Fort Worth: The Civilized West
About this ebook
It was nothing but a dusty, erratic river—
cursed, some called it—
that marked the jumping-off place of civilization.
Beyond it, the land stretched under a warm sun,
and those that basked in it were horny-toads,
buffalo and small bands of roaming Indians.
When you got right down to it, it didn’t have that much to offer.
And yet, it was free land—
and those in the east and the south and the north
were cramping with the pangs of hunger
for land, for money, for space, for a new life,
for an empire they could carve and call their own.
To them, the land stretched
limitless as the possibilities they dreamed.
And so they came to the Texas prairie.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning.
The Indians had first claim.
But that had never really held back the flow of people across the continent.
The sporadic clashes of cultures brought the military,
and the fort they built eventually became a village—Fort Worth.
By 1859, the townspeople were talking of courthouses and elections.
The trappings of civilization had found their way into the southwest.
In some ways, it was a harsh land.
But if it[…]”“The town was actually beginning to be civilized.
That early frontier spirit still existed—
but teas and cake walks, churches, schools and skyscrapers
lived alongside city bootleggers and marshals and Hell’s Half Acre.
Then came oil—
Texas-black and thick, gushing out of the land—
at Ranger and Burkburnett and Desdemona.
The oil poured out of the west Texas boomtowns
into Fort Worth where railroads and transportation sat waiting,
where banks and businessmen could make deals
across drinks and across country.
The excitement fit right into the spirit of the frontier town.
The boom did more than turn over a fast buck and a few fortunes.
It gave impetus to the city itself.
Airports sprouted where cattle had grazed, paved streets
where the cowboys had whistled the dogies along.
Fort Worth had become an honest-to-god city,
launched into the twentieth century
but carved from a backbone of hide and horn.
Excerpt From: Caleb Pirtle III. “Fort Worth The Civilized West.” iBooks.
