Azle, Texas

Everything Azle is known for

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Music in Azle

Songs About Azle

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Artists From Azle

A
Allan Peterson
country Pop: 1
J
Justin Slinkard
country Pop: 1

Rivers & Roads in Song near Azle

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Azle.

Texas State Highway 199 8 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Brazos River 37 songs Interstate 35 42 songs Trinity River 10 songs Chisholm Trail 7 songs

History of Azle

The Winter the Ground Started Shaking RoadyGoat

For a stretch of weeks late in 2013, the ground under Azle would not hold still. Starting in early November, residents felt the floor jolt, dishes rattle, and pictures tilt as a swarm of small earthquakes rolled through Azle and neighboring Reno, just across the Parker County line. The U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center logged 27 felt quakes between early November 2013 and January 2014, including two widely felt magnitude 3.6 shocks, one near Azle on November 19 and another north of town on December 8. By North Texas standards this was unheard of. The area had recorded essentially no earthquakes in roughly 150 years, so a town built on quiet prairie suddenly cracked walls and frayed nerves. Frightened homeowners packed city and railroad-commission meetings demanding answers, because everyone suspected the booming gas-drilling industry all around them, not nature, was rattling their homes. The swarm faded by early 2014, but it turned a sleepy exurb into ground zero for one of the biggest scientific fights in Texas: what makes the earth shake where it never had before. (Source: U.S. Geological Survey; Texas Almanac.)

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How Drilling Wastewater Taught a Town About Faults RoadyGoat

When Azle started shaking in 2013, scientists turned the town into a natural laboratory for induced seismicity, earthquakes triggered by human activity. A team led by Southern Methodist University geophysicists Matthew Hornbach and Heather DeShon, working with the U.S. Geological Survey, blanketed the area with seismometers and mapped what was moving underground. They found two intersecting faults deep beneath the gas field, faults that had sat locked and silent for ages. Around them, the Barnett Shale operation was doing two opposite things at once: more than 70 production wells were pulling huge volumes of natural gas and salty brine out of the rock to the east, while two disposal wells were pumping wastewater back into the ground to the west. The team built a 3-D model of fluid pressure and showed that this push-and-pull changed the stress along the faults just enough to unstick them and set off the swarm. Tellingly, when injection volumes dropped, the shaking eased. Published in Nature Communications in 2015, the Azle study became key evidence that managing wastewater can manage man-made quakes. (Source: Southern Methodist University; U.S. Geological Survey.)

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Two Settlers, Two Acres, and the Town's Oldest Ground RoadyGoat

On the western edge of town lies the oldest piece of organized Azle there is. In 1871 two early settlers, town namesake Dr. James Azle Steward and John Giles Reynolds, each donated an acre of land to create Ash Creek Cemetery, giving the scattered farm families a permanent place to bury their dead. The earliest graves are lost to time, with no records kept of who went into the ground first, but the first documented burials are Dave Morrison in 1874 and W. P. Gregg, laid nearby later that same year. For decades upkeep was informal until February 22, 1922, when residents organized the Azle Cemetery Association to maintain the grounds and finally keep accurate burial records. More than two thousand graves now fill the site, a roll call of the families who built the town. In 1985 the Texas Historical Commission recognized its long history with a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark designation. Walking the rows here is the closest thing Azle has to reading its own founding ledger, settler by settler. (Source: Ash Creek Cemetery Association; Texas Historical Commission.)

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Eagle Mountain Army Air Field — WWII Marine Glider Base

1942

In June 1942, the U.S. Marines established a glider training base on 2,500 acres east of Eagle Mountain Lake, 18 miles northwest of Fort Worth — the first inland glider base in the country. The base trained Marine pilots on Waco gliders inspired by Germany's capture of Crete, then shifted to dive bomber finishing school in 1944. Closed after WWII, the land was purchased by televangelist Kenneth Copeland in 1986. The runway, a cracked ramp, and a Quonset hut are all that remain.

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Nix, William Hoyle

1918

Hoyle Nix, West Texas fiddler, bandleader, and exponent of the Bob Wills sound, was born William Hoyle Nix to Jonah Lafayette Nix and Myrtle May (Brooks) Nix on March 22, 1918, in Azle, Texas. The family moved to Big Spring when Hoyle was one year old. His father was a fiddler and his mother a guitarist, and the couple often performed together at community gatherings. Nix was six years old when he learned his first fiddle tune. In addition to his parents' influence, the music of Bob Wills was also very important to his style. According to Nix, Wills was the finest fiddler he ever heard. Nix and his brother Ben formed the West Texas Cowboys in 1946 and patterned the band after Wills's Texas Playboys. In 1954 the Nix brothers built a small dance hall on the Snyder highway just outside of Big Spring and named it the Stampede . Nix had already established a dance circuit in the area and was making regular appearances in other towns, including Abilene, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa, and San Angelo. The West Texas Cowboys cut their first recordings in 1949 for the Dallas-based Star Talent label. The initial Star Talent release, Nix's "A Big Ball's in Cowtown," a folk-derived rewrite, proved to be an enduring standard. He continued to record for small Texas record companies-Queen, Caprock , Bo-Kay, and Winston -in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1968 Nix started his own label, Stampede, named after the dance hall. During the late 1950s, the West Texas Cowboys grew to its largest size with nine members. The band at this time included former Texas Playboys Eldon Shamblin, Millard Kelso, and Louis Tierney. Nix had first shared a stage with Bob Wills in 1952 in Colorado City, Texas, and their two bands soon began touring together, splitting the playing time at each dance. After Wills disbanded the Texas Playboys in the early 1960s, he continued to appear with Nix on a fairly regular basis until his first stroke in 1969. The respect that Wills had for Nix was evidenced when he invited Nix and his son Jody to participate in what turned out to be Wills's final recording session, For the Last Time , in 1973. Nix's last recordings were made in 1977 and released on Oil Patch. He was inducted into the Nebraska Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984, the Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985, the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame in 1991, the Western Swing Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Northwest Western Swing Music Society Hall of Fame in 2013. He died after a short illness on August 21, 1985, in Big Spring, Texas. Nix married five times and had four children, Larry (1940), Jody (1952), Hoylene (1957), and Robin (1959). Larry joined his father's band in 1957 and played bass. When Jody signed on in 1960 as drummer and fiddler, the two siblings became the rhythm section of the West Texas Cowboys, a position they held for the next twenty-five years. Jody Nix took over leadership of the band as his father wanted, and with the younger Nix carrying on the show, Texans were assured of dancing to the music of a Nix fiddle well into the twenty-first century.

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Rice, William M.

1834

William M. Rice first came to Texas in 1834 and settled in what is now Nacogdoches County, where he was involved in frontier defense and served as an Alcalde in the Mexican Government. He served in the Texas Revolution and was wounded in the Battle at San Jacinto. He and his wife, Mariah, later lived in Harris County, in Kansas, and in Dallas County, where he was a farmer and merchant. During the Civil War, he was active on the home front, making soldiers' hats and hauling supplies. About 1874, Rice moved to Tarrant County, where he lived until his death.

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Ash Creek Baptist Church

1871

On September 9, 1871, the Rev. J.C. Powers led 48 charter members in organizing Ash Creek Missionary Baptist Church. Guarding against Indians, Rev. Powers preached with a gun beside his Bible and men kept rifles on their knees. A meeting house was erected at this site in 1891 under the Rev. T.H. Sturges. In summers, brush arbors were built and prayer meetings held on the grounds. The women sold all eggs laid on Sundays to buy Sunday school literature. In 1965 a new auditorium was built and the original structure used for a Fellowship Hall. (1979)

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Kiowa Raid on Walnut Creek

1867

In April 1867 a band of about sixty Kiowa Indians, led by Chiefs Satank and Satanta, raided the home of William Hamleton on Walnut Creek. Hamleton was away when the Kiowas killed his wife, Sally, and captured two children, Lavina and Mary. Lavina was released from captivity after six months, but Mary was given to an Indian family and grew to adulthood among the Kiowas. Called To-Goam-Gat-Ty, she became an accepted tribal member and married another captive, Calisay. The site of the 1867 Kiowa Raid is now under the waters of Eagle Mountain Reservior (1.4 mi. E) (1983)

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Azle, TX

1846

Azle is on State Highway 199 sixteen miles northwest of downtown Fort Worth in the northwest corner of Tarrant County; the town extends partly into Parker County. The first recorded settlement at the site occurred in 1846, when a young doctor named James Azle Steward moved into a cabin built by a Dutchman named Rumsfeldt. Other settlers came and established themselves near the local streams, Ash Creek, Silver Creek, and Walnut Creek. The first post office opened in 1881, and the town took the name O'Bar in honor of the man who obtained the postal service. Soon, however, the name was changed at the request of Steward, who donated the land for a townsite in order to have the town named Azle. The community's economy was based on agriculture. Several crops were grown, including wheat, corn, peanuts, sorghum, and cotton. Watermelons, cantaloupes, peaches, plums, and pears were also produced. Dairy farming became important in the early decades of the twentieth century, when local milk products were sold to creameries in Fort Worth. The population of Azle grew steadily, and by 1920 the census recorded 150 residents. By 1933 State Highway 34 (later State Highway 199) had reached Azle from Fort Worth, greatly improving transportation capabilities between the town and the city. Also, Eagle Mountain Lake was formed by a dam on the Trinity River east of Azle. In the late 1930s electricity was supplied to Azle and the surrounding countryside. The population grew between 1940 and 1960 from 800 to 2,696. It was 5,822 by 1980. After the 1930s agriculture gradually declined; fields were converted from wheat and corn production to housing developments. Manufacturing increased, and in 1984 Azle had twenty-six businesses. In 1985 the population was estimated at more than 7,000. The town's proximity to Fort Worth and its position as the "Gateway to Eagle Mountain Lake" have made Azle a popular place to live. In 1990 the population was 8,868. The population grew to 9,600 by 2000.

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Things to Do in Azle

quirky 3.7 mi away
Chewbacca's Grave — May the 4th

May the 4th be with you — and with the Wookiee. Peter Mayhew the seven-foot-three British actor who brought Chewbacca to life in every Star Wars film from 1977…
historical 0.1 mi away
WWII Marine Glider Base at Eagle Mountain

In 1942 the United States Marines bought 2931 acres of ranchland on Eagle Mountain Lake for a purpose that sounds almost unbelievable now — training pilots to…
quirky 0.1 mi away
The Azle Earthquake Swarm

Starting in November 2013 the ground beneath Azle started shaking and it did not stop for 84 days. Twenty-seven earthquakes rattled windows cracked foundations…
quirky 3.6 mi away
Chewbacca's Grave

The seven-foot-three British actor who played Chewbacca in every Star Wars film from 1977 to The Force Awakens is buried right here at Azleland Memorial Park.…
quirky 8.8 mi away
Springtown Dinosaur Tracks

A family went out hunting arrowheads along Walnut Creek in 2017 and found something about 110 million years older than they expected. Pressed into the creekbed…
historical 13.8 mi away
Billy Bob's Texas

Billy Bob's opened in 1981 in an old cattle barn in the Fort Worth Stockyards and at one hundred twenty-seven thousand square feet it is the largest honky-tonk…
historical 13.8 mi away
Fort Worth Stockyards

Daily cattle drives down the street. Honky-tonks and rodeos in the old West.
food 15.0 mi away
Joe T. Garcia's

Joe T opened his little family restaurant behind the packing plant in the Fort Worth Stockyards in 1935. There was no menu. His wife Jessie served whatever she…

Everything Near Azle

1093 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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