Tarrant County Criminal Courts Building
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built in 1917-18, this structure is located on land upon which old Camp Worth was constructed in 1849. The noted Fort Worth architectural firm of Sanguinet and Staats designed the building, incorporating elements of the Beaux Arts and Classical Revival styles. In addition to a criminal courtroom, it originally housed the jail and gallows, a jail hospital, mental wards, and offices for the Sheriff, District Attorney, and District Clerk.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Rising in 1917–18 on ground that once held old Camp Worth, the 1849 frontier post that gave Fort Worth its name, this building put the county's justice system under one roof. The prominent local firm of Sanguinet and Staats gave it Beaux Arts and Classical Revival dignity, while inside it held not only a criminal courtroom but a jail, gallows, hospital, mental wards, and the offices of sheriff, district attorney, and district clerk.
Why it matters
It links a raw frontier army camp to the maturing civic institutions of a modern Texas city, all on a single patch of ground.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Worth "Where the West Begins"
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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.
Tarrant County Courthouse
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Built between 1893 and 1895 in red Texas granite, the Tarrant County Courthouse rose in the Renaissance Revival style, its designers deliberately echoing the Texas State Capitol save for the addition of a clock tower. Its $408,840 price tag struck many citizens as such an extravagance that voters turned out the County Commissioners' Court in 1894. The building nonetheless became an enduring civic landmark of Fort Worth as the city surged into the Gilded Age.
Eastern Cattle Trail
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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.'
Founding Fort Worth
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In the late 1840s the U.S. Army sought a new post on the Trinity River to guard the line between settlers and the Plains tribes. General William J. Worth planned it but died of cholera before it was built, leaving Major Ripley Arnold to scout and establish the fort in 1849 near Marrow Bone Springs with the help of local figures like Middleton Tate Johnson. Arnold named the post for Worth, the recently fallen Mexican War hero, and the barracks rose where the Tarrant County Courthouse now stands.