Stockyards in Fort Worth Texas
The arrival of the railroad in 1876 made Fort Worth a major hub for livestock. The city in 1887 built a stockyard by the name Union Stockyard located north of the Tarrant County Courthouse. The project suffered a slight setback due to lack of fund to stock enough cattle that will attract local ranchers. An investor by the name Greenleif Simpson was invited to invest in the stockyard which he did though with limited information of what he was getting into. The stockyard does not hold as much cattle as he saw on his arrival on a regular day but for an ongoing rail strike.
Simpson bought Union Stockyards on April 27, 1893, for $133,333.33 and had the company renamed Fort Worth Stockyards Company. He invited another investor, Louville V. Niles who is into meatpacking to join him and both of them fashioned out a better approach to the business which is processing the meat right there in Fort Worth instead of shipping cattle to another market for processing.
Two major packers Armour & Co. and Swift & Co. were brought in, and they had their plants near stockyard. The same time, pens, barns and a livestock Exchange building was built. This building housed support businesses such as railroad offices, telegraph offices and livestock commission companies. A coliseum known as Cowtown Coliseum was built in 1907 to host the first Feeders and Breeders Show.
Stockyard prospered over the years despite some setbacks brought by two devastating fires that destroyed properties and livestock, but this was not going to last forever. The stockyard had its peak in 1944 during World War II with a record of 5,277,496 livestock processed, but the business began experiencing a downward trend as the railroad began experiencing its downturn too.
The ripple effect of new road constructed after the World War II had a negative toll on the railroad as it led to road becoming a cheaper and preferred means of transportation. This new development displaced meat packers as shipper who drew business away from stockyards. One after the other, packers began to close business as their business shrank due to the stiff competition that met. Armour and swift closed their plant in 1962 and 1971 respectively after struggling to keep afloat but couldn’t.
The once-booming yard that recorded the largest horse and mule market in the world in 1917 during World War I, with the purchase made by allied countries for war execution came to the lowest stockyards sales by 1986 with 57,181 animals sold.
To keep the Fort Worth’s livestock legacy, Charlie and Sue McCafferty started the North Fort Worth Historical Society. This effort led to the restoration of the Livestock Exchange Building, the swift & Co building, and the Coliseum. By 1989, the Stockyards Museum was opened in the Exchange building, and it hosts thousands of visitors yearly to this present day.
Fort Worth Stockyards is one of Texas’ tourist destinations that hold so much about the history of Fort Worth. And at Fort Worth Home Repair, we are proud of our Fort Worth heritage.
