Fort Worth Stock Yards Entrance
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Spanning Exchange Avenue, this gateway to the Fort Worth Stock Yard was completed in 1910. Constructed by the Topeka Bridge & Land Co. for the Fort Worth Stock Yards Co., it was a significant feat of concrete work for that era. The columns are 22 feet high and 13 feet in circumference. The sign is 36 feet long and 4 feet high. The entrance is a significant landmark in this historic area of Fort Worth. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1985.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Completed in 1910, this concrete gateway spans Exchange Avenue to announce the Fort Worth Stock Yards, one of the great livestock markets of the American West. Built by the Topeka Bridge & Land Co. for the Stock Yards Company, its towering columns and long sign made it an ambitious feat of concrete construction for the era. The entrance still stands as the iconic threshold to Fort Worth's historic stockyards district.
Why it matters
The Fort Worth stockyards helped transform Texas cattle country into a national meatpacking hub, and this gateway remains a symbol of the city's identity as 'Cowtown.'
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
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.
Early Site of Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show
Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth grew into a cattle supply depot in the 1870s as drovers pushed herds north, and railroad lines soon drew stockyards along their tracks. Boston investors bought the yards in 1893, and the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company held its first livestock show at Marine Creek in 1896, boosted by the Texas Cattle Raisers Association. With backing from Armour and Swift, the show grew into the National Feeders and Breeders Show, added a Wild West act in 1916, and by 1918 became the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show before relocating in 1944.
Fort Worth Belt Railway
Fort Worth, TX
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.