Fort Worth walking tour & city guide

The Stockyards

The Stockyards National Historic District, north of downtown, keeps the brick pens, wooden boardwalks and saloons of the old livestock market. Twice a day a small herd of Texas longhorns is driven down Exchange Avenue by drovers on horseback, and on weekends the Cowtown Coliseum, home of what is billed as the world's first indoor rodeo, still holds rodeos.

Exchange Avenue is lined with western-wear shops, boot makers and steakhouses, and Billy Bob's Texas, which calls itself the world's largest honky-tonk, has live country music at night.

Sundance Square and downtown

Downtown Fort Worth is compact and pleasant to walk. Sundance Square, named after the outlaw the Sundance Kid, is a pedestrian-friendly area of restored brick buildings around a plaza with fountains, with a large mural of a cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail painted on one of its walls.

At the north end of Main Street stands the pink granite Tarrant County Courthouse of 1895, and at the south end the Fort Worth Water Gardens, a striking concrete park of terraced pools designed by the architect Philip Johnson.

The Cultural District

West of downtown, three museums sit side by side: the Kimbell Art Museum, in a celebrated vaulted building by Louis Kahn, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, designed by Tadao Ando around a reflecting pond, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, known for its paintings of the American West. The Fort Worth Botanic Garden is nearby.

A walk through downtown

Start at the Tarrant County Courthouse on the bluff above the Trinity River and walk south down Main Street into Sundance Square. Spend some time in the plaza and the streets around it, then continue south past the old office towers to the Water Gardens, where you can walk down into the Active Pool. The walk is about 2 kilometers; the Stockyards are a short bus or car ride north, and best visited in time for the cattle drive.

Visiting tips

Spring and autumn are the most comfortable seasons; summers are very hot. The Trinity Railway Express commuter train links downtown Fort Worth with downtown Dallas in about an hour. Check the cattle drive times before you go, and arrive early to find a spot along Exchange Avenue.