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Cowtown - Fort Worth, Texas
Entry 11 of 23 | show all | print this entry |
This area is referred to as DFW or Dallas-Fort Worth. Dallas is much larger and gets most of the attention, but Fort Worth's Stockyards are, in our opinion, the best sightseeing stop in the DFW area.
We saw several interesting sights on our way to the Stockyards -- some planned and some accidental.
Our first stop was Machine Gun Kelly's home. The house at 857 E Mulkey Street was where George "Machine Gun" Kelly lived with his wife, Kathryn Thorne, in 1933. On July 22, 1933, George and Kathryn kidnapped Charles Urschel, an Oklahoma Oil millionaire, and held him for a $200,000 ransom . The ransom was paid and they released the oil baron on July 30, 1933 near Norman, Oklahoma. Machine Gun Kelly and Kathryn were arrested in Memphis, Tennessee on September 26, 1933, and they were sent to prison. George "Machine Gun" Kelly died of a heart attack at the Federal Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas, on July 17, 1954. Kathryn Kelly was released from prison in Cincinnati in 1958; she was last known to be residing in Oklahoma.
Paris is the big destination on this trip, so we visited the Paris Coffee Shop in Fort Worth to get warmed up. The Paris Coffee Shop has been a Fort Worth institution since 1930. The side of the building has a mural depicting famous locations in Fort Worth.
As we drove to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, we hooked a U-turn when we spotted Jake's White Trash & Pink Lemonade Coiffure. They appear to cut hair there a couple of days a week, but Jake's was closed this Sunday. Barbara commented that it seemed like the kind of place you would find in Austin - not conservative, western, cowboy Fort Worth. The big turquoise airplane mounted on a pole over the building was what caught our eye. As we looked closer, there were man-made palm trees and other interesting bits of decor. Jake's ranked high on our Quirk-o-Meter!
The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is located at 1720 Gendy Street in the Cultural District of Fort Worth. The museum is west of the Will Rogers Memorial Center and south of the Museum of Science and History at the corner of Montgomery Street and Burnett-Tandy Street. The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame honors and celebrates women, past and present, whose lives exemplify the courage, resilience, and independence that helped shape the American West, and fosters an appreciation of the ideals and spirit of self-reliance they inspire. The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame displays a life-size bronze sculpture, "High Desert Princess." Donated by The Burnett Foundation, the sculpture depicts a cowgirl with her horse and was created by nationally recognized artist Mehl Lawson.
The Amon G Carter, Jr. Exhibits Hall is just across the street from the museum. We stopped to take a few photos of the memorial to Midnight, the world's greatest bucking horse. Midnight was on the rodeo circuit from 1923 to 1933, and in those 11 years, only nine men managed to stay on.
Barbara and Brittany enjoyed several art exhibitions at the Kimbell Art Museum when we lived in Dallas, so we stopped by for a photo.
Barbara then spotted a store that looked interesting to her -- Domain XCIV. Located at 3214 Camp Bowie Boulevard, across from the Kimbell Art Museum, Domain XCIV is one of Fort Worth's premier shopping venues. Established over five years ago by designer Tad Watts and Mark Vaughan, the shop is a real treasure trove. Barbara feels it is much nicer than any interior design stores in Atlanta! The mix of European antiques, new accessories and upholstery, furniture, accessories, Peacock Alley luxury bedding, Provincial and Italian dinnerware, and custom dried floral arrangements is very impressive. Bozzie will be back!
Joe T. Garcia's is the most famous Tex-Mex restaurant in Fort Worth, so we had planned to have lunch there. It was wonderful. Best guacamole either of us have ever had. Our waitress was a nursing student and salsa dancer from Poland who looks a bit like Cameron Diaz.
After lunch, our handy GPS unit informed us that there was a Bicycle Tree nearby, so that was where we were going when we detoured for some interior decor. What we found in a residential area across from a cemetery was a home with four or five trees adorned with bicycles and motorcycles. George Hilton's "bicycle trees" are in his yard at 606 Grand. He has draped his hackberry trees with bicycles, tricycles, and motorcycles that he has picked up at auctions and secondhand stores.
As we headed for the Fort Worth Stockyards, I had to stop for a few photos at the Cross-Eyed Moose. The Cross-Eyed Moose features western antiques and stuff. If you had a ranch house in Texas and wanted to decorate it with authentic Texas and western stuff, this would be a great place to shop.
The Fort Worth Stockyards is the old section of "Cowtown" where the cattle were brought on trail drives. It is a National Historic District with great history. The old buildings have been maintained, and it is an area filled with bars, restaurants, museums, and tourist spots. There are cowboys on horseback in the streets, and there is a cattle drive twice a day. We saw the World's Largest Belt and the World's Largest Spurs. We also visited the World's Largest Honky Tonk, the amazing Billy Bob's Texas. With 127,000 square feet, a capacity over 6,000 people, over 20 bar stations, the best in entertainment, and live bull riding, it is something to see.
Our itinerary also included a visit to the World's Second-Longest Burning Lightbulb! Known locally as "The Eternal Light," it spent most of its life hanging over a stage door entrance at Byers Opera House on 7th Street in Fort Worth. A stage hand named Barry Burke screwed in the bulb on September 21, 1908. The Opera House became a theater in the same year that the bulb was installed, then a movie theater in 1920. The theater was torn down in 1977, but the bulb was saved and moved into a glass display case in the Stockyards Museum, plugged into an outlet, where it continues to burn today.
See our Fort Worth Sightseeing Photos.
Copyright Round America and William M. Windsor
Where I stayed:
Just Passing Through
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