FW Star-Telegram Touts Portal To Texas History.. Ignores Its Own Denial Of Historic FW Preservation

FYI: This story has been updated. Please see the UPDATE at the end of this article..

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram (FWST) did a fine front-page article on Wednesday, March 13th covering the on-line Portal to Texas History (PTH).  It did a particularly good job of the work that the PTH is doing in digitizing and publishing old newspaper editions.

Saving Texas History One Image At A Time

Sounds great doesn't it? But in spite of all the bright, trendy acceptance that the FWST put into this article, there's just one little problem...

The 1922-1972+ DIGITAL BLACK HOLE..

The fact is that the FWST is one of the largest Texas newspapers to be undigitized, unindexed and unpublished from 1922 to the present. Sure, it's all available on microfilm if you want to burn the gas, pay the parking, as well as risk your eyesight and sanity at the FW Public Library.

  

But a big chunk of the FWST from 1922 on is not available anywhere on the internet. It's not the FW Public Libraries fault...

Anyone that has ever worked with indexed and digitized newspapers will tell you that they can get 10 to 100 times more work done if the newspaper is on-line than by doing the heavy lifting at a library table. Library work is traditional, with the image of the hunched-back wretch staring myopically into the film reader going through a billion words to find anything close to the subject matter under consideration. While we may admire the perseverance of those willing to do this, the fact is that it is unnecessary today and the sweat expended does not in any way make the end research product any better or any more worthy.

"Newspapers are the archaeological records of a town or city," said Ana Krahmer, supervisor of the digital newspaper unit at UNT Libraries. " Loss of one day -- one issue -- is a loss of that history."

How to get the FWST 1922-to fairly recent times digitized and available?

"While most of the information comes from small-town newspapers, adding major Texas dailies to the project is an ambition that is still evolving and while include working out copyright issues and getting funding to digitize the newspapers, Krahmer said."

Copyrights or intellectual property? This isn't impossible. The Belo Corporation, including the Dallas Morning News, have been completely digitized for years. Many other large papers are digitized through several sources. It's a matter of the intellectual property owner or owners turning over the rights. The old idea that newspapers could build profit centers by selling old clips has not worked out.  Instead, thoughtful newspapers that have any regard for local history and its preservation have long been making arrangements to that their their old issues digitized by some institution like the PTH or by commercial subscription providers like GenealogyBank. 

Funding? There are so many local North Texas historians that want and need this digital archive that the odds are pretty good that the funding would not be an insurmountable problem.

What is really needed right now is for the owners of the FWST, or if they do not have the rights, for the current owners to offer them to PTH or some other digitizer.  Do the right thing, right now.

"We would really love to work with anyy dailies who would like to work with us" Krahmer said. "We are very interested in digital preservation of large daily newspapers because they represent such a large body of the population". 

Can we wonder if Ms. Krahmer had any thoughts about why the paper interviewing her was not itself involved in the historic preservation they were describing so glowingly?

It's hard to believe that Diane Smith who wrote the article or her editors were unaware of this glaring paradox:  An article promoting historical newspaper digitization from one of Texas' primary serial non-digitizers'... Go figure..


UPDATE   Sunday March 24, 2013:

Word was received today from Senior VP/Executive Editor Jim Witt about the status of digitizing & indexing Fort Worth Star-Telegram archives including the newspaper from 1922:

"The Star-Telegram's parent company has contracted with Newsbank to digitize all our archives"

NewsBank is the parent company of GenealogyBank, a reasonably priced subscription service, which many of us use.


We appreciate the word from the Star-Telegram about their plans to digitize their archives.  We look forward to using these new resources as they become available.

1917: Pre-Bankhead Highway Roads in West Tarrant County

Recently I have been working on a 1917 Tarrant County map that is posted on the Portal to Texas History and is a part of the UTA Library Special Collections. On the Bankhead Highway History Group we tend to spend a lot of time on the 1919 and later period when the Bankhead began to become a reality.

Clip From A 1917 Tarrant County Map <Click to Zoom>

However, it is equally important to know what came before the Bankhead Highway. It all began with the with the advent of the automobile in the very early 1900's. A "Good Roads" movement began which was echoed in the other larger Texas counties as well. The Bankhead, the Meridian and other early interstate highways were the result.

In 1913 the Tarrant County precinct commissioners went to war with each other over which roads would be declared the main or "Cardinal" roads.  The biggest fight was over whether the old Stove Foundry/Benbrook/Weatherford road would continue to get the improvement and money or whether the shorter and dryer connection off of Arlington Heights Blvd. (Camp Bowie Blvd.) would be selected. After a lawsuit and a lot of harsh words, the Arlington Heights Blvd. connection into downtown Fort Worth was selected.  This was three or four years before World War I and the Camp Bowie base establishment.

This map was created about a year before the Great War over a standard Tarrant County landowners map by the well-known Tarrant County Surveyor John H. Darter.  On the map he overlaid many of the more important county roads including the still-new "Cardinal Roads". The map exists in blueprint form, but for clarity I have inverted it to bring out the detail so that it is more readable.

The clip above shows a part of Precinct #1 from about Benbrook north to White Settlement Road with the red box focusing on the points where Arlington Heights Blvd connects with what will later be the Kuteman Cutoff headed straight west for Weatherford with a connection at the Parker County line. Also the north-south road at the same junction that drops down toward Benbrook and intersects Stove Foundry Road and finally, the Stove Foundry Road itself that follows the T&P railroad tracks from downtown Fort Worth to Benbrook.

1917 map legend

For the past several years there has been a question as to the exact way that the Arlington Heights connection headed west across Mary's Creek and on to Parker County. It's a niggling detail in the overall picture but no definitive answer has yet appeared in a County or Highway Department map. This map offers a few more clues.

The Cardinal road which we know as Chapin Road today connected with Arlington Heights Blvd just about where the traffic circle is today, although the circle was far in the future. It headed west, jogging a little at section lines until it slanted northwest just before Mary's Creek, then turned west again, crossed the stream and continued to the county line.  Chapin Road, which does not go all the way west anymore, is still titled as the "Benbrook Cardinal Road" on current Tarrant County maps. Some of the abandoned right-of-way which became Bankhead Highway for a while is still visible on aerial maps.  We are sill looking for a picture of this early bridge across Mary's Creek.

This 1917 map adds a little more to what we know about the early roads in this part of Tarrant County.  The entire map has a number of other interesting features including some "lost" roads which will be covered in later posts...

Where Was "Stop 6" On The Fort Worth - Dallas Interurban?

Small mysteries..  This one has bugged me for several years....

1925 NTT postcard

In 1971 I moved to the Fort Worth area and immediately began absorbing the history of the city. The fact that there had been a world-class street car and interurban system based in Fort Worth grabbed my attention right away. One of the references that periodically popped up in the Star-Telegram was to the "Stop 6" community in east Fort Worth which was once a prestigious place to live in the country with quick and easy access to the city.

As I began to pick up maps and other material on the Northern Texas Traction system, I began to try to chart where the lines went in the period from 1900-1938 as compared to the present day. Most mentions referred to stop names, not numbers, but for some reason, Stop 6 always was called by number and not its official name. There were a number of old Fort Worth maps that showed these lines, but only two that actually named the stops.

Click to zoom in

This clip from the great 1919-1920 Fort Worth map by C.H. Rogers showed the named stops clear out to Stop Virginia Place past Ayers Street at Mount View around the 3700 block.  But the stops weren't numbered and I thought that Stop 6 was further east from there.

The interurban stops were initially numbered on their way to Dallas and referred to that way.  But as the system grew this became cumbersome and in 1905 the NTT published this list of official stop names:

Click to zoom in

Even if the stops weren't numbered, you would think that counting the first six names would work. But it doesn't.  Obviously in the period from 1902 to 1905 a number or new stops were added as the city grew and that fouled up the math.

No one I talked to seemed to know what the official stop name and location was, they just knew that it was somewhere around the 4000 block of East Lancaster which was originally Front Street, or further out it was called the Dallas Pike. The mentions I found in the old newspapers generally mentioned the Edgewood, Tandy Lake, Virginia Place and Sagamore Hill stops as being generally within the Stop 6 area.

Click to zoom in

Finally, I found the 1909 clip above that solves the little mystery.  In the text it reads ".. at Edgewood Stop just beyond Stop 6, or Sagamore.".  So it turns out that we can place Stop Sagamore Hill as Stop 6 with good certainty. Sagamore Hill road (It's Rand Street now) runs north-south and crosses East Lancaster at the 4400 block.

Click to zoom in

This 1925 Fort Worth map clip shows Stop Sagamore as the first on the left, followed by Stop Edgewood and then Stop Haines on the way to Handley.

An historic footnote:  Stop 6 existed in two ways.  North of the interurban, Front Street or the Dallas Pike there were a number of fine homes and sometimes luxurious living by white residents.  South of the interurban and across the T&P (Now Union Pacific) tracks were the very respectable black neighborhoods of Stop 6.

Mystery solved..

Texas Cattle Drives BEFORE The Chisholm Trail

Long before the Texas cattle trails turned north through Fort Worth, Red River Station and Indian Territory to a railhead in Abilene, Kansas, there was a solid trade in herding cattle from south of San Antonio eastward into Louisiana.  This trade started as ear;y as 1830 long before the Civil War. It continued after 1865 and Harper's Weekly published a fine woodcut image and article in their October 19, 1867 edition.

Click to zoom

It's interesting to note that the cattle shown are not what we think of as traditional Longhorns.  Pictures of the period quite often show cattle of this type.

The short article below, published on the next page of the article gives what I think is an interesting overview of this early trade and it comes from an different point of view, rather than the Texas view.

Click to zoom

In addition to the drives east,  cattle had been driven  up the Shawnee Trail through Waco, Dallas, Preston, into eastern  Indian Territory and on up into southeast Kansas and southwest Missouri.  Shortly after this article was published or maybe at about the same time, the long drives to Abilene began.

Whoa! Turns Out That Jesse Chisholm Really Blazed A Trail to Nowhere.. And It Ended Up in South Texas..

How did Jesse Chisholm's name get on the great cattle trail from south Texas to Abilene, Kansas? Contrary to trail romanticists and current public opinion, the little wagon road from Wichita Kansas to the Wichita Reservation Agency store near today's town of Anadarko never really contributed a majority of the trail mileage in Kansas and Oklahoma.

A little math along with a look at a special map tells us so. And after that, it might be interesting and revealing to take a long view of the long Trail.

Over the last year or more I have been turning over the old pages of Chisholm Trail history and lore that I had neglected since about 2007, which was the last update of the The Great Texas Cattle Trails map. Since that time, primarily due to the information explosion on the Internet, more sources have come to light and several history groups have been taking a closer and more critical look at the subject. The result has been greater clarity and more reliable sources.

Chisholm Trail Log: To give a solid background, here is an 1880 map of the period with some trail mileage overlaid.  Extended notes from the map Legend: (All mileage is  approximate):

• Abilene KS. to Wichita, KS.: 93 miles. This route was laid out and marked in 1867 by Joseph McCoy's surveyors.  No part of this trail used Jesse Chisholm's 1864 wagon road which ended at Wichita. 
• Jesse Chisholm's 1864 wagon road from Wichita KS. to Caldwell KS:  62 miles. Only about 1/3 of the Kansas trail to Abilene used Jesse Chisholm's wagon road. 
• Jesse Chisholm's 1864 wagon road from Caldwell KS. to the Wichita Agency (Anadarko), OK.: 160 Miles. About 60% of the 275 (160+115) miles of the Abilene cattle trail theoretically used Jesse Chisholm's wagon trail. 
• The Wichita Agency (Anadarko) to Red River Station, TX.:  115 miles.  Probably was never heavily used.
• El Reno, OK to Red River Station, TX: 125 miles. Did not use Jesse Chisholm's 1864 wagon road. Part of the "official" Oklahoma Chisholm Trail.
• Red River Station, TX. To Fort Worth, TX: 95 miles.  The distance from Red River Station to Fort Worth was just about the same as the distance from Wichita to Abilene.

1880 Colton Map With Cattle Trails Overlaid ~Electric Books Collection

• The "Official" Oklahoma Chisholm Trail Map: The highly detailed 1933-1936 "Chisholm Trail" map created from an Oklahoma Highway survey and with the aid of the Oklahoma Historical Society shows that the "official" Chisholm Trail path was mostly to the east of current US-81 from Red River Station north and would not have intersected Jesse Chisholm's wagon road until it reached the Canadian River at about Fort Reno. Using this "official" route, the last 40 miles of the Jesse Chisholm wagon road from Fort Reno to the Wichita Agency would not have been a part of the main Chisholm Trail.

1933-36 Official Oklahoma Historical Society Chisholm Trail Map

• The State of Oklahoma has produced the best and most believable research on both the Chisholm and Western Trails. This work began very early and over the years has produced an almost unanimous agreement with the results. The heritage of the Chisholm Trail in Oklahoma is very strong.

Here is some more clarification of the Trail:

• Jesse Chisholm's Trail ended at Abilene, Kansas.  This is not true. His road ended at the Arkansas River where Wichita now is. Although Chisholm may have driven a few cows from Wichita to a trading post in Fort Leavenworth, it was Joseph McCoy who hired civil engineer T. F. Hershey to survey and mark a direct path to Wichita from Abilene.
• Jesse Chisholm's Trail started on the north side of the Red River. This is not true. The closest that Jesse Chisholm's old wagon road came to Texas was at the Washita River crossing where the Wichita Reservation Agency was located.  The first recorded drive  went from the Texas line went up to the North Fork of the Canadian River before hooking up with Chisholm's trail several miles north and east of the Wichita Agency. 
• Jesse Chisholm's Trail never was in Oklahoma or Indian Territory. This is not true. However, the Trail Log and maps reveal that only about 120 Miles of the 275+ mile Chisholm Trail in Oklahoma had anything at all to do with Jesse Chisholm's wagon road. The other 155+ miles of the Trail was on newly broken land or previous unnamed trails that already existed.
• Jesse Chisholm's Trail never existed in Kansas. This is not true. However, there are only about 60 miles (Caldwell to Wichita)  of the 150+ mile Trail to Abilene in Kansas.  The 95+ miles of Trail from Abilene to Wichita was surveyed and marked by Joseph McCoy. 
• Jesse Chisholm used his 1864 wagon road for Texas trail drives.  This is not true. Although Chisholm, his sometime partner J.R. Mead and others periodically did move cattle from Wichita to the North Fork of the Canadian and back for trading purposes.

A bridge on the Trail. Taking what we now know, it is pretty clear that part of Jesse Chisholm's wagon road was just a bridge between two other sections of what now is known as the Chisholm Trail. This takes nothing away from Chisholm himself or the wagon road.  He was one of the great pioneer figures of the west and his trail from Wichita to the trading posts in Indian Territory was very important in its time. 

Why "The Chisholm Trail"?  How did the long cattle trail from the the Red River to Abilene become almost universally known as "The Chisholm Trail", when less than half of Jesse Chisholm's wagon road was actually a part of the Chisholm Trail itself?  Joseph McCoy didn't name it. In fact, if McCoy had been more of promoter, he probably would have named it after himself and it would have been called the "McCoy Trail" without question.  Other names like "The Abilene Trail" and the "Texas Trail" were used both as common terms and trail titles, but just didn't stick or became attached to later trails.

The answer is simple and uncomplicated: Jesse Chisholm's wagon road was the only "named" trail in existence when the drives started from Texas. The rest were mostly generic with the name of the departure point or the destination.  As the Trail developed, the use of Chisholm name became a simple and recognizable term for the whole trail. It became a generic "brand" that was easily recognizable and became the most commonly used name.

The Old Trail Drivers Agree: Interestingly enough, in 1931 at the conclusion of the Old Trail Drivers Association meeting, George Saunders who had been up the Trail more than a half-dozen times, was quoted in a newspaper that "The Chisholm trail was marked from Abilene Kansas to Red River Station and no further". This obviously  includes the extensions on the north and south of the old wagon road.  But for some reason Saunders was quite clear that the Trail went no further south.

SA Express-10-16-1931~George Saunders~Pres Old Trail Drivers Assoc

Note: The historical record is explicit that Joseph McCoy really only "marked" the new trail from Abilene to Wichita and simply sent agents out to the most popular Red River crossing points and further down into south Texas. Saunders also said in the same article that "McCoy hired Chisholm to lay out the route". McCoy does not mention Chisholm at all in his book and there seems very little basis to the suggestion that McCoy & Chisholm had a business arrangement in the short time before Chisholm's death in 1868.


* Not an issue: The historical and public community involved with the Chisholm Trail in Kansas and Oklahoma today is almost entirely unconcerned with the idea that large parts of what is known as "The Chisholm Trail"  in both states were not really ever a part of Jesse Chisholm's original wagon road.  These two Trail states have avoided controversy and have expended their energies on creating cattle trail documentation that far exceeds that of Texas. They have been polishing their heritage..

No Chisholm Trail in Texas! South of the Red River, there is a pocket of historical quicksand located mostly between San Antonio and Fort Worth. For almost 100 years there have been contradictory pronouncements from several sources that have managed to tarnish the deep heritage of the cattle trail from south Texas to Abilene, Kansas. Several theories are offered as proof. They contradict each other, but no matter:

"Nothing But Feeder Trails To the Red River": This is a brush-fire issue that is generally used to take the focus off the weakness of the "Not in Texas" position. It also lingers in some Oklahoma references. The idea might seem to have some credibility until you consider that the three earliest maps (1872-1873-1875) used exactly the same line width and colors for both feeder trails and the main stem from San Antonio through Fort Worth. This of course gives the impression that each trail carried the same number of cattle per year. Which is dead wrong. These maps give us absolutely no information about the sheer number of cattle that passed through the main stem towns compared to the feeder trail traffic. Sadly, this thoughtless cartography was copied onto later maps that spread the confusion. 

1875 Kansas & Pacific RR Trails Map ~ Feeder Trails in Texas

Cattle Count: As an example, in 1868 Fort Worth estimated 75,000 head and in 1871 360,00 head passing through with some estimates doubling that. In comparison, did Weatherford, which was on a northern feeder trail connecting to Red River Station ever pass even a fraction of this number in a year? Or how many cattle crossed the Brazos between Fort Graham and Cleburne compared to any of the feeder trails to the west? There don't seem to be any statistics available for the feeder trails, but it seems reasonable to estimate that most of them passed a few herds of 1000-2000 head once or twice a year or maybe a little more. And that most of those herds joined the main trail stem at some point along the way as the maps show. 

May 22, 1875-Dallas Weekly Herald

Twenty five herds on the main stem road between San Marcos and Fort Worth does not sound like that route  was a "minor" feeder trail. A later newspaper report in August of 1875 says the the total Texas cattle driven for the season was around 166,000 head. Even allowing for overly enthusiastic reporting by local newspapers, it is easy to see that the trail from San Antonio to Fort Worth probably accepted 2/3 of the total Texas cattle traffic for 1875, which was the last before the railroad came to Fort Worth and also a year that saw the drift toward the new Western Trail continue. 

Out West: The later Western or Dodge City Trail also began in south Texas just about where the Chisholm Trail began, building its main stem up through Fort Griffin and Doan's Crossing with extensive feeder trails as well. History does not seem to record any strident outbursts claiming that the real Western Trail was only in Oklahoma and Kansas and that there were only unnamed feeder trails in Texas. 

Flip-flop:  If the feeder trail theory was valid, then why do the many later maps show names like the  Abilene, McCoy, Texas, Northern, or Eastern Trail  running up the main stem to Red River Station from South Texas?  One cancels the other. You can't have both. 

"Jesse Chisholm's Trail never was in Texas": Very true. The old wagon road never came close, just like it never came close to the Red River or Abilene. This is the major issue that has always clouded the Texas heritage to the Chisholm Trail. It is worth some serious consideration because there are a fairly large number of those who feel that this is important.

The Trail extensions from Wichita to Abilene and from Red River Station to Fort Reno have been accepted by the states of Oklahoma and Kansas as part of the "Chisholm Trail" for over 80 years.  More important, George Saunders, the early and respected leader of the Texas based Old Trail Drivers Association also agreed that the Chisholm Trail ran from Red River Station To Abilene back in 1931.

The reasons for the adamant refusal to include Texas as part of the Chisholm Trail may have been partly personal, partly a misunderstanding of the true development of the Trail or just sheer hard headed thinking. Whatever the reasons, they are all pretty irrelevant now.

The Chisholm Trail IS a part of Texas History: Given all this background, what logic keeps the southern Chisholm Trail extension out of Texas?  The route from the North Canadian to south Texas along the main stem from Fort Worth south past San Antonio is one long logical extension of the original Trail.  Just as the route from Wichita to Abilene is the northern extension.

The Chisholm Trail didn't have boundaries defined by either the Arkansas or Red rivers.

Jesse Chisholm

* Ralph P. Bieber's long, exhaustively sourced footnote at the beginning of Chapter 6 of Joseph McCoy's "Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of The West and Southwest" is one of the best and most reliable sources on the development and extension of the Chisholm Trail.. 

1849: Major Ripley Arnold Speaks Up In Defense of the New Fort on the Trinity

It is 1849 on the Grand Prairie of Texas, just east of the Cross Timbers on a high bluff overlooking the the confluence of the Clear Fork and the West Fork of the Trinity River. A new U.S. Army outpost has just been established by young Brevet Major Ripley Arnold as part of a defensive picket to protect new settlements.  The post which does not have a protective palisade, is named Fort Worth.

Construction work gets underway, scouts and patrols by the mounted 2nd Dragoon troops are begun. Contact is made with the few local settlers.  Local Indian tribes as well as itinerant hunting groups are received at the camp and trading is begun.

Dragoons in field dress ~ From Ft. McKavett & The 2nd Dragoons

Supplies come in via Fort Graham to the south which also includes the mails. Newspapers of which the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Galveston News are the most prominent, are eagerly awaited. The June 17, 1849 edition of the Times-Picayune arrived with this article:

Times-Picayune, June 17, 1849

This article, which contained no sources at all, was troubling. To most Americans of the time, Texas seemed as far away as Afghanistan is today. The newspapers of this era had found that the Indian wars were wildly popular with their readers and treated whatever news there was almost as a sporting event with the small US Army on one side and the native tribes on the other. As always happens in the media, if there is no current news, then there is sometimes a tendency by the less ethical to create some.

Times-Picayune ~ August 6, 1849

Much was riding on the effectiveness of this new chain of Forts and the protection it would offer to those who were coming into Texas. So Major Arnold, in the midst of setting up this forward post, took pen in hand and replied directly to the scurrilous article with good humor, precise information, a direct non-nonsense manner and a plea to come to Fort Worth to join the settlement. 

This will not be the last we will hear from and about Major Ripley Arnold.

Note: The news articles above were the earliest I have found that mention Fort Worth.

1894: A Lost North Fort Worth Map Reveals a Tantalizing Hint ~The Old Road to Azle?

I love a mystery.  Even a little mystery.  This lost map mystery is really little and in the vast scope of things, insignificant to Fort Worth history. It all started this way:

1894 North Fort Worth Plat ~ Oakwood Cemetery Archives

Several years ago a search of the Oakwood Cemetery archives turned up this fine old 1894 plat map of North Fort Worth done by Brookes Baker, one of the earlier surveyors in the Tarrant County. It was a "blue line" map on a very heavy weathered tan colored paper.  The gray scale version is shown here to allow greater detail at a reasonable resolution.  This is one of the earliest maps of North Fort Worth that I have seen. It is based on Nathan Barrett's original 1889 plat and extends north only as far as NW 23rd Street.

With permission, I have been allowed to examine this map in detail and to include it in my Lost Antique Maps of Fort Worth CDROM where a full resolution, zoomable copy is available. Close study of this map has turned up some interesting and sometimes unexpected additions to Fort Worth history...

1894 Old Azle Road ~ Click to zoom

One of the little mysteries that this map reveals is located at the point on North Main where it jogs to the the right or due north at NW 20th street as it does today. The clip above shows that there was a road that apparently was a direct extension of North Main named Azle (Graveled) Road that headed off to the northwest. Obviously that road no longer exists. It is not a part of today's Ellis Avenue.  I thought for a while that it might be a shortcut to Clinton Street, but now I no longer think so.  Just the other day, a quick look at a large 1955 Fort Worth map during another quest gave me  a possible answer.

1955 Fort Worth Map ~ Click to zoom

If you look at the old 1955 Topo map above, you will see as I did, that there is a very definite relationship between this little stub off of North Main and the beginning of Angle Avenue where NW 26th and Refugio meet. The white line running diagonally from just north of NW 20th Street shows the approximate relationship of Angle Avenue to the little abandoned 1894 stub off North Main.

Angle Avenue and Cliff Street come together just past NW 28th street. Remembering of course, that none of the roads north of 23th Street nor Refugio existed until Rosen Heights was platted in about 1903. North Main was another mud track to the east of this line. Let's name this projection "Old Azle Road" or OAR.

Assuming that the angles were good and that a road was possible between the two points, the next question would be to figure out why it ran this way toward Azle, rather than some other direction, because there were options. Early roads were generally natural pathways that were animal or Indian trails and almost always followed the line of least resistance.

Current Aerial of Old Azle Road with elevations ~ Click to zoom 

The OAR projection on the Google aerial above shows that the elevation above sea level as it branched from North Main was about 555', then rose to about 630' and then descended to about 576' where it joined 10 Mile Bridge Road. Headed northwest out of town, the road climbed about 75' in 6 blocks or about 1/2 mile. Coming into town from the northwest, the climb would have been about 50' in a little over 2 blocks and then a gentle slope down to North Main.

These elevations are very important since in the period before 1910 almost all Tarrant County roads outside cities were unpaved, rutted, dusty tracks that became mud bogs after it rained. All of the merchandise and farm goods had to be hauled by wagon using teams of horse or mules. The most useful roads were those that avoided steep grades or river crossings.

Angle Avenue north to 10 Mile Bridge Road ~ Click to zoom

Those familiar with North Fort Worth are aware that there is a line of bluffs that run from just west of North Main starting at about Northside Drive that continues on up to about where North 820 runs. It is the barrier ridge between Marine Creek and the West Fork of the Trinity. At some points the drop off from NW 25th or NW 26th Street to the Marine Creek banks is almost 100' and is very steep.

If you follow the elevation markers on the aerial it becomes apparent that there is what was probably a natural crease dropping from the junction of NW 26th and Refugio down to Marine Creek, which later became Angle Avenue.  Note that they named it an "Avenue" rather than a street which might indicate its importance in the early days.  As a comparison, drive down Lee Street from NW 26th and then do the same on Angle Avenue. The difference is very notable.
 
Why did this old road exist?  After all, even in the late 1800's it was possible to to follow what is now North Main up to about NW 26th street and cut-off over what is now Cliff Street to 10 Mile Bridge Road with fairly easy grades.  Marine Creek many be part of the answer, since any other route required either a river crossing.  I don't think a bridge over Marine Creek existed until after 1890 when the first packing houses and stockyards were started. Even until the 1950's Marine Creek was crooked, flood prone and had steep banks that probably were difficult for wagon traffic to deal with.

Is this the reason Angle Avenue exists today?  Did our OAR connect between 26th street and the jog on Main Street? It's something to think about.....


10 mile Bridge Road is named for the Trinity River crossing about halfway to Azle. The road starts at about where 28th street is today. It leaves Fort Worth running a little northwest along Marine Creek and rises to a crest about where Boat Club Road is today. Then it runs downhill through some very hilly county until it reaches the Trinity River bottoms just below where Eagle Mountain Dam is today. It was one of two main roads to the northwest from Fort Worth until Jacksboro Highway was completed in about 1932.