Guide Exploring Fort Worth, Texas | SolarTravels.com

<body> Destination Guides Search for a City Destination Guides > North America > USA > Texas > North and east Texas > Fort Worth Fort Worth Travel Options Flights Hotels Vacation Rentals Cars • Fort Worth · The City • Arrival, Information And Getting Around • Eating • Nightlife And Entertainment • Hotels in Fort Worth FORT WORTH BE THERE NOW Hotels in Fort Worth • Ambassador Hotel Fort Worth from $49.00 USD • Days Inn Fort Worth Fort Worth from $50.00 USD • Microtel Inn & Suites - Fort Worth Stockyard Fort Worth from $55.00 USD More Hotels in Fort Worth >> Vacation Rentals in Fort Worth • Texas White House Fort Worth from $125.00 USD • Lockheart Gables Romantic B&B Fort Worth from $179.00 USD More Vacation Rentals in Fort Worth >> READ IT HERE Yes, Dallas does have something Fort Worth doesn't have - a real city thirty miles away . - Amon Carter, publisher, philanthropist, Fort Worthian FORT WORTH , often dismissed as some kind of poor relation to Dallas, in fact has a rush and energy largely missing in its more complacent neighbor thirty miles east. Unlike comparably cosmopolitan Dallas, this is one of the most "Western" cities in Texas. In the 1870s it was the last stop on the great cattle drive to Kansas, the Chisholm Trail ; when the railroads arrived, it became a livestock market in its own right, with its own packing houses, while remaining a haven for cowboys and outlaws. The cattle trade is still a major industry, after aviation and defense, but the city can also pride itself on its thriving cultural life. Unlike the more anxious Dallas, Fort Worth doesn't feel the need to brag about its many excellent museums . For a place so wealthy (the grand Western Hills area claims to have proportionately more millionaires than any other US locale), it's surprisingly laid-back. The City Fort Worth's main attractions fall tidily into a triangle anchored by downtown with the Cultural District and the Stockyards two miles away to the west and north respectively. The chief focus of downtown Fort Worth is Sundance Square ... Fort Worth's main attractions fall tidily into a triangle anchored by downtown with the Cultural District and the Stockyards two miles away to the west and north respectively. The chief focus of downtown Fort Worth is Sundance Square , a leafy, redbrick-paved fourteen-block area of shops, restaurants and bars between First and Sixth streets, ringed by glittering skyscrapers and pervaded with a genuine enthusiasm for the town's rich history. It owes its existence to vast injections of cash from the Bass family; the whole ensemble is dominated by the two gleaming glass skyscrapers of the Bass-owned City Center Towers , while the extremely tasteful Nancy Lee & Perry R. Bass Performance Hall (tel 817/212-4325, ) is evidence of its continuing development. Notice the carvings of longhorn skulls everywhere, and the many trompe l'oeil murals - especially the Chisholm Trail mural on Fourth Street between Main and Houston streets. The Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art , tucked away at 309 Main St (Tues-Wed 10am-5pm, Thurs-Fri 10am-8pm, Sat 11am-8pm, Sun 1-5pm; free; tel 817/332-6554, ), has a small but excellent collection of late works by Remington, including some of his best black-and-white illustrations, and early elegiac cowboyscapes by Charles Russell. Naming the square after the Sundance Kid isn't particularly appropriate; he, and other outlaws such as Bonnie and Clyde, spent their time a few blocks south, just north of I-30 at the city's original settlement. Even into the 1950s " Hell's Half Acre " was renowned for bawdy lawlessness; these days it's much less exciting, although the bubbling fountains and pools of its central Water Gardens offer refreshing respite. The Cultural District , two miles west of downtown, is an impressive area of museums and art galleries. The finest collection is at the small Kimbell Art Museum , 3333 Camp Bowie Blvd (Tues-Thurs 10am-8pm, Fri noon-8pm, Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; free, around $5 for special exhibits; tel 817/332-8451, ), a splendid vaulted, naturally lit building designed by Louis Kahn. Downstairs displays concentrate on pre-Columbian and African pieces, with some noteworthy Mayan funerary urns, while upstairs, as well as canvases by Gauguin, Cézanne, Picasso and Monet, you can admire a seventh-century Khmer figure of a Hindu deity, ancient Chinese bronzes and a fourteenth-century Japanese polychrome wood statue of En no Gyoja. The museum café itself is adorned with relief sculptures by Henri Matisse. American art in the recently renovated and expanded Amon Carter Museum , just up the hill at 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; free; tel 817/738-1933, ), includes great photographs of Western landscapes, as well as a fine assortment of Remingtons and Russells and works by Winslow Homer and Georgia O'Keeffe. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth , 1309 Montgomery St (Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 11am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; free; tel 817/738-9215, ), which specializes in twentieth-century abstract art, is being moved to a larger facility to be unveiled in 2002. South of here, the wide-ranging Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (Mon-Thurs 9am-5.30pm, Fri-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun noon-5.30pm; $6.50; tel 817-255-9300, 1-888/255-9300, ) includes a planetarium and an IMAX theater. The museum's most popular exhibits include ExploraZone - a kid-friendly area for exploring topics like magnetism, weather, math, etc - and DinoDig, where amateur paleontologists can dig through an "outdoor discovery zone" for dinosaur bones. The lively, interactive Cattle Raiser's Museum is, for now, slightly farther north at 1301 W Seventh St (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; $3) - it's scheduled to be relocated to the Cultural District by 2004. The changing economic face of the cattle trade is traced from the days of the open range, via the great cattle drives, to modern ranching and latterday cowboys - with displays of spurs, assorted tangles of barbed wire and some interesting history on the travails of early women pioneers. After the move, the museum will be adjacent to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame , set to open in 2002. However, museums, no matter how good, aren't necessarily what you want from a cowtown. The ten-block Stockyards Area , with its wooden sidewalks and old storefronts centered on Exchange Avenue two miles north of downtown, is a glorious evocation of the days when Fort Worth's stockyards made this "the richest little city in the world." It's much more than a cynical creation for cowboy-hungry tourists and even the daily march down East Exchange Avenue of the fifteen or so Texan Longhorn cattle (with six-feet horn spans) is done in good, educational taste. The drives occur, weather permitting, at 11.30am from the corrals behind the Livestock Exchange Building with the herd arriving back around 4pm; one of the best views can be found directly in front of the visitor center. Along with the restaurants and bars, the stores will have Western-wear obsessives in heaven. Look out for Fincher's rodeo equipment store and M.L. Leddy's expansive saddle shop; and check out the Maverick Trading Post, packed with hip, bright cowgirl regalia, and a bar serving good cold beers. They encourage you to drink first and buy later; this is not a good idea. If all the authenticity is too much to bear, there's a nearby mall with a slightly more tourist-friendly orientation: the shops and restaurants in the Stockyards Station , a brick-floored enclave in the old hog pens, are squeaky clean; one of the best is the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, next to the Stockyards Wedding Chapel. From here the magnificent Tarantula steam train puffs along to Eighth Avenue downtown (departs Wed-Sat noon, Sun 3pm; 30min; $10; tel 817/625-RAIL, ). The Stockyards no longer host live cattle auctions ; instead, images are beamed by satellite into the huge 1902 Livestock Exchange Building at 131 E Exchange Ave, home of the Stockyards Collections Museum (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm; free), packed with meaty memorabilia. The mission-style Cowtown Coliseum next door, used for rodeos (tel 817/625-1025, ; ticket prices vary) and concerts, is fronted with a bust of Bill Pickett, the black rodeo star who invented the unsavory but effective practice of "bulldogging" - stunning the bull by biting its lip. </body>