Historic Downtown Arlington Walk

Arlington exists because the railroad needed a place to stop. In 1875 surveyors for the Texas and Pacific drew a half-mile square of streets on the open prairie exactly midway between Dallas and Fort Worth, drilled a windmill well to water the steam engines, and began selling town lots; the first train pulled in on July 19, 1876. For decades afterward Arlington was a quiet cotton-and-farming town clustered around its depot at Center and Front, and that small-town downtown is what this walk explores. You'll meet the circuit-riding preacher many call the father of Arlington, stand at a 1910s post office, step inside a heritage park where three of the city's oldest log buildings were rescued and reassembled, trace the old Bankhead Highway that once carried the nation's traffic straight down Abram Street, and finish among the early churches and grand homes that the railroad's prosperity left behind. Wear comfortable shoes and look past the modern storefronts — the bones of the railroad town are still here.