Burleson, Texas

Everything Burleson is known for

5 songs mention this city 5 artists from here

Burleson, Texas, a city in North Texas, is home to a notable collection of musical talent. Grammy Award winning pop artist Kelly Clarkson graduated from Burleson High School. Country music is also well-represented, with the Casey Donahew Band, whose frontman Casey Donahew was born and raised in Burleson and still lives there today. Three of their songs, "running out of time," "Country Song," and "Feels This Right," mention Burleson.

The country duo The Janedear Girls also hails from Burleson.

Music in Burleson

Songs About Burleson

running out of time
casey donahew
10%
Country Song
Casey Donahew
6%
"And a girl from my hometown who tore my world apart"
Feels This Right
Casey Donahew
4%
"Everybody talking 'bout me in this town"
Ohio (Reprise)
Bowling for Soup
4%
"Kelly Clarkson wants you back"
High
Casey Donahew Band
2%
"Fifteen minutes south of the Fort Worth city lights"

Artists From Burleson

K
Kelly Clarkson
pop
C
Casey Donahew
country
C
Casey Donahew Band
country
T
The Janedear Girls
country
W
Wylder Wilson
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Burleson

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

Interstate 20 13 songs Chisholm Trail 8 songs Texas State Highway 199 8 songs Brazos River 42 songs Trinity River 11 songs Interstate 45 8 songs

Musical Heritage

Where Kelly Clarkson Found Her Voice RoadyGoat

Before she won the very first season of American Idol in 2002 and became one of the biggest pop voices in the country, Kelly Clarkson was just a kid in Burleson. Born in Fort Worth in 1982, she grew up here in this suburb south of the city, and the story locals love is that her gift was first spotted in a school hallway. As a seventh grader, her singing caught the ear of her school's choir teacher, who pulled her toward formal training, and she went on through the Burleson schools as a standout vocalist. A decade later that voice carried her through a national television contest watched by millions and straight to a number-one debut single. Burleson was a small enough town that a choir teacher could change the course of a career simply by hearing something in a hallway, and the singer who answered that call still gets claimed, proudly, as Burleson's own. (Source: Wikipedia; NBC.)

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The Hometown Voice RoadyGoat

1982

Burleson's most famous daughter is the singer Kelly Clarkson, who grew up here before winning the very first season of a national televised singing competition in 2002 and going on to one of the biggest pop careers of her generation. Years later, she said her small-town upbringing was exactly what prepared her for the strangest part of fame, the loss of privacy. In her words: Everyone has something to say, or can be invasive of your privacy, and for whatever reason that calmed me because I grew up in that atmosphere and so I knew I could handle it. She has said she approaches her whole career the way she'd approach the small town she came from.

History of Burleson

The Preacher Who Sold the Land and Got to Name the Town RoadyGoat

You're rolling into a town that exists because a railroad needed dirt and a preacher had it to sell. In 1881 the Missouri, Kansas and Texas line was pushing a route south from Fort Worth toward Hillsboro, and railroad man Grenville M. Dodge bought the depot tract from Reverend Henry C. Renfro, who owned land right here in the northern edge of Johnson County, fourteen miles below Fort Worth. As part of the deal, Renfro got the honor of naming the new stop. He didn't name it after himself. He named it Burleson, after Dr. Rufus C. Burleson, his old teacher and the longtime president of Baylor University, a man best remembered for baptizing Sam Houston. The post office followed in 1882, set up inside a saloon with John L. Dickey as first postmaster. By 1890 about 200 people lived here, and the surrounding farms were shipping cotton, wheat, and cottonseed out on the very rails that gave the town its reason to be. The name on every sign you pass honors a Baylor president who never lived here. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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From the Pulpit to Free Thought: The Man Behind the Name RoadyGoat

The man who named this town had a stranger story than the town itself. Henry Carty Renfro, born in Tennessee in 1831, came up as a Baptist minister and a former Baylor student, and he organized churches across Johnson and Tarrant counties. Then his reading led him somewhere his church couldn't follow. Renfro started questioning Baptist orthodoxy and the organized church entirely, and in February 1884 he was charged with preaching the doctrine of infidelity and expelled from the ministry. Instead of going quiet, he became a public free-thought lecturer, drawing large crowds across north-central Texas. He didn't have long. In March 1885 he died of pneumonia caught while making a cattle drive from his farm up to Fort Worth, the same kind of drive that defined this country in the trail era. Baptist papers claimed he recanted his liberalism on his deathbed; his family furiously denied it, and the dispute outlived him. Fittingly, his old friend Rufus Burleson, the man this town is named for, preached his funeral to more than a thousand mourners at Bethesda Baptist. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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The Creek That Is Born in Burleson and Fills a City's Lake RoadyGoat

Most people never notice it, but Burleson is the birthplace of a creek that ends up as drinking water for a city to the north. Village Creek rises right here, its headwaters tucked into northern Johnson County near Heiney Ranch Road and FM 802, then runs a long, roughly northeast course after Shannon Creek joins it inside town. From Burleson it threads through Kennedale and pours into Lake Arlington as that reservoir's main inflow, before finally emptying into the West Fork of the Trinity River. The plumbing matters: Lake Arlington is a working municipal and industrial water-supply lake, and it doubles as a terminal-storage basin in the regional system, so the rain that lands on Burleson's streets and the springs that feed this creek genuinely help fill a city's tap. The whole Village Creek watershed covers roughly 143 square miles across Johnson and Tarrant counties, and engineers watch it closely enough to keep a U.S. Geological Survey stream gauge, station 08048890, measuring the flow right at Burleson. The water under that bridge you just crossed is the start of someone else's faucet.

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The Interurban in Burleson

1911

At the turn of the 20th century, the Northern Texas Traction Co. found success with an interurban railway that operated between Fort Worth and Dallas. In 1911, a group began planning a new interurban that would run from Fort Worth to Cleburne by way of Everman, Burleson and Joshua. By that time, Burleson had approximately 700 residents and an active business district, and the city incorporated in 1912. The Fort Worth Southern Traction Co. came to town that year seeking employees and arranged with businessman and community leader Albert H. Loyless to be their local representative. He moved his Loyless-Robbins Pharmacy from a two-story wooden building across the street to a new brick building at this site. The traction company constructed an electrical plant and freight dock behind the building, and the pharmacy, complete with soda fountain and interurban ticket counter, occupied the front of the orange-brick structure. The first public run of the electrical train line came through Burleson on September 1, 1912. From that date until 1931, the train carried people in and out of town, brought goods to them from other cities, and helped make the pharmacy a community center. In 1935, a few years after the interurban ceased its service and motor coaches and automobiles took its place, Loyless, accepting the position of Burleson postmaster, moved his business next door to the post office. Robert Deering bought the former pharmacy building and from it published his newspaper, the Burleson News (later Burleson Dispatcher). The city later purchased the building for use as a visitors center. (2006)

Historical Marker →

Renfro, Henry Carty

1857

Henry Carty Renfro, Baptist minister, was born near Maryville, Blount County, Tennessee, on July 18, 1831, the son of Absalom C. and Levicy (Tipton) Renfro. The family moved to Rock Spring, Walker County, Georgia, before moving to Cass County, Texas, in June 1851. Renfro enrolled at Baylor University at Independence, Washington County, where he studied to become a minister under well-known educators such as Baylor president Rufus C. Burleson and George Washington Baines . In 1857, during a period of disagreement between Burleson and Horace Clark , Renfro was called to become the pastor of the Independence Baptist Church, then one of the most important Baptist churches in Texas. He was the only student ever chosen to fill the position. Continuing bitter divisions between Burleson, Clark, and others in the congregation, however, prompted Renfro to resign the post and return to Cass County. Soon after, he moved to Johnson County, where he conducted revivals and helped to establish the Bethesda Baptist Church, the county's first Baptist congregation. In Johnson County Renfro met Mary Robinson Ray, a recent arrival in Texas from Tennessee, and they were married on November 24, 1859. A son was born in 1860. With the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Renfro enlisted in Company C of William H. Griffin's Twenty-first Texas Infantry Battalion. Efforts of Rufus C. Burleson eventually led to Renfro's appointment as chaplain of Joseph Speight 's Regiment, Fifteenth Texas Infantry, after Burleson's resignation from the position. Renfro remained with the regiment for the remainder of the war, participating in the battles of Bayou Bourbeau, Vidalia, Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Yellow Bayou. In July 1864, while he was with his unit in Louisiana, his wife had a daughter in Johnson County. After returning to Texas, Renfro served as the minister of several Baptist congregations in Johnson and Tarrant counties. He also farmed and traded in land. He sold the property that became the town of Burleson and named the site after his old friend and professor Rufus Burleson. Renfro generally was regarded as one of the most prominent Baptist ministers in Texas. However, he began to question the organized church and Baptist orthodoxy, and his studies resulted in his being charged with "advocating and preaching the doctrine of infidelity." Despite Burleson's request for a delay, Renfro was dismissed from the ministry and the Baptist Church on February 2, 1884. He continued to lecture about free thought to large audiences in north central Texas. He died on March 2, 1885, after contracting pneumonia on a cattle drive from his farm to Fort Worth. His son, Burleson, died of the same disease three days later. Renfro's death was not without controversy, however, as Baptist publications reported that he recanted his conversion to liberalism on his deathbed, a charge vehemently denied by his family and friends. Rufus Burleson preached Renfro's funeral service to over 1,000 persons, and the former minister was buried in the cemetery at Bethesda Baptist Church in Johnson County.

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Renfro-Clark House

1894

Home of heirs of donor of the Burleson townsite. By providing land for the M.K.T. Railroad line, Henry C. Renfro (deceased 1885) won right to name town for his friend, Dr. Rufus Burleson, a pioneer preacher, president of Waco College (1861-86) and Baylor University (1851-61; 1886-97). This was the first house in the Clark addition, and was built in 1894 by Mrs. Henry C. Renfro and her only daughter, Margaret Annette Baker Clark.

Historical Marker →

Burleson, TX

1881

Burleson is on Interstate Highway 35W, U.S. Highway 81, State Highway 174, and Farm roads 731 and 3391, fourteen miles south of Fort Worth in northern Johnson and southern Tarrant counties. Shannon and Village creeks run through the community. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad runs through the community, and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe runs just to the west. Burleson began when the MKT planned a railroad from Fort Worth to Hillsboro in 1881 and established a depot on the townsite. Grenville M. Dodge, representing the railroad, purchased the land, originally part of the J. W. Henderson survey, from Rev. Henry C. Renfro . As part of the agreement, Renfro was allowed to name the depot and called it Burleson, in honor of Dr. Rufus C. Burleson , his teacher and later president of Baylor University. In 1882 Burleson received a post office located in a saloon, with John L. Dickey as the first postmaster. Soon after it opened, several stores and churches were formed. Burleson was a mile south of an earlier community, Brushy Mound, which was bypassed by the railroad. The first school in the area had been founded at Brushy Mound in 1879. In 1885 a new building was constructed and called Alta Vista College. In 1893 it became Red Oak Academy and was run by the Presbyterian Church . After the school was discontinued the building was moved to Burleson in 1900. The Brushy Mound site is now in the Burleson city limits. In its first fifty years Burleson was a stable community organized around agriculture and livestock raising. By 1890 it had a population of 200, grocers, druggists, a general store, and several cotton gin-gristmills. Ten years later the community had a newspaper, the Burleson Banner , and an artesian well and waterworks that supplied water to area homes and businesses. In 1899 Burleson shipped 2,000 bales of cotton, eighty cars of wheat and oats, and thirty cars of cottonseed. The population in Burleson was 368 in 1904 but dropped by the 1920s to 241, before beginning a slow climb to 573 in 1940. The community was incorporated before 1930. In 1912 the North Texas Traction Company began service on its Interurban line between Cleburne and Fort Worth with a stop in Burleson. In 1913 Burleson received its first electricity, powered by wires laid for the Interurban, and in 1921 Lone Star Gas began to provide gas service to Burleson. The Interurban service to Burleson made the town more accessible to the outside world. In 1924 State Highway 21 was built from Fort Worth to Alvarado through Burleson. As Burleson grew land was annexed to provide room for new buildings. Before World War II the Cumming-Clark addition was built, and after the war the Mound, Tarrant, Crestmoor, and Montclair additions were annexed. The population began to grow more rapidly. From 1940 to 1950 it rose 28 percent, from 573 to 795, but in the next decade the population mushroomed from 795 in 1950 to 2,345 in 1960, as Burleson became a suburb of Fort Worth. The community began to rely less on agriculture and more on business and industry. It supported thirty businesses in the 1930s, and sixty-two in the 1960s. In 1950 Burleson had seven manufacturers, including three feed companies and a brass manufacturer. By 1980 the population of 11,734 supported 196 businesses. Fourteen manufacturers constructed a variety of items, including glass, mobile homes, camper tops, and metal storage sheds. In 1990 three newspapers, the Burleson Star (established 1965), the Joshua Tribune (established 1970), and the Burleson Star Review (established 1969), were published in Burleson, in addition to technical, trade, and church journals. In 1990 the population of Burleson was 16,113. In 2000 the population grew to 20,976. The Burleson Library and a museum were located in the Victorian home of the Clark and Renfro families, built in 1893.

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Marystown, TX

1853

Marystown was ten miles north of Cleburne in northern Johnson County. The first Anglo-American settlers in the area, the Reverend J. S. Wilshire and his family, arrived and established a farm in 1853, and other settlers followed soon after, drawn by the plentiful timber and constant water of Quil Miller Creek. The community, however, was not organized until after the Civil War , when Thomas W. Hollingsworth, an area landowner, established a flour mill and a mercantile business. Other settlers arrived and additional businesses opened. Hollingsworth called the developing community Marysville, in honor of his wife, Mary, and applied for a post office under that name, but a Marysville post office already existed in the state, so the settlement became Marystown. The Marystown post office operated from 1874 to 1901. By 1879 the community had 100 residents, two grocery stores, a general merchandise store, a cotton gin, a gristmill, a flour mill, a blacksmith shop, a school, and two churches, one of them a community church built by Hollingsworth. In 1881 the railroad bypassed Marystown, and residents moved to the nearby rail town of Burleson. By the early 1890s only a general merchandise store, a flour mill, a cotton gin, and the post office remained open in Marystown. For the 1896–97 school year, one teacher taught eighty-seven pupils. By 1900–01 the school had 117 students and two teachers. Marystown ceased to exist as an organized community sometime thereafter.

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Bethesda Community

1844

The Bethesda Community traces its history to 1853, when pioneer farmer David R. Jackson donated land for a community cemetery. Unmarked graves date to 1844, and the earliest marked burials are from 1856. Bethesda Baptist Church was organized on August 13, 1855. It was the First Baptist Church in the county and was called Cross Timbers Bethesda Baptist Church. Services were held in a log cabin. Initially served by circuit riding ministers, the church's first pastor was William Robinson. A Sunday School was organized in 1887. Services were held monthly until 1944, when weekly meetings were begun. After the original log cabin church burned in 1878, a new wooden structure was built. A brick sanctuary was constructed in 1959, and became a fellowship hall in 1980 when a new facility was completed. A community school was organized in 1855. Located at the head of Crill Miller Creek, it was called Crill Miller School. In 1918 it was consolidated with the Post Oak and Village Creek Schools to form Bethesda School. A four-room schoolhouse was built and served as a center for many community activities. Bethesda School was incorporated into the Burleson Independent School District in 1950.

Historical Marker → · 4.5 mi away

Things to Do in Burleson

food 15.7 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…
historical 17.0 mi away
Fort Worth Stockyards

Daily cattle drives down the street. Honky-tonks and rodeos in the old West.
historical 17.0 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…
spooky 18.0 mi away
Lake Worth Monster

In 1969 dozens of witnesses reported a half-man half-goat creature prowling the shores of Lake Worth. Police investigated. The monster was never caught.

Everything Near Burleson

1162 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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