If you are wondering where to find a good example of how important the simple wheat grain once was to Fort Worth, go to a museum.<\/p>\n
In this case, architect Louis Kahn\u2019s iconic Kimbell Art Museum \u2014 which has a design that features cycloid barrel vaults reflecting the grain silos and Egyptian granaries.<\/p>\n
While the art aficionados swooned with flowery words about the design at its opening in October 1972, few realized Kahn\u2019s architecture plan for the museum was no simple design choice meant to \u201cwow\u201d the snooty critics from both coasts.<\/p>\n
The namesake family of museum had built their fortune on wheat, explains TCU history professor Rebecca Sharpless. Her upcoming book \u201cPeople of the Wheat\u201d explores the history of the grain and its importance to North Central Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople just don’t have any idea that the Kimbell empire started with flour and wheat,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Kimbell Milling Co. was owned by Kay Kimbell, a businessman and a patron of the arts who died in 1964 at 77. Kimbell, and his wife Velma, began collecting art in 1931 and amassed a multimillion-dollar collection that formed the basis of the future museum. The Kimbells were also big supporters of nonprofits, in particular the Edna Gladney Home, now the Gladney Center for Adoption.<\/p>\n
At the time of his death, Kimbell was head of more than 70 corporations, including flour, feed and oil mills, an insurance company, a wholesale firm and the Buddies food market chain \u2014\u2013 the H-E-B of its day.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas\u201d by Rebecca Sharpless. (University of TexasPress, 2026.) For more information, go here.<\/p>\n
At his death, he left instructions to construct a museum that resulted in the world-renowned Kimbell Art Museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it all began with wheat,\u201d Sharpless said.<\/p>\n
The book, from University of Texas Press, will publish on March 10.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor most of us, America\u2019s amber fields of grain lie in the country\u2019s center \u2014 in Kansas, Nebraska \u2014 but for more than a century, they also grew across North Texas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sharpless got the idea for the book shortly after she moved to Fort Worth in 2010.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were out and about, and I saw those grain elevators in Saginaw and thought, \u2018What are those doing here?\u2019 That’s how I got started,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But first she published a book related to wheat, \u201cGrain and Fire:
A History of Baking in the American South,\u201d which looks at the southern baking tradition.<\/p>\n
Along with the Kimbell Art Museum, where Sharpless begins her story, Fort Worth has massive grain elevators, most now empty and unused, that remain along railroad tracks.<\/p>\n
Grain elevators and huge silos still tower over the landscape. Built to be indestructible, they dominate parts of every North Texas city, concrete artifacts of a mostly forgotten industry, she said.<\/p>\n
Built in the first half of the 20th century, these concrete grain elevators sprang from the North Texas prairies.<\/p>\n
The grain elevators at the Kimbell Milling Company that still tower in south Fort Worth were built in 1924. Kay Kimbell had asserted at the time that they were the largest elevators in the U.S. outside of Chicago and Kansas City, Sharpless said.<\/p>\n
Wheat was not a natural crop for the region. The area originally consisted of prairie grasses that adapted to maximize precious moisture, such as bluestem, little bluestem, Indian grass, switchgrass and side oats.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch of that is gone now, but you can still see remnants of that prairie at Tandy Hills Natural Area on the city\u2019s eastside,\u201d Sharpless said.<\/p>\n
Throughout the 1840s, most people in North Texas ate mainly corn. The grain grew easily and was easily harvested.<\/p>\n
But the white settlers of the region, many from the upper south, were accustomed to wheat and \u2014 more particularly \u2014 its use to make high-quality bread, pie crusts and rudimentary cakes, Sharpless said.<\/p>\n
They soon discovered that grain could flourish in North Texas, Sharpless said.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth and other areas in North Texas quickly built an economy that included wheat in fields, mills and kitchens.<\/p>\n
The largest mill in North Texas before the Civil War was owned by Julian Feild and Ralph Man in Tarrant County. The duo built the first flour mill in Tarrant in 1856 on land owned by Feild on the Clear Fork of the Trinity, just west of its confluence with the West Fork and the original townsite of Fort Worth, according to her book.<\/p>\n
If those names are familiar, it is because the town of Mansfield, with Feild\u2019s last name slightly altered, is named after them. They also built the area\u2019s first steam-powered flour mill on Walnut Creek there in 1860.<\/p>\n
While settlers were growing wheat, it was not until some mechanization made it possible to effectively increase crop yields, Sharpless said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe horses many of the settlers brought from Tennessee were too light to plow the ground here in North Texas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In addition, the plows were mostly cast iron, which couldn\u2019t take the thick, clay composition of North Texas\u2019 soil. In the 1850s, John Deere perfected a steel plow that was a game changer.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though they had to import them from Galveston, North Texas farmers finally had the tools they needed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When the railroads came in the 1860s, the farmers then had a more effective way to get their wheat to market.<\/p>\n
By 1889, the area was so agriculturally prosperous that the idea for the Texas Spring Palace, a regional immigration and agricultural fair located in Fort Worth, was planned. The idea was to advertise Texas by displaying all the natural products of the state under one roof.<\/p>\n
Wheat, cotton and other products of Texas covered the entire structure, and it was a huge success.<\/p>\n
However, the next year, tragedy struck when a flash fire swept through the building, taking down the structure adorned with flammable and dry products.<\/p>\n
Although several thousand people were attending a dance in the palace that night, only one life, that of Al Hayne, was lost as he worked to save those who had not escaped the burning building. A memorial to Hayne now is located near the T&P Station at 225 W. Lancaster Ave.<\/p>\n
Despite all this success, things were changing rapidly for the wheat-based industries in North Texas, Sharpless said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy 1950, all six North Texas counties were producing only a fraction of what they had half a century earlier,\u201d she said. Wheat was still in use, but it was coming from other areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe say that this area is flat, but it\u2019s not. Farming here takes a lot of effort,\u201d she said. \u201cA plow in West Texas, where it is flat, can turn more land than here, so it was just more efficient elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, there were and are reminders of the area\u2019s wheat past.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was the Mrs. Baird\u2019s bakery in Fort Worth that people still talk about,\u201d Sharpless said. \u201cIt was apparently a rite of passage for girl and boy scout troops to take a tour there.\u201d<\/p>\n
And there are the road names that remain: Randol Mill Road in Arlington and Fort Worth or Trinity Mills Road in Carrollton.<\/p>\n
Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org.<\/p>\n
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members aIf you are wondering where to find a good example of how important the simple wheat grain once was to Fort Worth, go to a museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this case, architect Louis Kahn\u2019s iconic Kimbell Art Museum \u2014 which has a design that features cycloid barrel vaults reflecting the grain silos and Egyptian granaries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the art aficionados swooned with flowery words about the design at its opening in October 1972, few realized Kahn\u2019s architecture plan for the museum was no simple design choice meant to \u201cwow\u201d the snooty critics from both coasts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The namesake family of museum had built their fortune on wheat, explains TCU history professor Rebecca Sharpless. Her upcoming book \u201cPeople of the Wheat\u201d explores the history of the grain and its importance to North Central Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople just don’t have any idea that the Kimbell empire started with flour and wheat,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Kimbell Milling Co. was owned by Kay Kimbell, a businessman and a patron of the arts who died in 1964 at 77. Kimbell, and his wife Velma, began collecting art in 1931 and amassed a multimillion-dollar collection that formed the basis of the future museum. The Kimbells were also big supporters of nonprofits, in particular the Edna Gladney Home, now the Gladney Center for Adoption.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the time of his death, Kimbell was head of more than 70 corporations, including flour, feed and oil mills, an insurance company, a wholesale firm and the Buddies food market chain \u2014\u2013 the H-E-B of its day.\u00a0<\/p>\n