Smithfield: The Town NRH Swallowed

Long before North Richland Hills sprawled across this stretch of northeast Tarrant County, there was Smithfield — a small railroad-stop village named for Eli Smith, whose family donated land for a townsite in 1887. The suburb eventually grew up and around it, but Smithfield never quite disappeared: its church row, its Masonic lodge, and its pioneer cemetery still cluster tightly on the old townsite, a knot of nineteenth-century history inside a twentieth-century city. This short walking loop visits that surviving core — four churches whose congregations predate the town itself, the lodge that drew the area's leading settlers, and the cemetery where the namesake founder lies. It's a rare chance to walk a lost Texas town that is still legible on the ground. The stops sit close together, several on the same blocks, so take it slowly and read each marker — the story is in the dates, which run back well before Smithfield had a name.