Fort Worth Belt Railway
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Beginning in 1904, the Belt Railway serviced the Fort Worth Stock Yards. The arrival of the railroad in Fort Worth in 1876 moved the cow town from a regional economic player to a national force. The stockyards corporation, chartered in 1895, created a Belt Railway System to handle the movement of livestock and supplies into the yards and finished products out to the national market. As road traffic grew in the mid-1920s, the belt’s role began to diminish. By 1978, the Texas & Pacific and the Missouri Pacific Railroads gained full control of the belt. In 1988, the Fort Worth and Western Railroad purchased what was left of the belt. The remaining two miles of line are now used as an access route by an excursion train to the national historic district. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the railroad reached Fort Worth in 1876, it transformed the town from a regional trading post into a national livestock hub. The stockyards' Belt Railway, launched in 1904, shuttled cattle and supplies into the yards and finished products out to markets across the country. As trucking rose in the 1920s the belt declined, and today a short surviving stretch carries an excursion train through the historic stockyards district.
Why it matters
The Belt Railway shows how rail connections turned Fort Worth's stockyards into a national force, a key chapter in the industrialization of the American cattle trade.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Armour and Company
Fort Worth, TX
In 1901 Fort Worth business leaders courted Armour & Co., one of the nation's largest meatpacking firms, offering land and incentives to lure a branch plant to the city. Construction began in 1902, and the sprawling operation just north of here helped make Fort Worth the livestock capital of the Southwest, spawning a web of supporting businesses. The plant ran for more than half a century before closing in 1962.
Swift & Company
Fort Worth, TX
By the 1880s Swift & Company was a national meatpacking giant, and its strategy of building plants near the herds drew it to Texas and its vast livestock. Recruited by the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company, Swift opened this plant in 1903, quickly reshaping the city's economy and spawning a railway, a publishing firm, and other support businesses. The operation ran until 1971.
Fort Worth Stock Yards Company
Fort Worth, TX
Formed in 1893 when a Boston-led group of investors bought the Fort Worth Union Stock Yards, this company transformed the city into a livestock capital. It courted the Cattle Raisers Association and lured meatpacking giants Armour and Swift to build plants nearby, then drew animals to market through publicity and its Fat Stock Show. During World War I, foreign armies buying draft animals made Fort Worth the world's largest horse and mule market, and receipts soared into the millions before postwar decline.
Thomas B. Saunders Family
Fort Worth, TX
North Carolina native Thomas Bailey Saunders brought his family to Texas in 1850 and started a cattle ranch near Gonzales, launching a dynasty that would shape the state's beef industry for more than a century. His sons and grandsons drove herds to New Orleans and Kansas, became noted trail drivers, ran livestock commissions in San Antonio and Houston, and — in Thomas B. Saunders II — opened the first cattle-dealing firm on the Fort Worth Stockyards in 1902, pioneering the shipment of cattle by truck. Later generations built ranching operations and cattle clearinghouses across the Southwest.