--inherited a small fortune from their oil-tycoon uncle four decades ago and have built it up to a combined $8.2 billion.“
If you are a billionaire and you wish to be a large fish in a small pool, Fort Worth is an excellent way to gain notice and attract others who will fuel your fiefdom with talent and funds as well.
For example, Richard Rainwater was a stockbroker hired by Sid Bass who started his own investment firm locally and with his guidance, the Bass brothers became private equity and hedge fund titans.
As a matter of record, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, 20 billionaires have made their home, if--for no other reason--Texas is only 1 of 2 states in America which does NOT have a State income tax! Dallas and Fort Worth are about as far north and west as you can go and still have the best of two worlds: rural and homespun as well as modern and cosmopolitan.
(Yes, I have met some--not all--of these philanthropists and Titans and found them to be down-to-earth and ‘just folks’ for the most part.)
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Conclusion
Without sounding like a Chamber of Commerce shill, I’ll simply suggest you check out on Google the “Things to do” list in Fort Worth.
We have a remarkable Library system with amazing donors affiliated with free concerts and programs of the highest quality. The Van Cliburn Competition locally brings superb artistic genius into our city as a source of much pride and celebration.
Bass Hall is a latter day Opera House with perfect acoustics and lavish architecture as a venue for musicals, concerts, ballet, and mixed events at the highest level of performance.
And so on. I won’t bore you. Check it out for yourself.
Getting back to my title, COWTOWN AIN’T was written because I think we really need to let go of the shabby western mythos of the 1840’s and concentrate on our emergence in Fort Worth as a modern, contemporary paradise with the best a large ‘small town’ has to offer.
The past has passed.
Let go. Move forward.
My great grandmother’s husband was Jim Rushing, a sheriff (or possibly sheriff’s deputy) here in Fort Worth who was shot in the back by a gambler long ago.
She never quite got over it and told me tales of that time period with tears in her eyes. I learned to think of our fair city as something not lost in the past, but as a survivor of hard times and bad men and rotten situations brought on by happenstance, bad luck, and wrong-headed decisions.
But we survived, shook off the old ways, and moved ahead to join the real world.
The moral of the story and the point of this article is as follows:
We Ain’t Cowtown--we’re a Now town!
