Where to Stay in Fort Worth, Texas

What is Fort Worth known for?

Fort Worth is known as the Texas city where the cattle trails met the railroad, and it keeps that ranching identity alongside a strong cultural district. The Stockyards carry the cowboy heritage. West of downtown, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Sid Richardson Museum cluster in one of the country's densest art districts.

Cattle culture has its own halls, from the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame to the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame.

What are the main landmarks in Fort Worth?

The main landmarks in Fort Worth split between the cultural district and the cattle quarter. The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Sid Richardson Museum anchor the museum lawns west of downtown. Cowboy heritage fills its own halls at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame and the Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Grand old houses survive too. The Eddleman-McFarland House and the Pollock-Capps House keep the Victorian-era record near the bluff over the river.

What is the history of Fort Worth?

Fort Worth began in 1849 as an army post on a bluff above the Trinity River, guarding the Texas frontier. The fort gave the city its name. After the Civil War it became a stop on the Chisholm Trail, where herds bound north paused to water, and the cattle trade built the Stockyards and the packing houses that followed the railroad.

Grand houses such as the Eddleman-McFarland House and the Pollock-Capps House rose on the bluff as the trade prospered. Oil and ranching wealth in the twentieth century endowed the cultural district west of downtown, where the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth stand among the museum lawns. Churches from the settlement's earlier decades survive as well, among them the Allen Chapel AME Church and Tabernacle Baptist Church.

Fort Worth kept its cowtown identity even as it grew, and the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame carries that heritage forward in Texas.

Where is Fort Worth?

Fort Worth sits on the West Fork of the Trinity River in the state of Texas, at the western edge of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro. The old town crowns a low bluff. Around it the blackland prairie gives way to the rolling grass and cross-timbers country of the Texas plains, a transition that once defined the cattle-trail route.

The river and its forks thread through the city in a chain of lakes and greenbelts, while the flat prairie opens west toward the ranch country beyond.

What is the climate of Fort Worth?

Fort Worth has a warm, humid subtropical climate on the southern plains of Texas. Summers are long and hot. Spring brings the region's severe storms, when the city sits within the reach of the tornadoes that cross the prairie, and heavy rain can swell the Trinity River.

Winters stay short and generally mild, broken by cold fronts and the odd ice storm sweeping down from the north. Wind and drought mark the deep summer.

How do you get to Fort Worth?

Fort Worth sits on Interstate 35W and Interstate 30, the highways linking it across Texas and east toward Dallas. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport lies northeast between the two cities. Long-distance trains stop downtown.

From the airport it is a short drive to the Stockyards, the cultural district, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, while the dense highway grid of the metro carries most traffic across the wider region.