Fort Worth Livestock Exchange
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Headquarters, one of greatest cattle markets in the world. In late 1860s Fort Worth was stop on cattle trails. Market for West Texas organized 1870s. First trader, T. B. Saunders, Sr., soon was joined by others. First small packing houses were followed (early 1900s) by multi-million dollar plants. By 1910 trading almost doubled. This structure was erected in 1902-03 to house the Stockyards Company, Livestock Commission, and buyers officers, surrounded by lawns (now parking lots). In 1944, was purchased by United Stockyards Corporation.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the late 1860s Fort Worth was a stop on the great cattle trails, and by the 1870s it had organized a market that would become one of the world's greatest cattle centers. This building, erected in 1902-03, housed the Stockyards Company, livestock commissions, and buyers as trading nearly doubled and small packing plants gave way to multi-million-dollar operations. Surrounded then by lawns, the exchange stood at the heart of an industry that earned Fort Worth its nickname, "Cowtown."
Why it matters
The Fort Worth stockyards turned Texas cattle into a national industry, marking the shift from the open-range trail drives to the packing plants and railroads of the modern economy.
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Related people
- · T. B. Saunders, Sr.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Woody-Kutch Livestock Commission Company
Fort Worth, TX
Brothers-in-law Joseph Casner Woody and Jefferson Davis Kutch, Jr. worked in the bustling Fort Worth Stock Yards and in 1923 incorporated their own livestock commission company to process the sales of regional cattle, sheep, and hog producers. They operated from the Livestock Exchange Building—home to 48 such firms and known as the "Wall Street of the West"—until Woody's death, after which Kutch launched a successor firm that ran until 1981.
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.
Eastern Cattle Trail
Fort Worth, TX
A block of native Trinity River stone here marks the dusty path that made Fort Worth. From the end of the Civil War until the railroad arrived in 1876, great herds of longhorns were driven up Rusk Street and across the river, resting in the valley below before the long push north to Abilene, Kansas. This route — the Eastern or McCoy Trail, which joined the Chisholm Trail at the Red River — earned Fort Worth its lasting nickname, 'Cow Town.'
Fort Worth "Where the West Begins"
Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth began in 1849 as a U.S. Army dragoon post named by Major Ripley Arnold for his old commander, General William Jenkins Worth, guarding the edge of Anglo settlement. After the fort's brief military life, the town it spawned boomed once millions of longhorns began fording the Trinity here on their way up the Chisholm Trail, earning the nickname "Cowtown." The railroad's 1876 arrival turned it into one of the world's great cattle markets, and later meatpacking, oil, and aircraft plants carried its growth into the modern era.