When the families of Bird's Fort abandoned their troubled settlement on the West Fork of the Trinity River in the spring of 1842, the place seemed destined to become no more than a miserable, inconsequential footnote in the area’s history. Instead, it became the spark that ignited the growth of a remote North Texas wilderness into the 4th largest metropolitan area in the United States. The DFW Metroplex was born at—and out of—Bird’s Fort. This 111-acre parcel of land and water, now nestled peacefully within the Viridian community of North Arlington, is truly the last vestige of a time and place that pitted Anglo-American settlers against Native American tribes in a sequence of events that would set the course for the future of North Texas.

Unfortunately, the story of Bird's Fort and its shaping of today's Texas has received little recognition. Precious few reliable background materials have been available, and a high percentage of accounts found online or in print publications propagate a legacy of error and misrepresentation that ranges from minor inaccuracies to outright myths. In short, there's a high probability that whatever you've read about Bird's Fort is wrong.

The Bird’s Fort-Viridian Historical Research Repository, launched with an initial 100 articles and administered by the Arlington Historical Society, will gather all available and credible research materials into a comprehensive, searchable, growing collection. Here, current and future historians can tap into those resources, consider the reliability of each, and begin to correct the record on the Lone Star State's most significant historic site north of the San Jacinto Battleground, the Alamo, and the State Capitol.

Please visit us today at www.birdsfort.org.

If she is labeled at all on today’s maps, she is labeled Calloway Lake. Many thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived, she was a mighty bend in a broader and wilder Trinity River, orphaned when the serpentine Trinity curled around and met itself three-quarters of a mile to the south where it flows today. This placid little oxbow lake would become the birthplace of the 4th largest metropolitan area in the U.S....  READ ARTICLE

Texas was a very different place 95 million years ago. Dinosaurs and crocodiles dominated a lush seacoast, and the place that would become Arlington sat in a swampy delta lowland where a rich menagerie of marine, amphibious, and land animals lived, interacted, and died. Nowhere has this fossil record been better preserved than at the Arlington Archosaur Site. Discovered in the early 2000s, this site has provided us an unparalleled glimpse into life here during the mid-Cretaceous geologic period.

Join us at the Fielder Museum to look back at a prehistoric era when a great inland seaway divided North America into two separate continents and the place where we live today was uniquely positioned to capture a rare and revealing snapshot of that time.

The Seashores of Ancient Arlington: A Rich Fossil Record will open July 21 and run through the end of September at the Fielder Museum. The exhibit will feature regional fossil displays along with a series of special presentations illustrating rich paleontological discoveries that have been made—and will be made—in the ground beneath us.

What: The Seashores of Ancient Arlington: A Rich Fossil Record
When: Daily (Closed Sundays)
Where: Fielder Museum, 1616 W. Abram St., Arlington, TX 76013

NOTE: We encourage and welcome both adult and student groups to attend. For groups of six or more, please call ahead to ensure we have a docent on hand to narrate the exhibit and answer any questions your group may have. — (817) 460-4001

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Allan Saxe, a beloved University of Texas at Arlington professor and prolific philanthropist, died at age 85 on June 18, 2024, the university announced.

"For nearly six decades, Allan Saxe has been a Maverick institution—one of our best known and most beloved professors," UT Arlington president Jennifer Cowley said in a statement. "He was engaging, smart, funny, and opinionated, and his classes were considered can't miss by generations of UT Arlington students."...  READ ARTICLE

The late-winter rains of 1885 had been heavy, and on March 15 rain continued to fall, putting Village Creek between Fort Worth and Arlington in a mood: out of its banks, running high, wide, and ruthless. A seventy-foot wooden bridge carried the Texas & Pacific railroad tracks over Village Creek. The bridge had been hastily built in 1876 in the rush to lay track west from Eagle Ford in Dallas County to Fort Worth. Writer Tom Marlin wrote in the Handley Herald in 2006 that although the bridge was only nine years old in 1885, it already needed to be repaired. Its unsafe condition had been reported to the railroad company by snipes...  READ ARTICLE