Old Town & the Interurban

Burleson runs along the line where Tarrant and Johnson counties meet, and for a quarter century its lifeline was electric. When an interurban railway opened in 1912 connecting Fort Worth to Cleburne, the trains ran straight through Burleson, carrying passengers and freight in and out of town and turning the local pharmacy on the line into a community hub. The town had incorporated only the year before, and the interurban era set the rhythm of Old Town: the depot-side businesses, the churches, the academy on the hill, and the cemetery that holds the founders. This walk follows the bones of that downtown — the building where the train tickets were sold, the houses of the families who gave the town its land and its name, the site of a frontier college, and the burying ground at the edge of it all. It's a short loop through a railroad town that the cars eventually replaced.