Bird's Fort to the Airline: The HEB Tri-Cities Origin

The HEB cities — Hurst, Euless, and Bedford — share one origin story that no single one of them can tell alone. It starts on the open prairie in 1843, when a treaty signed near Bird's Fort drew the line between Indian country and white settlement and opened these lands to the pioneers who followed. From there the story runs through the namesake founders — Elisha Adam Euless and his cotton gin, 'Uncle Billy' Hurst and the rail stop named for him — and on to the cemetery and homesteads of the seed community of Bedford. It ends in the present, at the C.R. Smith Museum, where American Airlines tells the story of the aviation industry that now anchors all three towns next to DFW Airport. This driving tour stitches the three cities together as they actually grew: one prairie, a handful of founding families, and a runway. Mind the traffic, and let the distances tell you how far the frontier has come.