Tarrant County

Tarrant County’s roots lie in the ‘Old West’ and much of our heritage can be traced to the era of the cowboy and the cattle drives that passed through Tarrant County. Tarrant County is one of 254 counties in Texas which were originally set up by the State to serve as decentralized administrative divisions providing state services and collecting state taxes.

Tarrant County, one of 26 counties created out of the Peters Colony, was established in 1849. It was named for General Edward H. Tarrant, commander of militia forces of the Republic of Texas at the Battle of Village Creek in 1841. The village of Grapevine; the Texas Ranger outpost of Johnson’s Station (in what is now south Arlington); and Bird’s Fort, a short-lived private fort just south of present-day Euless, were early areas of western civilization in the region.

From as early as 1856, regular stagecoach service passed through Tarrant County, carrying mail and passengers from the east on to the frontier forts and the West Coast. By the 1870’s, mail stagecoaches arrived and departed from downtown Fort Worth six days a week. From the close of the Civil War and through the late 1870’s, millions of cattle were driven up the trail through Tarrant County (roughly following Interstate 35 West) to the railheads in Kansas. After the Texas & Pacific Railroad reached Tarrant County and Fort Worth in 1876, Fort Worth became the largest stagecoach terminus in the Southwest – a hub for rail passengers to continue their journeys west by stagecoach.

Tarrant County’s 41 Cities, Towns, Municipalities, and Incorporated Areas

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