Fort Worth Stockyards

For half a century, the smell of money in Fort Worth was the smell of a stockyard. When the Swift and Armour packing giants opened plants here in 1902, this stretch of bottomland north of downtown became one of the largest livestock markets on earth — a churning city of pens, chutes, auction rings, and rail spurs where ranchers, traders, and buyers turned Texas cattle into cash. The trade gave Fort Worth its nickname, 'Cowtown,' and its swagger. This walk follows Exchange Avenue from the great brick Livestock Exchange — the 'Wall Street of the West' — past the coliseum that birthed the indoor rodeo, the towering brick gateway, and the barns that once held three thousand animals, out to the ghosts of the Swift and Armour plants and the vanished boomtown of Niles City. The pens are quiet now, but twice a day a small herd of longhorns still ambles down the bricks, a living echo of the millions that came before.