Virtual Caching in Fort Worth 5/16/2010

We drove into Fort Worth early this morning after having breakfast at Cracker Barrel, to do some of the many virtual caches in the city. We are driving down I35W at about 65 mph and the cars whizzing by us and we see the dumbest sign on a highway we have ever seen. It was a message board over the highway and it said "FLOODING RAINS TODAY POSSIBLE IF HIGHWAY IS FLOODED TURN AROUND DON'T DROWN". Yeah right stop and turn around on a major interstate with all the nuts coming at you at 65, 70, 75, 80 mph............NO WAY. What the hell are they thinking?

Well anyway on into Fort Worth and no turning around. Our first cache was a plaque commemorating the first airplane landing in Fort Worth.
In 1911 Calbrath Perry Rodgers became the first to cross the continent in a Wright EX airplane. Most of his navigation consisted of following the train his ground crew was riding in. The plane was dubbed the "Vin Fiz" flyer after the grape drink of his sponsor J. Ogden Armour, a Chicago meat packer. Bales of leaflets advertizing Vin Fiz were dropped along the way.
The range and reliability of the airplane being somewhat limited at the time, the flight took 49 days to complete. Many stops were required along the way to refuel and repair the airplane. In fact there were 23 stops just in Texas! One of these stops was made in a pasture in Fort Worth. The landing drew a crowd of 10,000 spectators. This was to be merely the first step in a long line of Fort Worth's aviation heritage.

Next was at one of the downtown fire departments and had to do with the statue and bell you see in the pictures. The bell was bought in 1882 and used by the volunteer fire department until 1893 and then by the regular department until 1912 when automatic alarm systems were installed.

Then it was on to a 3 part virtual cache where we had to visit 3 different bronze sculptures that had to do with cowboys. You see a picture of one of them as one statue had been removed and the other I couldn't find a place to park so I had to let Mom out and couldn't take a picture.

Then it was on to Burnett Park in the downtown area. Samuel Burk Burnett, who built a huge fortune on cattle ranching and oil, dedicated this three-acre stretch as a public park honoring his children. It is located next to several buildings that are entries in the National Register of Historic Places.
Samuel Burk Burnett, rancher, banker, oilman, son of Jeremiah (Jerry) and Nancy (Turner) Burnett, was born on January 1, 1849, in Bates County, Missouri. In the late 1850s the family moved to Texas and built a home on the banks of Denton Creek in Denton County. Within ten years Jerry Burnett had established a small but successful ranch that enabled Burnett to learn the day-to-day operations of the cattle business. Burk received little formal schooling, but he used his practical education to become eventually one of the wealthiest ranchers in Texas. His first trail drive occurred in 1866. The following year he served as trail boss, driving his father's 1,200 cattle along the Chisholm Trail to Abilene. In 1868 he became a partner with his father, and in 1871 he acquired his own brand and began building what became one of the largest cattle empires in Texas history—the Four Sixes Ranch. Burnett weathered the panic of 1873 by holding over the winter the 1,100 cattle he had driven to Kansas. The following year he sold this stock for a profit of $10,000. He was one of the first ranchers in Texas to buy steers and graze them for market. At first his herd consisted of longhorn cattle, but later he introduced Durhams and then Herefordsqv into the herd, thus producing what many considered to be among the finest cattle strains in the state.
In 1874 Burnett bought and moved cattle from South Texas to the area of Little Wichita, now Wichita Falls, where he established his ranch headquarters in 1881. The move was partly prompted by the increase in the number of Four Sixes cattle and an agreement drawn up between Burnett and Quanah Parker, Comanche chief and friend of Burnett. Through Parker's assistance over a period of years Burnett leased 300,000 acres of Kiowa and Comanche land in Indian Territory for 6½ cents an acre. He grazed 10,000 cattle on this land until 1902. After 1898 cattlemen were told to surrender their lease agreements to allow opening of Oklahoma Territory to homesteaders. Burnett once again called on a friend for assistance, this time Theodore Roosevelt. The Texas rancher asked the president for an extension so that the Texas cattle might be removed in an orderly fashion. Roosevelt's agreement to the request enabled Burnett to purchase land to offset the loss of grazing rights in Oklahoma. Between 1900 and 1903 Burnett purchased 107,520 acres in Carson County northeast of Amarillo and bought the Old "8" Ranch, of 141,000 acres, near Guthrie in King County, ninety-three miles east of Lubbock. The two purchases increased the size of the Four Sixes to 206,000 acres. Ultimately, Burnett owned ranches in Oklahoma and Mexico in addition to his holdings in Texas and ran 20,000 cattle under the Four Sixes brand.
In 1905, in return for Roosevelt's assistance, Burnett helped organize a wolf hunt for the president. During the president's visit, Roosevelt influenced the changing of the name of Nesterville, on the Four Sixes spread in Wichita County, to Burkburnett. Five years later Burnett discontinued personal direction of his ranch. He leased the Four Sixes to his eldest son, Tom, so that he could concentrate his attention on his other businesses, banking and oil. After the discovery of oil on land near Burkburnett in 1921, Burnett's wealth increased dramatically. He had already expanded his business interests by buying property in Fort Worth, where he had maintained a residence since 1900. By 1910 the city had become headquarters for his financial enterprises, and he had become the director and principal stockholder of the First National Bank of Fort Worth and president of the Ardmore Oil Milling and Gin Company. He continued his interest in ranching, however, through his association with the Stock-Raisers Association of North-West Texas (see TEXAS AND SOUTHWESTERN CATTLE RAISERS ASSOCIATION). He had been a charter member in 1877, and he served as treasurer from 1900 to 1922. Burnett was also president of the National Feeders and Breeders Association and in 1896 of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show (later the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show).
Burnett married Ruth B. Lloyd in 1869, and they had three children. They were later divorced. Two of their children, Ann and Thomas L. Burnett, lived to adulthood. Burnett married Mary Couts Barradel of Weatherford in 1892, and this couple had one son. In the early 1920s Burnett's health failed and he went into semiretirement. On June 27, 1922, he died. At the time of his death his wealth was estimated at $6 million, part of which, through the efforts of his widow, became an endowment for Texas Christian University.
They must have thought a lot of him, or his money, as the statue in the park of him as you can see in the picture is about 30' tall.

Next it was on to Sundance Square in the middle of the city for a virtual cache about a mural painted on the side of a building. Sundance Square in downtown Fort Worth is rich in Western history and lore. During the great cattle drives of the late 1800's, Fort Worth was one of the major stops on the legendary Chisholm Trail. Cowboys on the trail would visit downtown Fort Worth for some much needed recreation. The downtown area was filled with saloons, gambling parlors, shooting galleries and dance halls, which attracted a rough mix of gamblers, cattlemen, outlaws, and lonesome doves.
The area was named for the Sundance Kid who - along with his partner Butch Cassidy - was a frequent visitor to the area, then known as Hell's Half Acre. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, well-known participants in the "Shootout at the OK Corral," could also be spotted from time to time in Sundance Square. Most of the buildings in Sundance Square date from the turn of the 20th century, and have been beautifully restored to provide a wonderful architectural view of the past. The red brick streets and lush courtyards add to Sundance Square's authentic aura.
A few of the notable buildings in Sundance Square include the Knights of Pythias Hall (1901), the Land Title Building (1889), and the Jett Building (1907), which features the Chisholm Trail Mural painted by Richard Haas in the mid 1980s and spans the building's southern façade. The mural commemorates the Fort Worth segment of the Chisholm Trail cattle drives of 1867-1875.

Next we were off to the Tarrant County Courthouse and a cache about the fountain in front. This building is one of architectural masterpieces of Fort Worth. The fountain we need to find was built in 1892 and was rededicated to Judge Jonathan Hogsett who watered his horse at the fountain and was a State Legislator and author of the Charter of the City of Fort Worth. The Courthouse today serves as the terminus of Main Street and it sits high on the bluff of the Trinity River. It was designed by Gunn and Curtiss Architects of Kansas City and it is a striking example of American Beaux Arts Design. Probst & Co. from Chicago was the General Contractor. It was modeled after the Texas Capitol Building in Austin and uses pink granite. It was one of the first structural steel framed buildings built in the Southwestern United States. The courthouse is 194 feet in height. Over the years, many bad remodel jobs were done, including adding mezzanines, covering up the rotunda in the center, painting the copper dome, outlining the dome in neon, and adding the Civil Courts Building on the west side. The architect that restored the building in 1983 was Ward Bogard. If you look carefully at the building, you will notice some of the windows in the basement have bars over them. These were on the windows of the prisoner holding cells when the building was constructed. The exterior of the building was used in the filming of the CBS television series Walker, Texas Ranger. This breathtaking hall was constructed in 1893, slightly northwest of the site where the original 1849 fort marked the city's beginning. This is the third courthouse to be built on this site; the first burned in 1876, while the second was demolished to make way for a larger building. When it was constructed, the building's $500,000 price tag so angered the citizens that they voted the county commissioners out of office. The building itself, with its red granite walls and four-faced Seth Thomas clock in the tower, was designed by the Kansas City firm Gunn & Curtis.
After 115 years of holding court and keeping time over downtown, the "queen" of North Texas architecture's dramatic high hat has an appointment for a $5 million makeover.
Since 1895, the Tarrant County Courthouse's clock tower has withstood lightning strikes, wild winds, hammering hail and driving deluges. But time and the elements have put some wrinkles in the pink granite's 110-foot-tall topper.
The Renaissance Revival structure's copper dome and cupola have never been waterproof, and the drip, drip of the decades has wreaked havoc with the interior of the wedding-cake style tower's masonry, windows, plank flooring and steel framework.
The cast-iron balustrade on the exterior has lost a few teeth, the copper dome is pocked with holes, and the original clock and the ring of its 8,000-pound bell run 15 minutes late.
Like many home repair projects, the tower restoration started modestly.
Officials had budgeted about $300,000 for cosmetic repairs. But when a 400-pound cast-iron plate fell off an exterior face, more problems were revealed and the project morphed into a $2 million face-lift that was approved a year ago by county commissioners, said David Phillips, the county's facilities management director.
Fort Worth architect Arthur Weinman then spent months "crawling all over" the tower, and his examination revealed the need for an 18-month makeover costing an estimated $5 million, Phillips said.

Next it was off to what was referred to as Hell's Half Acre a section of old time FW and it it was the Fort Worth Medical College. There was not a "public" hospital in the early days of Fort Worth. There was however the Fort Worth Medical College.
"There were many Acre victims that owed their lives to the quick response of the college staff on numerous occasions between 1895 and 1903. Doctors often rushed to the scene to treat patients; at other times, when the emergency was not so great, patients were taken to the college for treatment. The Acre provided the medical school with most of its patients "for treatment and demonstration." Cadavers, as well as more lively subjects, were a neccessity for any medical school, although these could usually be secured only on a catch-as-catch-can basis".
"Students sat in a large amphitheater on the first floor of the building and observed while their instructors diagnosed and treated patients, and performed autopsies on subjects who had probably been walking up and down Rusk Street just a few hours earlier. Students dissecting rooms were on the second floor and sometimes doctors-to-be got a little "rambunctious" after long hours of learning. In the summer months when the dissecting rooms grew hot and stuffy, the students would open windows. What followed next was sworn later by Dr. Kent Kibbie of the college, who claimed students amused themselves by tossing spare pieces of cadavers out the windows so that they landed on the street - or worse - below. This bit of tomfoolery never failed to have the desired effect of frightening unsuspecting pedestrians."
HELL'S HALF ACRE, FORT WORTH. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, Hell's Half Acre became almost a generic name for the red-light district in many frontier towns, including San Antonio, Fort Worth, and Tascosa, Texas. The exact origins of the name are unclear, but in the days of the Republic of Texas it was applied to Webberville, near Austin, because of the community's lawless and immoral reputation. The name did not come into widespread usage, however, until after the Civil War. Returning soldiers may have brought the phrase back with them from such bloody battlefields as Stones River, where it had been applied with a different but equally vivid connotation. As a name for prostitution districts, it was usually shortened to "the Acre," but everyone knew what the abbreviation stood for.
Among the various Hell's Half Acres that dotted the frontier, none was more infamous or more rambunctious than Fort Worth's. The Fort Worth version started during the city's heyday as a drover's stop on the cattle trails to Kansas in the early 1870s. The name first appeared in the local newspaper in 1874, but by that time the district was already well established on the lower end of town, where it was the first thing the trail drivers saw as they approached the town from the south. Here there was an aggregation of one and two story saloons, dance halls, and bawdy houses, interspersed with empty lots and a sprinkling of legitimate businesses. Only those looking for trouble or excitement ventured into the Acre. As one headline put it in a description of a popular saloon there, "They Raise Merry Cain at the Waco Tap." Moreover, the usual activities of the Acre, which included brawling, gambling, cockfighting, and horse racing, were not confined to indoors but spilled out into the streets and back alleys.
As the importance of Fort Worth as a crossroads and cowtown grew, so did Hell's Half Acre. It was originally limited to the lower end of Rusk Street (renamed Commerce Street in 1917) but spread out in all directions until by 1881 the Fort Worth Democrat was complaining that it covered 2½ acres. The Acre grew until it sprawled across four of the city's main north-south thoroughfares: Main, Rusk, Calhoun, and Jones. From north to south, it covered that area from Seventh Street down to Fifteenth (or Front) Street. The lower boundary was marked by the Union Station train depot and the northern edge by a vacant lot at the intersection of Main and Seventh. These boundaries, which were never formally recognized, represented the maximum area covered by the Acre, around 1900. Occasionally, the Acre was also referred to as "the bloody Third Ward" after it was designated one of the city's three political wards in 1876.
Long before the Acre reached its maximum boundaries, local citizens had become alarmed at the level of crime and violence in their city. In 1876 Timothy Isaiah (Longhair Jim) Courtrightqv was elected city marshal with a mandate to tame the Acre's wilder activities. Courtright cracked down on violence and general rowdiness-by sometimes putting as many as thirty people in jail on a Saturday night-but allowed the gamblers to operate unmolested. After receiving information that train and stagecoach robbers, such as the Sam Bass gang, were using the Acre as a hideout, local authorities intensified law-enforcement efforts. Yet certain businessmen placed a newspaper advertisement arguing that such legal restrictions in Hell's Half Acre would curtail the legitimate business activities there. Despite this tolerance from business, however, the cowboys began to stay away, and the businesses began to suffer. City officials muted their stand against vice. Courtright lost support of the Fort Worth Democrat and consequently lost when he ran for reelection in 1879. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s the Acre continued to attract gunmen, highway robbers, card sharks, con men, and shady ladies, who preyed on out-of-town and local sportsmen.
At one time or another reform-minded mayors like H. S. Broiles and crusading newspaper editors like B. B. Paddock declared war on the district but with no long-term results. The Acre meant income for the city-all of it illegal-and excitement for visitors. Possibly for this reason, the reputation of the Acre was sometimes exaggerated by raconteurs; some longtime Fort Worth residents claimed the place was never as wild as its reputation. Suicide was responsible for more deaths than murder, and the chief victims were prostitutes, not gunmen. However much its reputation was exaggerated, the real Acre was bad enough. The newspaper claimed "it was a slow night which did not pan out a cutting or shooting scrape among its male denizens or a morphine experiment by some of its frisky females." The loudest outcries during the periodic clean-up campaigns were against the dance halls, where men and women met, as opposed to the saloons or the gambling parlors, which were virtually all male.
A major reform campaign in the late 1880s was brought on by Mayor Boiles and County Attorney R. L. Carlock after two events. In the first of these, on February 8, 1887, Luke Short and Jim Courtright had a shootout on Main Street that left Courtright dead and Short the "King of Fort Worth Gamblers." Although the fight did not occur in the Acre, it focused public attention on the city's underworld. A few weeks later a poor prostitute known only by the name of Sally was found murdered and nailed to an outhouse door in the Acre. These two events, combined with the first prohibition campaign in Texas, helped to shut down the Acre's worst excesses in 1889.
More than any other factor, urban growth began to improve the image of the Acre, as new businesses and homes moved into the south end of town. Another change was the influx of black residents. Excluded from the business end of town and the nicer residential areas, Fort Worth's black citizens, who numbered some 7,000 out of a total population of 50,000 around 1900, settled into the south end of town. Though some joined in the profitable vice trade (to run, for instance, the Black Elephant Saloon), many others found legitimate work and bought homes.
A third change was in the popularity and profitability of the Acre, which was no longer attracting cowboys and out-of-town visitors. Its visible population was more likely to be derelicts, hoboes, and bums. By 1900 most of the dance halls and gamblers were gone. Cheap variety shows and prostitution became the chief forms of entertainment. The Progressive era was similarly making its reformist mark felt in districts like the Acre all over the country.
In 1911 Rev. J. Frank Norris launched an offensive against racetrack gambling in the Baptist Standard and used the pulpit of the First Baptist Church to attack vice and prostitution. Norris used the Acre both to scourge the leadership of Fort Worth and to advance his own personal career. When he began to link certain Fort Worth businessmen with property in the Acre and announce their names from his pulpit, the battle heated up. On February 4, 1912, Norris's church was burned to the ground; that evening his enemies tossed a bundle of burning oiled rags onto his porch, but the fire was extinguished and caused minimal damage. A month later the arsonists succeeded in burning down the parsonage. In a sensational trial lasting a month, Norris was charged with perjury and arson in connection with the two fires. He was acquitted, but his continued attacks on the Acre accomplished little until 1917. A new city administration and the federal government, which was eyeing Fort Worth as a potential site for a major military training camp, joined forces with the Baptist preacher to bring down the curtain on the Acre finally. The police department compiled statistics showing that 50 percent of the violent crime in Fort Worth occurred in the Acre, a shocking confirmation of long-held suspicions. After Camp Bowieqv was located on the outskirts of Fort Worth in the summer of 1917, martial law was brought to bear against prostitutes and barkeepers of the Acre. Fines and stiff jail sentences curtailed their activities. By the time Norris held a mock funeral parade to "bury John Barleycorn" in 1919, the Acre had become a part of Fort Worth history. The name, nevertheless, continued to be used for three decades thereafter to refer to the depressed lower end of Fort Worth.


Our last cache was a small park also in the downtown area called Panther Park. In 1875, the Dallas Herald published an article by a former Fort Worth lawyer, Robert E. Cowart, who wrote that the decimation of Fort Worth's population, caused by the economic disaster and hard winter of 1873 which dealt a severe blow to the cattle industry, combined with the railroad stopping the laying of track 30 miles outside of Fort Worth had caused Fort Worth to become such a drowsy place that he saw a panther asleep in the street by the courthouse. The nickname PantherPanther City was enthusiastically embraced when in 1876 Fort Worth recovered economically and many businesses and organizations were named Panther.
At this place it may be well to answer the inquiry so often propounded "why is Fort Worth called `Pantherville' or `Panther City'?'
Among those who left the place when the cyclone hit it was a young lawyer who had come hither from Georgia, one Robert E. Cowart. He went to Dallas, where he still lives, and is one of the promoters of the scheme to get deep water in the Trinity at that place. Cowart was, and is, a bright man. He has a keen sense of the ridiculous and verbiage that can make an Indian's hair curl. He lived long enough in Fort Worth to become acquainted with the peculiarities of its people. It was he who furnished the story that gave Fort Worth the name of the "Panther City." Knowing the conditions that prevailed here, he wrote a communication for the Dallas Herald, then the leading paper of North Texas, telling of the discovering of a panther in the streets of Fort Worth, and the action taken by the people.
No attempt was made to deny or explain the charge. It was accepted as a fact. The town was by common consent christened "Pantherville." Every one named every thing "Panther." There were "panther" stores, "panther" meat markets, "panther" saloons. The "Democrat," a weekly paper being printed here secured a cut of a panther couchant, which it displayed at the head of the paper. A fire company organized at about that time named the engine the "Panther." Two panther cubs were advertised for and secured by the local paper and they were housed in a handsome cage at the firehall. When, a little later, Dallas gave a big celebration or demonstration of some kind the wagon with the panthers were taken over there, drawn by four white horses and escorted by forty good and patriotic citizens of the town clad in white uniforms. It was easily the most attractive part of the procession on that occasion. Fort Worth is still known as "Pantherville," or the "Panther City."
The fountain, dedicated on Wednesday, June 26, 2002, is 18 feet in diameter and 20 inches deep with a reinforced concrete structure. The panther itself weighsClick for larger view approximately 6,000 pounds, and the large marble block on which it rests weights approximately 13,000 pounds. Both were set by crane.
The fountain is traditional in its design and aesthetics. The coloring of the marble goes from white, to gray, to black, an artist statement in itself because the various grades of the expensive stone. All of the marble was quarried and cut in Carrara, Italy and shipped by boat to New Orleans and then trucked to Fort Worth. The walls of the pools and other decorative marble pieces were cut by laser in Italy and hand set at the site in the distinctive pattern. The joint tolerances of the marble is one of extremely tight, almost "nasa" tolerance. At the bottom of the fountain's pool, the Star of Texas design is 12 feet in diameter. The blue and oyster-white mosaic tile was laser cut and hand set at the site.

Once we were done we did do some driving around and did some sightseeing. One interesting thing we saw was Barber's Book Store which is supposedly haunted. Multiple ghosts haunt this building. At least one is somehow attached to the books and antiques that are contained inside. One is a young woman, and her story dates back to when the building was a hotel. The woman was having a relationship with a young man, a man her father vehemently disliked. The young man and woman went to this hotel to be together, and here her father found them, in Room 11. The father shot the young man, killing him, and the young woman afterward committed suicide. One account says she hung herself, another says she jumped off the building.
Paranormal investigators have caught unexplained orbs in photographs throughout the building and have experienced unexplained cold spots in different areas as well. Employees and patrons of the store often hear footsteps ascending and descending the stairwells, while others hear books slamming shut and pages of books being turned in areas of the building that are vacant. Some also report hearing distinctive whispers when there is no one around.Then it was off back to the coach being careful not to run into anyone turning around in the middle of the freeway. Well that about takes care of today so until tomorrow we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick