I remember riding into Fort Worth as a kid from our sprawling home in Cleburne,\u00a0pressing\u00a0against the car window and marveling at the city\u2019s scale. My gaze always settled on the brick patches near the Stockyards, then farther west on Camp Bowie Boulevard. At the time, I thought it odd that these stretches\u00a0hadn\u2019t\u00a0been replaced with\u00a0a smooth\u00a0blacktop. Now, returning years later, I can say\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0glad they\u00a0haven\u2019t. Those bricks carry history beneath every tire, every footstep.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A quick glance at\u00a0historicfortworth.org<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0campbowiedistrict.com<\/a>\u00a0revealed a history of Camp Bowie\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0never stopped\u00a0to ponder\u00a0\u2014 one that blends urban growth, military legacy, and the everyday life of a city expanding westward. The private, member-funded nonprofit\u00a0Camp Bowie District\u00a0has spent the past 25 years revitalizing the boulevard and its surrounding side streets. In a\u00a0City of Fort Worth newsletter<\/a>, Lydia Guajardo Rickard, the district\u2019s executive director, said, \u201cIn the early 1900s, the whole area from Montgomery Street all the way to the interstate was called Chamberlain Arlington Heights and was a suburb of Fort Worth. Named after a nearby World War I military training camp, Camp Bowie was the original connector to downtown. It was also the original highway connecting the western part of the city to the Central Business District.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That military camp looms large in the boulevard\u2019s story. In 1917, construction began on\u00a0Camp Bowie, a tented training facility\u00a0named after\u00a0Texas Revolution hero James \u201cJim\u201d Bowie. Spanning over\u00a02,000 acres, it housed the\u00a036th Division, whose soldiers lived side by side with Fort Worth residents. On April 11, 1918, the division marched through the city in what may have been Fort Worth\u2019s largest public\u00a0gathering \u2014\u00a0225,000 people lining the streets to watch a four-hour procession. After months of training and deployment to France, the camp became a demobilization center,\u00a0ultimately discharging\u00a0more than 100,000 soldiers before closing in August 1919. Today,\u00a0Veterans\u2019 Memorial Park\u00a0at Camp Bowie and Crestline\u00a0Rd. commemorates those who trained there, planted by both local and international groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even before the war, Fort Worth had begun building the infrastructure that would define its westward growth.\u00a0Vitrified clay bricks\u00a0\u2014 fired at\u00a0high temperatures\u00a0for durability and glazed to resist water \u2014 paved streets like\u00a0Camp Bowie Blvd. These bricks\u00a0weren\u2019t just functional; they symbolized a city carving itself out \u201cwhere the west begins.\u201d Today, Camp Bowie Boulevard preserves that legacy: a corridor of red Thurber bricks whispering tales of soldiers, trolleys, and neighborhoods over a century old.\u00a0<\/p>\n The boulevard was initially planned in the 1890s by the Chamberlin brothers \u2014 Alfred, Humphrey, and Frederic \u2014 with trolley tracks running down the center, linking the city to Lake Como and the surrounding\u00a0suburbs. By the early 1900s, the street was platted and ready for growth, soon becoming a hub for families moving westward. After the war, middle- and upper-middle-class families filled the former military grounds with\u00a0bungalows\u00a0and\u00a0English-cottage-style homes, and the boulevard became a lively commercial corridor. Landmarks like\u00a0Arlington Heights Methodist Church, Connell Baptist Church, Fire Station No. 18,\u00a0and\u00a0Zeloski\u2019s\u00a0commercial row\u00a0sprung up along the boulevard\u2019s lines.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In 1919, the\u00a0Federation of Women\u2019s Clubs\u00a0renamed the street\u00a0Camp Bowie Boulevard\u00a0to honor the nearby military camp. By 1928,\u00a0Thurber bricks\u00a0paved the thoroughfare as we know it today. Beneath the surface, remnants of the streetcar system that once ferried passengers downtown still exist, a hidden testament to a bygone era.\u00a0Even as asphalt replaced historic brick streets\u00a0elsewhere,\u00a0Camp Bowie preserved its red-brick identity \u2014 a contributor to the proposed\u00a0Brick Streets National Register Thematic Group.\u00a0<\/p>\n Westward expansion continued to shape the boulevard. By the late 1920s, the\u00a0Ridglea neighborhood\u00a0emerged, blending residential and commercial development. The Luther brothers introduced\u00a0Ridglea Village\u00a0in the 1940s, a mixed-use Mediterranean complex of retail, offices, and homes. Over decades, the corridor extended toward Weatherford, lined with hotels, restaurants, and theaters, cementing its role as a gateway to western Fort Worth.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, the historic 3-mile stretch from Montgomery to Hulen streets \u2014 affectionately called\u00a0\u201cThe Bricks\u201d\u00a0by locals \u2014\u00a0remains\u00a0a unique combination of original red Thurber bricks and modern Acme replacements. The road is undeniably bumpy and noisy, but that\u2019s part of its charm.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Those bricks have endured a century of heat waves, ice storms, flash floods, even a tornado, plus shifting tree roots. Their durability \u2014 along with intentional preservation \u2014 has ensured they\u00a0remain, even though the Thurber Brick Plant closed in 1931.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maintaining\u00a0the bricks is a challenge, one\u00a0many, if not all, Fort\u00a0Worthians\u00a0embrace. The roadway tells the story of Fort Worth\u2019s evolution: soldiers marching in formation,\u00a0families\u00a0shopping and dining, congregations gathering.\u00a0<\/p>\n And for anyone who drives its uneven, clattering stretch, the message is clear: these bricks are more than pavement. They are\u00a0history, resilience, and identity\u00a0\u2014 proof that some roads, no matter how old, never lose their rhythm.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I remember riding into Fort Worth as a kid from our sprawling home in Cleburne,\u00a0pressing\u00a0against the car window…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[40670,24361,116,118,3342,117,2419,1012,40669,838,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-84577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-brick","9":"tag-camp-bowie","10":"tag-fort-worth","11":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","12":"tag-fort-worth-history","13":"tag-fort-worth-news","14":"tag-history","15":"tag-stephen-montoya","16":"tag-street-view","17":"tag-streets","18":"tag-top-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84577","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=84577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}