Everything Springtown is known for
Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Springtown.
Woody Creek BBQ started as a family food operation on private property beside the actual Woody Creek, on the stretch between Springtown and Weatherford. It moved into a permanent building on the Springtown square in 2005 and has been one of the town's most established food stops since. Traditional Texas smoked meats, sold by the pound or in sandwiches. The name stayed with the creek where the business started.
In 1884, the same year Springtown incorporated as a town, it opened a college-level school. The Springtown Male and Female Institute, also known as College Hill Institute, served the educational needs of northern Parker County for about ten years. Frontier Texas had few options for secondary or higher-level schooling, and private institutes like this one filled the gap before public higher education reached the region. The fact that Springtown could sustain a school at that level for a decade, in a community without a railroad connection, says something about both the local ambition and the agricultural wealth that was flowing through those three cotton gins.
Springtown had no railroad in 1877. No rail connection, no shipping depot, none of the infrastructure that usually built Texas towns in this era. And yet by that year it had a hotel, a school, two general stores, two blacksmith shops and three cotton gins. Three cotton gins in a town that size means the surrounding farms were producing enough cotton to justify serious processing capacity. The hotel meant transient traffic. The blacksmith shops meant working equipment. The community was sustaining genuine commercial life on local agricultural output and the groundwater that had drawn people here, without a single mile of rail connection.
William (Bill) Woody (1824-1915), one of the first Anglo settlers in Parker County, was born in Roane County, Tennessee. While living in the eastern Tennessee hills bordering North Carolina, he married Elisabeth Lydia Farmer (1822-1879) in 1846. In December 1846, six weeks after the birth of their son, the Woody family set out to Texas on foot with few possessions. Six months later, they arrived in Honey Grove in Fannin County where they met up with other family members and established a working farm. In 1851, the family traveled to White Settlement in Tarrant County where they stayed until their home was built here by 1855. Located in the Veal’s Station Community, the Woody family built a story-and-a-half, four-room dogtrot home using hand-sawn yellow pine lumber transported by ox from New Orleans. Once their house was complete, it served several distinct and important purposes for the Veal’s Station Community. The property was used as a refuge and stagecoach stop for pioneer travelers, a boarding house for college students attending Parsons College, and a community meeting place for all religious denominations in the area, as well as a cobbler’s workshop for hand-cobbled boots and shoes. In 1858, Bill Woody and community members built a two-story frame meeting house on the property which provided a church, masonic hall, town hall, common school, and later Parsons College, chartered in 1874, for the town of Veal’s Station. Elisabeth and Bill Woody are buried in the Veal’s Station Cemetery, both examples of rugged individualism that expanded the state and country in the nineteenth century.
Eureka Lodge No. 371, A. F. & A. M. The Eureka Masonic Lodge entered into an agreement with W. L. Hutcheson to build this two-story structure in 1897. Over the years, while the first floor housed a variety of businesses, including Hutcheson's hardware store, the lodge continued to occupy the second floor. Exhibiting influences of the Romanesque Revival style, the building features round-arch windows, a detailed keystone on the upper central window, and a red sandstone cornerstone. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1987
In 1856, Captain Joseph Ward, a native of New Jersey, settled on a creek fed by numerous springs seventeen miles northeast of Weatherford. In 1859, Ward designed the town square and named the plate Littleton's Springs after a pioneer family. The first settlers in Springtown found about twenty-five active springs within three major areas: Smith Springs, Malone Springs and Kinnard Springs. The town received its present name of Springtown in the mid-1870s because of the beautiful springs that came to the surface on the creek bank just south of the public square. From the beginning, Springtown Square has always been a bustling place of activity with many businesses nearby. Located in the center of town near a well, the square served as a meeting and gathering place where folks came to town to shop, trade and visit. The First Methodist Church was organized in 1857. In 1866, the new union church building housed the Methodists, Baptists and Cumberland Presbyterians, coming together with a different minister to lead services each week. By 1877, the town boasted a school, a hotel, two general stores, two blacksmith shops and three cotton gins. White's Funeral Home began in 1908 and has served the community for over 100 years. Many schools were established early on and Springtown became known as the educational capital of Northwest Texas from 1884 to 1894. By 1949-50, Springtown schools were among the most modern and financially independent in Parker County due to oil discovery in the district. Springtown is often called Parker County's second city. From small beginnings, the town has grown dramatically and will continue to be a source of pride in the community. (2017)
Springtown is on State Highway 199 twenty-seven miles northwest of Fort Worth near the northern border of Parker County. In 1856 Joseph Ward of New Jersey settled on the site, on a creek fed by numerous springs seventeen miles northeast of Weatherford. Three years later Ward designed the town square and named the place Littleton's Springs after a pioneer family. In the mid-1870s the name was changed to Springtown following a petition by a majority of the 200 residents. The town's post office has operated continuously since its establishment in June 1875. In 1884 Springtown was incorporated, and the community elected J. A. Graves its first mayor. Springtown Male and Female Institute opened that year and served the northern part of the county for a decade. Public schools eventually developed, and in 1936 Springtown High School was incorporated in the Parker County school system. The first town newspaper, established in 1881, was the Springtown Sentinel . Newspapers that followed included the Pilot, Local , and Journal . By 1890 the community had four churches, two cotton gins, one steam corn mill, a daily stage to Weatherford costing one dollar, and a triweekly stage to Decatur. Springtown grew from a population of 500 in 1890 to nearly 800 in 1940. From the Great Depression through 1960 the population growth slowed. Afterward, primarily because of an increase in the Springtown-Fort Worth commuter population, the number of residents nearly doubled. Springtown had a population of 1,658 in 1986. In 1990 the population was 1,740. The population reached 2,062 in 2000.
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.
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.
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
If you flew a helicopter in Vietnam you almost certainly learned how right here. Fort Wolters trained over 40000 rotary-wing pilots before shutting down in…
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…
Daily cattle drives down the street. Honky-tonks and rodeos in the old West.
507 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.
Eureka Lodge No. 371, A. F. & A. M. The Eureka Masonic Lodge entered into an agreement with W. L. Hutcheson to build this two-story structure in 1897. Over the years, while the first floor housed a variety of…
In 1856, Captain Joseph Ward, a native of New Jersey, settled on a creek fed by numerous springs seventeen miles northeast of Weatherford. In 1859, Ward designed the town square and named the plate Littleton's Springs…
Woody Creek BBQ started as a family food operation on private property beside the actual Woody Creek, on the stretch between Springtown and Weatherford. It moved into a permanent building on the Springtown square in…
For twenty years the settlers of Springtown slept with one eye open. The Comanche considered this land theirs and they were not subtle about making the point.…
When the Civil War called the Texas Rangers east to fight for the Confederacy they left behind an unguarded frontier. The Comanche knew it immediately. They…
Picture a man from New Jersey standing at the edge of a creek in 1856 watching water bubble up from dozens of natural springs. Captain Joseph Ward had found…
For one strange glorious decade a tiny frontier town became the smartest place in Northwest Texas. Starting in 1884 the Springtown Male and Female Institute…
In the depths of the Great Depression when most towns could barely keep the lights on Springtown got a gift that would outlast generations. In 1936 young men…
Nobody expected what came bubbling out of the ground beneath Springtown's school district. When oil was discovered on school land the money changed everything…
Every third Saturday in September for more than 35 years the town square in Springtown transforms into something straight out of 1885. A parade rolls down the…
By 1877 Springtown had a hotel two general stores two blacksmith shops and three cotton gins — not bad for a settlement in the middle of Comanche country. The…
You're driving past the home of Dr. George and Ruth Jones, built in 1915. Dr. Jones, a respected physician, and Ruth, a dedicated teacher and missionary, were pillars of the Springtown community. Their two-story house,…
You're driving through Springtown, and right here on the Square is a place that's been the heart of this community since the 1930s: the Springtown Tabernacle. It started with a building in 1906 that housed city hall and…
In 1884, the same year Springtown incorporated as a town, it opened a college-level school. The Springtown Male and Female Institute, also known as College Hill Institute, served the educational needs of northern Parker…
The county Springtown calls home carries a name tangled up in one of the most dramatic stories in Texas history. Parker County was named for Isaac Parker whose…
Springtown had no railroad in 1877. No rail connection, no shipping depot, none of the infrastructure that usually built Texas towns in this era. And yet by that year it had a hotel, a school, two general stores, two…
The Springtown Sentinel began publication in 1881, just a few years after the community had established itself as a trade center. On the Texas frontier, a local newspaper was more than a convenience. It was a signal…
On Springtown's town square there was once a building with no walls. Just a roof and open sides, called a tabernacle, and it served as the community's main gathering space in the early twentieth century. Church…
Howell's is a long-running local favorite in Springtown, the kind of place Parker County regulars know and visitors discover. A reliable stop for a sit-down meal in a small town with limited restaurant options.
Springtown began where a settler found reliable water. Joseph Ward settled beside a spring-fed creek in 1856, and when he laid out the town square in 1859, the settlement was called Littleton's Springs, for the springs…
Early settlers reportedly found about twenty-five active springs in and around the Springtown area, grouped into three main clusters. That density of natural water sources was unusual enough to define the place…
Springtown was not named by a railroad company or a land developer. It grew where roughly two dozen natural springs brought hidden groundwater to the surface, and the science behind those springs is hydrogeology, the…
Springtown is on State Highway 199 twenty-seven miles northwest of Fort Worth near the northern border of Parker County. In 1856 Joseph Ward of New Jersey settled on the site, on a creek fed by numerous springs…
You're driving past Springtown Cemetery, a resting place that's been here longer than the town itself. This ground was first used by pioneer settlers even before Springtown was officially founded. The earliest stone you…
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…
Springtown (Springtown, TX) placed on the 4A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Layton Murrell (4 HR); Isaac Gonzalez (2 HR).
In a small cemetery on Veal Station Road a single headstone glows an eerie green after dark. It belongs to William E. Wright and the glow made local news and…
In 1884, the same year Springtown officially incorporated, this small frontier community did something ambitious: it opened a school of its own. The Springtown Male and Female Institute took in students from across the…
The road you're likely driving on right now, State Highway 199, is the single most important piece of engineering in modern Springtown. For decades, this was just a two-lane country road connecting Fort Worth to…
Springtown's history began with Joseph Ward, an early settler who named the community Littleton's Springs. In the mid-1870s, the name was changed to Springtown. The town's post office opened in 1875, and Springtown was…
William (Bill) Woody (1824-1915), one of the first Anglo settlers in Parker County, was born in Roane County, Tennessee. While living in the eastern Tennessee hills bordering North Carolina, he married Elisabeth Lydia…
You're driving through Veal's Station, a community that got its start back in 1852. But the real heart of this place, for over fifty years, was a schoolhouse established in 1858 by William G. Veal. He was a driving…
You're driving past the site of the old Jay Bird Union School, Church, and Cemetery. This route, Jay Bird Lane, has been used since the 1860s. In 1883, local landowners donated land for a school building that also…
You're driving past the site of Cartersville, a town that thrived for decades right here in Parker County. Founded in 1866 by Judge Carter and friends, it grew into a bustling community with two main streets, stores,…
A notable event in Cottondale's history is the burial of the infamous American gangster Machine Gun Kelly in the Cottondale Cemetery. He passed away of a heart attack at Leavenworth Prison on July 17, 1954, in…
Wise County, nestled in the rolling terrain of the North Texas Cross Timbers, finds its identity rooted in agriculture and community. This land, characterized by its mix of woodlands and prairie, proved ideal for…
Reno does not have a documented century-old restaurant, but it does have a solid present-day favorite in Pop Pop Burgers, a family-run roadside spot out on Highway 199. The menu is exactly what you want from a Texas…
You're driving past the historic New Hope Cemetery and Church. Back in 1875, pioneer settler Joseph Wren donated five acres right here for a community cemetery. That same year, the New Hope Baptist Church moved to this…
A few miles southwest of Reno, a small cemetery is the last clear physical reminder of a community that no longer exists, a place once called Sabathany. James and Margaret Clark settled there in 1865 and took in an…
You're driving past the site of Walnut Creek Baptist Church, a congregation that's been serving this community for generations. It all started way back in 1867, with worship services held in a simple log cabin. By the…
Before Reno was a city, it was Parker's Shop, a scattering of farms gathered around a log cabin that served as both church and school. The settlement grew up along Walnut Creek, and Walnut Creek Baptist Church was…
Starting in November 2013, people around Reno and nearby Azle felt something North Texas almost never feels: earthquakes. This part of the state had recorded very little felt seismic activity in its history, so a sudden…
The earthquakes beneath Reno did not require the ground to be torn apart. Changing the pressure of water inside ancient rock was enough to loosen faults that had stayed quiet for millions of years. Reno sits in the Fort…
A Reno post office opened back in 1884, but the place stayed tiny for most of the next century, a farm community held together by its church, its school, and a few small businesses. Reno did not formally incorporate as…
Reno's most colorful documented resident may be a barber named E.R. Bird Harris. In 1995, Harris was ninety-one years old and held what was reported to be the oldest barber's license still in active use anywhere in…
Here is a problem you do not think about until it bites you: Texas has two incorporated cities legally named Reno. One is this one, in Parker and Tarrant counties. The other sits clear across the state in Lamar County,…
Reno has spent the last few decades transforming from a sleepy farming settlement into one of the faster-growing corners of Parker County. The population, just a few hundred into the 1960s, passed 2,800 by the 2020…
You're driving past the Keeter Cemetery, serving this community for over a hundred years, starting in 1882. The oldest grave is Ida Mae Ryan, who lived from 1881 to 1882. Albert Lafayette Keeter, the namesake of the…
Somewhere in Row 11 of the Cottondale Cemetery, under a small headstone that reads George B. Kelley, 1954, lies George Machine Gun Kelly, one of the most notorious gangsters of the Prohibition era. The misspelled name…
You're driving past "Machine Gun" Kelley. During the Prohibition Era, organized crime increased. Big-name gangsters like Al Capone ruled the streets while public enemies such as Bonnie and Clyde swept across the…
Cottondale sits nestled in the rolling hills of Wise County, where the Eastern Cross Timbers transitions into prairie. This North Texas region is characterized by its mix of post oak and blackjack oak forests,…
You're driving past Cottondale. Area's oldest settlement. Platted by landowner B. F. Banks, who also gave lots for public use named, 1875, for lush growth of cotton planted by John Bridges, blacksmith, to finance a trip…
You're driving past the area where Robert and Molly Paschall settled way back in 1876. They bought land near Salt Creek, and by 1902, their home became the Paschall post office. It even housed the Paschall-Cottondale…
You're driving past the Nelson Cemetery, originally donated by Hugh Nelson in the mid-1800s. The earliest dated stone marks his infant son, Hugh, who died in 1864. Many children's graves here date from a dysentery…
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.…
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…
You're driving through Pleasant Grove, home to one of three communities with that name in Wise County. This spot has been a center of life since the late 1870s, when the earliest graves were marked here. In 1879, a…
You're driving past the Tucker House in Weatherford. Moses Tucker and his twin brother Aaron arrived in Texas from Kentucky back in 1853, initially building a log cabin on this land. After serving in the Civil War,…
Imagine this spot in 1893. Paradise had been here for twenty years already -- Bill Anderson's general store, a post office since 1876, a place folks first called Eldorado and then Paradise Prairie for the wildflowers.…
The Paradise you see today was fundamentally re-drawn by a 19th-century engineering project: the railroad. This was not open country before it came -- there had been a store here since the early 1870s and a post office…
Nestled in Parker, Tarrant, and Wise counties, Briar is a picturesque community near the west side of Eagle Mountain Lake. The area spans 21.9 square miles, with 20.5 square miles of land and 1.5 square miles of water,…
The existence of Boyd is a story of farming and railroad politics. Farmers settled here in the early 1890s, in a curve of the Trinity's North Fork, and called the place Greasy Bend -- the bottomland was used to fatten…
This town is where an NFL gunslinger got his start. Billy Joe Tolliver grew up right here, and his athletic talent was obvious early on at Boyd High School. He went on to become a record-setting quarterback for Texas…
In 2011, the new Boyd High School was completed, which is three times the size of the former high school building. This expansion was necessary to accommodate the growing population of the town.
In Weatherford's Greenwood Cemetery lies a man whose life inspired one of the greatest characters in American fiction. His name was Bose Ikard. Born into slavery in Mississippi, Ikard was brought to Texas as a boy.…
You can't miss the building that defines Weatherford's skyline: the Parker County Courthouse. Completed in 1886, this masterpiece of Second Empire architecture is the town's crown jewel. Built from locally quarried…
Have you ever wondered why Weatherford became the 'Peach Capital of Texas'? The answer is literally in the dirt. The town is located in the Cross Timbers region, which is defined by a specific soil type: a sandy loam…
In 1854, Methodist minister Pleasant Tackett led 15 pioneer families into a land they called 'Goshen,' which would later become part of Parker County. The following year, Parker County was created through the efforts of…
You're driving through Azle, but just a few miles east, under the waters of Eagle Mountain Reservoir, lies the site of a dramatic Kiowa raid. It was April 1867. Led by Chiefs Satank and Satanta, about sixty Kiowa…
You're driving past Clark Cemetery, a burial ground for early settlers dating back to the 1830s. Reverend John William Godfrey and his wife Anzaline arrived here in 1853. Anzaline, who passed away in 1859, has the…
The throwing rings at Azle High School launched a genuine Olympian. Shelbi Vaughan, born August 24, 1994, grew up here and competed for the Azle Hornets, where in 2010 she won the Texas Class 4A state discus title with…
You're driving past the site of the Smith Farmstead, a glimpse into 19th-century Texas life. Settlers began arriving in this area around 1849, with James and Sarah Hoggard among them. Their daughter, Nancy Jane, married…
You're driving past the Hoggard-Reynolds Cemetery, a final resting place that tells the story of early Azle. Oral history says pioneer Sarah Hoggard donated this land after the Civil War for an African American child…
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…
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…
You're driving through Wise County, where a ghost of a railroad runs alongside you. The Dallas, Pacific & Southeastern Railway was planned way back in 1889 to connect Dallas all the way to Albuquerque. They graded a…
In 1846 a doctor from Tennessee named James Azle Steward rode into a clearing and found a log cabin built by a Dutchman named Rumsfeldt. He liked what he saw…
For nearly a century the people of Azle lived by candlelight and kerosene lamps while Fort Worth glowed with electric light just 23 miles down the road. Think…
On May 24 2011 the sky above Eagle Mountain Lake started spinning. An EF0 tornado formed directly over the water — a waterspout in the middle of North Texas —…
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…
The first recorded settlement at the site of what is now Azle, Texas occurred in 1846 when Dr. James Azle Steward, a young doctor, moved into a log cabin built by a Dutchman named Rumsfeldt. Other settlers soon arrived…
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…
The first settler in Azle who wanted a proper plank home instead of a log cabin faced a simple problem — the nearest lumber was in Houston 280 miles away. So…
When the first settlers arrived in 1846 they planted themselves right on the contested line between Parker and Tarrant Counties — which also happened to be the…
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…
Before it was a lake town or a bedroom suburb, Azle was farm country, and the soil between these creeks decided what people grew. Through its first decades the community lived on wheat, corn, peanuts, sorghum, and…
The rolling hills of Wise County, part of the Cross Timbers region, offered early settlers a mix of prairie and woodland, ideal for ranching and farming. Unlike the flatter plains to the west, the varied terrain…
This town could not make up its mind what to call itself. First it was Elizabeth Town and that did not stick. Then the store owner got it renamed Mooresville…
At 124 West Main Street stands a sturdy two-story rock building that has quietly held nearly every role a small town needs. James and Eula Nation built it in 1936, living upstairs while running a general store and gas…
You're driving through Tarrant County, not far from where William M. Rice spent his final years. Rice first arrived in Texas way back in 1834, settling near Nacogdoches. He was involved in frontier defense and even…
You're driving past Azle, where the story of education began in the 1850s. Local legend says J.G. Reynolds started the very first school, holding classes in log cabins and even the Ash Creek Baptist Church. Imagine…
You're driving past Ash Creek Baptist Church, a place with a story that starts way back in 1871. Reverend J.C. Powers organized this church with 48 charter members, and let me tell you, it was a rougher time. Powers…
Before Azle had a post office before it even had its final name a group of settlers gathered in 1872 and organized a church. Ash Creek Baptist Church became…
You're driving through Azle, Texas, a town named after the very man who helped build it. James Azle Steward, a physician from Tennessee, arrived here before 1860. He and his wife were early settlers in this region.…
You're driving past Azle, Texas, where a post office served as more than just a place to mail letters. Originally called O'Bar, the post office opened way back in 1881. It moved to this Main Street location in 1916 and…
You're driving past Ash Creek Cemetery, the final resting place for many of Azle's earliest residents. Look for the graves of Dave Morrison and W. P. Gregg, both dying tragically in <say-as interpret-as="date"…
You're driving through Azle, a town named for Dr. Azle Stewart, who donated the land for this church. Back in the 1880s, services were held under a brush arbor. The congregation officially organized in 1890 and built…
You're driving through Azle, and right here is the site of the First Methodist Church. It all started back in 1895 when Reverend Will A. Stephens and fifteen members got together to form this congregation. They quickly…
Boyd High School (Boyd, TX — Wise County, northwest of Fort Worth) won the 2026 UIL Class 3A Division I state baseball championship, beating London (Corpus Christi) 9-8 in the final.
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…
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…
Boyd, TX placed on the Texas high school baseball PLAYOFF HITS leaderboard for the 2026 postseason: Keelan Clary (16 hits, #15 in TX).
Boyd, TX placed on the 2026 Texas high school baseball PLAYOFF leaderboards (H=hits, HR=home runs, RBI, R=runs, SB=steals, K=strikeouts, H/IP=hits per inning): Will McIntire — 47 K (#3), .440 H/IP (#12); Lane Beacham —…
You're driving near Azle, Texas, and this town owes its name to a young doctor. In 1846, Dr. James Azle Steward moved into a cabin here. When the post office was established in 1881, the town was first named O'Bar. But…
You're driving past the site of the Silver Creek United Methodist Church. Organized way back in November of 1900, the congregation finished this very sanctuary just a year later. Farmers Steele and Clayton donated the…
If you were in Azle between 2013 and 2015, you might have felt the ground shake. Not from a big California-style earthquake, but from a series of small, unsettling tremors. The town experienced a 'swarm' of hundreds of…
The swarm of earthquakes that shook Azle from 2013 to 2015 wasn't just a strange event; it was a real-world lesson in geology and physics. Scientists from Southern Methodist University investigated and linked the quakes…
In 1846, the first recorded settlement at what is now Azle, Texas, began when Dr. James Azle Steward moved into a log cabin built by a Dutchman named Rumsfeldt. Other settlers followed, establishing themselves near…
Look towards the water of Eagle Mountain Lake, and you’re looking at the single biggest thing that shaped modern Azle. Before 1932, this was just the valley of the West Fork of the Trinity River. Azle was a small,…
You're driving past the site of the old Wright Community, near Weatherford. In 1874, L.F. Wright donated land here for a Union Church and School. This cemetery is one of the last traces of that community. While L.F.…
If you hear a deafening roar overhead out here on Eagle Mountain Lake, don't be alarmed. You're hearing what locals call the sound of freedom. Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth sits a dozen-odd miles…
The very ground Pelican Bay is built on owes its existence to a monumental feat of 1930s engineering: the Eagle Mountain Dam. Before this, you would have been in the valley of the West Fork of the Trinity River. To…
The big water just east of town wasn't always here, and making it cost a few small communities their existence. Construction of the dam on the West Fork of the Trinity River began on January 23, 1930, finished on…
In 1970 a man named Olen Yandell looked at his struggling dairy farm on the shore of Eagle Mountain Lake — the Circle-Y, a hundred and fifty head of cattle grazing the ground you're driving over — and saw something else…
Founded by Olen Yandell on his struggling dairy farm in 1970, Pelican Bay incorporated in 1981. Yandell had aspirations to create a new Sausalito, California, but Pelican Bay remains a modest enclave today.
For decades Azle was just another quiet crossroads where not much happened and nobody was in a hurry. Then in 1932 they started building a dam on the West Fork…
You're driving through Poolville, a town that owes its existence to a natural spring-fed pool right here in Parker County. This pool, about a half-mile northeast of where you are now, was a vital watering spot for…
Pelican Bay feels like a place that's been here forever, but it only became an official city in 1981. It started in 1970, when Olen Yandell began selling lots off his dairy farm on the Eagle Mountain Lake shoreline.…
You're driving through Poolville right now, and just ahead is the site of a church that started with just six members. Back in February of 1885, these folks broke away from a church in eastern Parker County to start…
One of the great underdog stories in golf came out of Azle. Robert Landers was a cattle and dairy farmer with no professional background who, at around fifty years old, qualified for the Senior PGA Tour. He had…
Azle carries a doctor's middle name, and he more or less paid for the honor. Dr. James Azle Steward, a Tennessee-born physician, settled in this area in the 1840s. When the community needed a townsite, Steward donated…
You're driving past Boyd, Texas, and if you look closely, you might imagine a whole town on the move! This building, originally constructed in 1877, was the heart of Old Aurora, just two miles east of here. The ground…
You're driving past the site of Draco, a Texas town that vanished as quickly as it appeared. Settled in the early 1880s and originally called Tylewater, it got a post office in 1883 and a new name: Draco. It boomed with…
When the first church in Azle was organized in 1872, this was still the dangerous edge of the frontier. As local history tells it, the early preacher kept a six-shooter on each side of his Bible while he delivered the…
Settlement in what is now Newark began in the mid-1850s, with the area known as Caddo Village due to remnants of the Caddo Indian culture along the West Fork of the Trinity River. The town's fortunes changed with the…
Boyd worked through two other names before it settled on this one. Farmers settled in the early 1890s in a curve of the West Fork of the Trinity, in rich bottomland where hogs were turned loose to fatten, so the place…
Boyd sits right in a bend of the West Fork of the Trinity River, and that bend explains a lot about the town. When a river rounds a curve, the water on the inside of the bend slows down and drops the silt it is…
You're driving through Boyd, Texas, a town with a name that changed almost as fast as the railroad lines! Originally settled in the early 1890s and known as Greasy Bend because farmers fattened hogs here, the community…
Of all the places for a movie legend to settle down, the actor who played Chewbacca in the Star Wars films chose a quiet ranch in Boyd. Peter Mayhew, the seven-foot-two Englishman behind the famous furry character,…
For its first half-century Boyd was a cotton-and-livestock town, but after the 1940s the farms here turned to a sweeter crop and the area became known as melon country. Those farm roots still flavor the place. For a…
You're driving past the Smith-Frazier Cemetery, a place that began as a burial ground for Azle's black community. In 1886, businessman J.J. Jarvis deeded this land for that purpose, though some graves were already here.…
The enduring rivalry between Azle High School and Springtown High consistently ignites passions in this corner of Tarrant County. More than just a game, the annual football clash embodies the spirit of these Cross…
You're driving through Newark, Wise County, and right here is the site of the very first post office in the county, established way back on September 8th, 1855. The first postmaster was Benjamin B. Haney, who was also…
You're driving past Rock Springs Cemetery, a quiet reminder of a village that once served as a social hub for local farmers. Many pioneers are buried here, with some graves marked only by native stones. The earliest…
Robert E. Howard was born in Peaster in 1906 and became one of the most influential genre writers in American literary history. He is best known for creating Conan the Barbarian, a character who first appeared in the…
The community of Peaster went through three names before it settled on one. It started in the 1870s when Henry H. Peaster, a Georgia native, purchased 160 acres and established a home in the area, attracting neighbors…
Most Texas towns in the 1890s needed a railroad to survive as a commercial center. Peaster had no railroad, and it built a commercial center anyway. By the end of the decade it had three churches, a school, a steam…
When the Great Depression hit, Peaster's cotton gin and gristmill could not survive. Not because the machines broke down, but because the farms they served could not survive. No crop income meant no cotton to gin, no…
Before electricity reached rural Parker County, Peaster was already running industrial machinery using steam. The steam gin and gristmill documented here in the 1890s converted a simple physical process into useful…
John Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) — the Fort Worth-born songwriter behind 'Pancho and Lefty' and 'To Live Is to Fly' — is buried in the Van Zandt family plot at Dido Cemetery, northwest of Fort Worth. The Van Zandts…
Dido, sixteen miles northwest of Fort Worth on the eastern shore of Eagle Mountain Lake, is a true ghost town: founded in 1848 and named for the mythological queen of Carthage, it thrived with a post office and stores…
Dido was one of the first communities in Tarrant County: by 1848, settlers homesteaded this part of the Peters Colony along the stage route from Fort Worth to Decatur. The Dido School organized in 1854, with A.C.…
You're driving through Fort Worth, and just a little ways from here, a story from the Texas frontier unfolds. It's September of <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1865</say-as>. Tensions are high between settlers…
You're driving past Weatherford, Texas, the county seat of Parker County. Ever wonder how a county gets its name? Well, you're looking at the history of Isaac Parker. Born in Georgia in 1793, Parker arrived in Texas in…
You're driving through Avondale, near where the Dido community first took root. Settlers homesteaded here in 1848, along a stage route from Fort Worth to Decatur. By 1854, they'd organized Dido School, with a teacher…
You're driving past the Dido Cemetery, a final resting place for many of Tarrant County's earliest settlers. The oldest marked grave here belongs to Amanda Thurmond, who died way back in 1879. Her grandfather, Dave…
You're driving through Aurora, and just off the road is the Teague Cemetery. It's named for John Teague, who came here from Missouri in 1858 with his family. He fought in the War with Mexico and served on the frontier…
You're driving through Wise County, near Aurora. Back in 1897, this quiet town became the center of a bizarre statewide sensation. A local cotton buyer, S. E. Haydon, wrote a story for the Dallas Morning News about a…
You're driving past the Peaster Cemetery, a final resting place with a surprising connection to a childhood icon. It all started back in 1870 when Henry Peaster bought land here. By the late 1880s, his land sales kicked…
You're driving through Newark, a town with a name that might sound familiar, but its origins here in Wise County are anything but ordinary. It started in the mid-1850s, first known as Caddo Village, then Odessa. Later,…
You're driving past Dilbeck Cemetery, the final resting place for many Peaster pioneers. The earliest marked grave here belongs to Richard W. Barnes, dated September of 1883. Over time, this five-mile radius cemetery…
In April 1897, the Dallas Morning News ran an astonishing story out of Aurora. A local writer reported that a mystery airship had sailed over town at dawn, clipped a judge's windmill, and exploded in his yard. The…
The Aurora Cemetery is a real, still-used graveyard with graves dating back to the 1860s, on land a settler donated to the local Masonic lodge in 1877. It would be a quiet country cemetery like a thousand others in…
Aurora's airship legend turns out to be a neat little case study in how science tests an extraordinary claim. Over the years, investigators have come at it with real tools. They swept the cemetery with metal detectors,…
Long before the airship story, Aurora got its name from something hopeful. Settlers arrived in the late 1850s, and the man credited with naming the place chose Aurora, after the Roman goddess of the dawn, by one account…
The real reason Aurora faded has nothing to do with spacemen. Two ordinary disasters did it. First, around 1888, a spotted-fever epidemic, now thought to have been a form of meningitis, swept the town, and so many…
Fifty years before Roswell, this tiny Wise County town made a claim so strange that people are still arguing about it. On April 17, 1897, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News, a mysterious airship crashed…
You're driving past the Aurora Cemetery, a place with more stories than you might expect. The oldest graves here go back to the 1860s, belonging to the Randall and Rowlett families. But this 3-acre plot was officially…
You're driving through Aurora, and right here, you're passing the final resting place of George Lawton Bledsoe. Born in Georgia in 1805, Bledsoe came to Texas in 1834, just in time to fight for its independence. He was…
You're driving past the site of Old Town Paradise, a community that literally moved! Settled in 1858 and initially called Eldorado, this town grew around a central square and a community well. It even got a post office…
Aurora's claim to fame is a story that's literally out of this world. On April 19, 1897, the Dallas Morning News reported that a mysterious airship had crashed two days earlier on the property of a local judge, J.S.…
Aurora, Texas, stands as a quiet testament to a singular, dramatic event that etched its name into the annals of local lore. Unlike its agricultural neighbors, born from fertile land or strategic trade routes, Aurora's…
Fifty years before anybody said the word Roswell, a little town north of Fort Worth had already buried its alien. April of 1897 — the local newspaperman, S.E. Haydon, filed a story in the Dallas Morning News. A…
Aurora died in two blows, and the first one wasn't the railroad. Late in 1888 spotted fever broke out here, and by 1889 the fear of it had emptied a town that had counted somewhere between 750 and 3,000 people, with two…
Before the UFO story, Aurora had a much more grounded tragedy. By the mid-1880s this was a real town: two schools, two cotton gins, two hotels, fifteen businesses, and a population somewhere between seven hundred fifty…
You're driving through Parker County, heading past the town named for the man we're talking about: Isaac Parker. Born in Georgia way back in 1793, Parker arrived in Texas in 1833, just in time to serve in the fight for…
Paradise put 6 players on the statewide leaderboards of the 2026 Texas high school baseball playoffs. Camden Walker had 20 stolen bases (1st in the state), 18 hits (6th in the state), and 17 runs (4th in the state).…
In Texas, small-town identity is usually forged on the football field. Here in Peaster, it was made on the basketball court. Under coach Danny Henderson, the Peaster Greyhounds won back-to-back Class 2A state…
Parker County is the 'Watermelon Capital of Texas,' and Peaster is a key reason why. The secret isn't just hard work; it's soil science. The ground here is mostly sandy loam, a product of weathered sandstone from the…
In the 1870s, Georgia native H.H. Peaster purchased 160 acres of land and built a house in what is now Peaster, Texas. The community that formed around his home was initially called Freemont, but in 1885, the name was…
Paradise, TX placed on the Texas high school baseball PLAYOFF HITS leaderboard for the 2026 postseason: Carter Mara (19 hits, #3 in TX); Camden Walker (18 hits, #6 in TX); Madden Taylor (17 hits, #8 in TX); Cash Watson…
Fort Worth, named for a war hero, emerged on the edge of the Cross Timbers, where prairie grasses meet the post oak woods of North Texas. The city’s identity was forged by the cattle drives that thundered up the…
Fort Worth, a city where the spirit of the Old West meets modern ambition, has seen its landscape transformed in recent years. The city’s growth, fueled by its position in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and its…
You're driving past Zion Hill, a community that got its start thanks to Samuel Wolfenburger. He deeded land back in 1877 for a school, church, and cemetery. The school here, established in 1868, actually operated out of…
You're driving through North Texas, and right here, in what is now Wise County, you might be passing near Paradise. That's where Mansell Walter Matthews, a preacher, doctor, and legislator, spent the last years of his…
You're driving past the First Christian Church of Paradise. Members held services in 'Old Town' in the late 1800s, but moved here when the railroad arrived. Merchant M. D. Cansler, school superintendent S. L. Atkins,…
Just northeast of Azle sits Eagle Mountain Lake, and the way it was built is a quietly clever piece of engineering. The dam went up on the West Fork of the Trinity River in the early 1930s, and rather than spanning the…
You're driving through Paradise, Texas, and you're passing the site of a man who saw some of the most pivotal moments in Texas history. Dr. M. W. Matthews was a pioneer physician and preacher, but he also served as an…
You're driving through Wise County, passing the spot where George Lafayette Ramsdale lived out his days. Born in England in 1820, Ramsdale came to Texas as a teenager, enlisting in the army by 1836 to fight for Texas…
You're driving past the site of the Anneville School. This community, likely named for early settler Annie Davis, got its start when land was donated in 1883 for a school, church, and cemetery. The original school…
In the summer of nineteen thirty-three, a five-hundred-acre farm outside Paradise, Texas, became the center of one of the most famous kidnapping cases in American history. On July twenty-second, George Machine Gun Kelly…
The tracks you see in Rhome are the reason there's a town here at all — but the name on the town isn't the railroad's. The Fort Worth and Denver City Railway had its line laid past this spot by 1882, pushing north out…
Before Rhome was Rhome, it was Prairie Point, a stagecoach crossroads settled by Missourians in the late 1850s and laid out by Samuel Sheets in 1858. By the early 1860s it was the second-largest place in Wise County,…
A few miles north of Willow Park sits the reason the town filled up with people. Construction on Lake Weatherford's dam began in June 1956, and the reservoir was impounded in March 1957, closing off the Clear Fork of…
You're driving past Trimble Cemetery, the main burial ground for the tiny community of Flatwood, also known as Davis City, in the late 1800s. Named for James W. Trimble, who bought land here in 1877, it was formally…
You're driving through Rhome, a town with roots stretching back to the 1850s as Prairie Point. It was once the second-largest settlement in Wise County, boasting a hotel and businesses. But the Civil War brought…
You're driving past the site of Rhome's First National Bank. It all started in 1904, not as a national bank, but as a private venture by prominent businessman Dan Waggoner, who also ran a bank in nearby Decatur. His…
You're driving past Rhome, where the United Methodist Church was organized in the 1880s. Early services were held in a schoolhouse, under brush arbors, and in a tent before their first building was finished in 1903. The…
We have said clearly that this town is named for a rancher and not for Rome, Italy. But here is a genuine little twist that ties the two together in a way you would never guess. The Hereford cattle that made Byron Rhome…
The man this town is named for did not just raise cattle. He raised champions. Colonel Byron Rhome was known across the Southwest as the finest breeder of purebred Hereford cattle, the sturdy red animals with the clean…
Say the name out loud and your ear plays a little trick on you. Rhome. It sounds exactly like Rome, the ancient capital of Italy, home of emperors and gladiators. So let me clear this up right now, because it is a fair…
Rhome was actually named for Colonel Byron Rhome, a local rancher remembered for bringing the first Hereford cattle to Wise County, so the resemblance to ancient Rome is pure coincidence, right down to the extra letter.…
Here is the honest story of how this town got its name, and it has nothing to do with any city across an ocean. You are rolling through Rhome, Texas, spelled with an H, and it is named for a man: Colonel Byron Crandall…
Your ear heard Rome, but the truth is closer to home: this town was named in eighteen eighty-three for Colonel Byron Crandall Rhome, a Wise County rancher, and the echo of the ancient city is pure coincidence. Still,…
Those white-faced red cattle that made Byron Rhome famous did not start in Texas. They came from a green county in western England called Herefordshire, right on the border with Wales. And here is how a breed like that…
Tarrant County's story begins with the rolling hills and wooded terrain of the Cross Timbers. This North Texas region, with its mix of prairie and forest, drew early settlers seeking fertile land. Farming and ranching…
You're driving through what used to be Deep Creek, settled around 1854 by folks like Sam Woody and Tom McCarroll. They farmed cotton and corn, raised cattle, and built a church that also served as a schoolhouse. But…
To understand the culture of Willow Park, you have to understand its connection to the Aledo Bearcats. Though the high school is in the neighboring town of Aledo, Willow Park is a key part of the Aledo Independent…
Interstate 20 shaped Willow Park, but it did not invent it. There were farms out here in the 1850s, and by the late 1800s a small place called Willow Springs. The name you know came after 1940, when U.S. Highway 80 was…
Willow Park sits just west of Fort Worth, where the land begins to roll and the air feels a little lighter at its 932-foot elevation. You can almost feel the ancient seabed beneath your feet, a reminder that this part…