Rocke Enjoyed The Stock Yards

Fort Worth found fame during the great open-range cattle drives, which lasted from the 1860s to the 1880s. More than 10 million head of cattle trooped through the city during the Chisholm Trail days. When the railroad arrived in 1873, stockyards were established at Fort Worth and many drovers chose to end their trek here. Outlaws Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Longbaugh, better known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, spent a lot of time hiding out in a part of downtown known as Hell's Half Acre. Depression-era hold-up artists Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow also spent time in the city. Most of the mayhem of Fort Worth's wild days, however, came from rank-and-file cowboys who boozed and brawled through town, giving Fort Worth a far different image than that of God-fearing Dallas. The cattle business remained the top industry in Fort Worth through the 1920s, even as major finds in nearby fields turned the city into an important operations center for the oil industry.