{"id":159828,"date":"2026-02-11T10:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T10:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/159828\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T10:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T10:39:10","slug":"from-4470-to-400000-the-meteoric-rise-of-arlingtons-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/159828\/","title":{"rendered":"From 4,470 to 400,000: The Meteoric Rise of Arlington’s Population"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published on February 09, 2026<\/p>\n


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\n \"Arlington <\/p>\n

Editor’s Note:\u00a0As Arlington celebrates its sesquicentennial throughout 2026, we are sharing stories about the people, places and moments that made The American Dream City what it is today.<\/p>\n

Arlington is on the cusp of surpassing a population of 400,000 in 2026, making it one of the 50 most populous cities in the country. But it hasn\u2019t always been a fast grower.\u00a0In 1940, as the nation neared entry into World War II, the official census population was 4,470.<\/p>\n

After the war, as former military men returned to civilian duty, Arlington seemed to boom \u2013 so much so that even conservative estimates put it at more than 10,000. The local “Arlington Citizen-Journal” even conducted a contest to see who could guess the closest. The majority of those participating guessed it at between 10,000 and 12,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that level of optimism proved to be, well, overly optimistic.<\/p>\n

The official tally: 7,961. The winner, incidentally, was Pamela Jean Ross, whose guess was only slightly off, undercounting by 65.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mayor B.C. Barnes nevertheless noted that the town\u2019s population had increased by a smidge more than 78% in a decade. Not bad at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can be proud of our city\u2019s growth in the past 10 years as it has been solid and substantial,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cMy prediction is that the next ten years will see our population soar to the 14,000 mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barnes also missed that guesstimate. A lot. By 1960, by which time Tom Vandergriff was mayor, Arlington\u2019s population zoomed almost six-fold to 44,775 and the city had evolved into one of the fastest growing municipalities in the country.<\/p>\n

– This article was written by Arlington author and historian O.K. Carter, who served on the Landmark Preservation Commission.<\/p>\n

Visit Arlington150.com<\/a> for more historical articles, photos and events planned throughout 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on February 09, 2026 Editor’s Note:\u00a0As Arlington celebrates its sesquicentennial throughout 2026,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":{"0":"post-159828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arlington","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-arlington-headlines","10":"tag-arlington-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}