The Fort Worth Hotel
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Situated in the northwest corner of the public square, the Fort Worth Hotel was the stage coach terminal for travelers arriving at and leaving Fort Worth. The original structure remained on this site for over 70 years. Over its lifetime, the hotel had several additions and was known under different names. Early settler and "Father of Fort Worth" Ephraim M. Daggett bought two empty lots on the fort grounds in 1855 and erected a two-story building to serve as his home and a tavern for the public. In 1857, Lawrence G.A. Steel purchased the property and renamed the business the Fort Worth Hotel, commonly known as Steel's Tavern. It was expanded into the opposite lot and featured unique items including a 1782 bell mounted to the hotel used to announce arrivals, fires and social activities. In 1859, Albert T. Andrews purchased the property and operated the business until his death in 1867. In the 1870s, the hotel was renamed the Transcontinental Hotel, advertised as "The Best Hotel in Northern Texas." By 1879, the stage coach terminal moved to the El Paso Hotel, and the hotel operated as the Lindell Hotel. It was around this time that well-known gunfighter Luke Short boarded in one of the rooms. By the early 1890s, newer and larger hotels opened in Fort Worth and business began to decrease. The original buildings were demolished in 1892 and in 1925. The grand live oak trees are the only remaining remnant of the original site, a reminder of early Fort Worth history. (2017)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Fort Worth was little more than a frontier fort site, "Father of Fort Worth" Ephraim Daggett built a two-story tavern and home here in 1855. Under a succession of owners it became the Fort Worth Hotel and the town's stagecoach terminal, greeting travelers with a mounted bell that rang for arrivals, fires, and social events. Renamed the Transcontinental and later the Lindell, it even boarded gunfighter Luke Short before newer hotels eclipsed it and the buildings were razed.
Why it matters
The hotel's long life traces Fort Worth's growth from an isolated army post into a bustling stage and rail crossroads of the cattle-country frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When this hotel's story begins in 1855, Fort Worth was barely more than the site of a former army post on the edge of settled Texas. The fort that gave the town its name had been established only a few years earlier to guard the frontier, and when the soldiers moved on, civilians began settling the abandoned grounds. This corner of the public square stood at the very start of that transformation from military outpost to town.
Travel in that era ran on the stagecoach, and a hotel that served as the stage terminal was the beating heart of a frontier town's connection to the outside world. Arrivals and departures, mail and news and newcomers, all passed through such a place. In a settlement still finding its shape, the coaching inn was infrastructure, gathering spot, and lifeline at once.
The decades the marker spans — from the 1850s through the Reconstruction years and the Gilded Age — were exactly the period when Fort Worth grew from that isolated post into a real crossroads. The hotel's changing names track the town's changing fortunes step by step.
People & events
It started with Ephraim M. Daggett, remembered as the "Father of Fort Worth," who bought two empty lots on the old fort grounds in 1855 and put up a two-story building to serve as both his home and a public tavern. In 1857 Lawrence G.A. Steel bought the property, named it the Fort Worth Hotel — known familiarly as Steel's Tavern — and expanded it into the neighboring lot. Among its distinctive touches was a bell cast in 1782, mounted to the hotel and rung to announce arrivals, fires, and social occasions: a single bell doing the work of a town's public address system.
Ownership passed on. Albert T. Andrews bought the property in 1859 and ran it until his death in 1867. In the 1870s the establishment took the ambitious name Transcontinental Hotel and advertised itself as "The Best Hotel in Northern Texas" — a boast that captures the optimism of a growing frontier town. But in 1879 the stagecoach terminal moved to the El Paso Hotel, and this house carried on under yet another name, the Lindell Hotel.
It was around this later period that the well-known gunfighter Luke Short boarded in one of its rooms — a detail that ties this quiet corner to the rougher, more storied side of frontier Fort Worth. By the early 1890s, newer and larger hotels had opened and business fell away. The original buildings were demolished in stages, in 1892 and 1925, until only the ground and its old live oak trees remained.
Its place in the American story
The life and death of this hotel is a compact history of how western towns rose. Across nineteenth-century America, the stagecoach inn was the essential first institution of a new settlement — and when railroads and bigger cities arrived, those same inns were often the first to be eclipsed. This building's arc, from indispensable stage terminal to outmoded relic torn down for something newer, is the frontier hotel's story in a single lot.
It also traces Fort Worth's particular rise. The town became famous as a great cattle-country crossroads, a place where trails and later rail lines converged, and this hotel sat at the center of that emergence from the beginning. The names it wore — Fort Worth Hotel, Transcontinental, Lindell — and the loss of its stage terminal to a rival house are a ledger of a boomtown's shifting center of gravity.
Even the passing presence of a figure like Luke Short connects this ordinary corner to the larger American mythology of the frontier West — the era of cattle drives, gambling halls, and gunfighters that Fort Worth's history is steeped in.
If you visit
Look for the live oaks. The marker is clear that the grand old trees are the only surviving remnant of the original site — the buildings are long gone, demolished in 1892 and 1925 — so on this corner of the historic public square, the trees are the monument. Stand beneath them and you're standing where a stagecoach terminal once received travelers into a raw young Fort Worth.
Use the marker to repopulate the empty ground in your imagination: Daggett's two-story tavern of 1855, the 1782 bell ringing out for an arriving coach or a fire, guests coming and going under names that changed with the decades. It's a place that asks you to picture what's no longer there.
This is a natural stop on a downtown Fort Worth history walk. From here, the city's frontier-to-cattle-town story opens up in every direction — a good starting point before exploring the wider historic district and the stockyards heritage the town is known for.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Ephraim M. Daggett
- · Lawrence G.A. Steel
- · Luke Short
Themes & tags
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