Old Irving & Bear Creek Roots

Before there were canals and bronze mustangs, there was a barbecue and an auction. In the early 1900s, two men working the survey crew for the Rock Island Railroad's new line from Fort Worth to Dallas — chief J. O. Schulze and surveyor Otis Brown — bought just over 80 acres of farmland here, platted a townsite, and on December 19, 1903 sold off the lots over barbecue. They named it Irving, and a real town grew up along the tracks: churches on lots the founders donated, a lumberman's bungalow, a doctor who saw patients in his front room day and night. But the land west of town had its own older story. Out past Bear Creek, families freed from slavery after the Civil War bought their own acreage, built a community, and buried their dead in ground a former slave purchased and gave away. This driving tour starts in the original townsite Schulze and Brown laid out and ends at the Bear Creek settlement and its cemetery — two roots of the same place.