Sundance Square & Downtown Fort Worth

Downtown Fort Worth grew up at the edge of the frontier and never quite shook it off. The town began as an 1849 Army camp on a bluff above the Trinity, became the county seat in 1856, and boomed when the cattle trails and then the railroad turned it into the last supply stop before Indian Country — the place that earned the names 'Cowtown' and 'Where the West Begins.' From the pink-granite courthouse on the bluff to the Art Deco towers raised on oil money, this walk traces that arc through a compact downtown grid. It also takes you to the edge of Hell's Half Acre, the notorious red-light district where Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and the rest of the Wild Bunch came to spend their loot — and sat for the single photograph that doomed them. The name 'Sundance Square,' the polished entertainment district you'll walk through, is a nod to exactly that outlaw past.