Heritage Park is just north of the Tarrant County Courthouse and downtown Fort Worth

In writing for this site, I’d heard so much about Heritage Park that I knew I had to go down and see it. The reports were conflicting – some spoke of a lofty bluff where the original Fort Worth sat, others of an abandoned memorial which the city refused to repair. Where was the truth?

The site of the original “Fort” our city is named for is nestled under the morning shadow of the courthouse. If you drive up from the stockyards across the bridge (a masterpiece in its own right) you’ll come upon a small green area with some historical plaques – the first Mason Lodge and the site of the fort. There are no physical remains of a stockade or any such; the story is that the soldiers, “Dragoons” or heavy cavalry, lived in tents. The memorial proper is a cement walled structure, fenced off with chain link.

“How long has this been going on,” you can’t help but wonder as you stare at our city’s birthplace monument sitting blatantly unrepaired, and banned to entrance with no explanation as to why this is occurring or when it will be opened. Recent reports of a plan to erect a natural gas drilling rig somewhere in the park does not sound too encouraging either. Is this city so impoverished that we can’t even have our founder’s memorial operational? Has the city council decided that they don’t like this particular memorial and are wrangling to tear it down and replace it with something more popular, say a log cabin structure? As I watched my daughter looking through the chain link at the dry fountains and walkways inside, I wondered what political wrangling led to the abandonment by the city fathers of this site.

In overall appearance, Heritage Park is reminiscent of the Fort Worth Water Gardens at the other end of the downtown. That park was closed as well for a while, after three children and an adult drowned there (having visited it myself, I mut say I wondered at the time how they got liability insurance on that place.) But surely now that the Water Gardens have been reopened, Heritage Park can be open too?

The confluence of the West and Clear forks of the Trinity.

Down past the fenced-off memorial, a path of hand-inscribed memorial bricks is set right into the mud. The aspect is not of what you’d call a bricklaying job for the ages. The path leads down the bluff to the river’s edge. If you walk down the path you can take a stairway past a roofless rock house with careful brickwork over the windows and doors, since abandoned and intermittently occupied by transients, evidenced by abandoned clothes and garbage flung around. An interesting historical site, I think to myself, and couldn’t the city clean this place up?

About a quarter mile away, the confluence of the West and Clear forks of the Trinity river can be seen obscured by trees. Here for a moment you can imagine what the original settlement may have been like, especially if you visit late in the afternoon. Some Honest-to-God prairie swatches are visible and Fort Worth at the founding of the fort 150 years ago comes into the imagination, with bands of Indians on the other side of that river, out on the undulating plain. 

Down on the river proper, things improve – an attractive walk bridge crosses the Trinity below the fork and waterfowl and even a muskrat are seen playing beneath its span. A good view of the bridge and the forks is available, and the area is cleaner. The Trinity Trails bike path travels rapidly along, plied by young guys riding very fast in a line, and wearing, on this sunny afternoon of about 65 degrees, not much more clothing than the rock band Queen’s lead singer Freddy Mercury used to on stage. 

Our visit to Heritage Park has answered some questions and left others open. One can easily see why this site was chosen for the original fort. One can imagine those days of open prairie and pioneers. What does not seem clear is why the much-later memorial watercourses and walkways are gated off, and I intend to get on the phone this morning with organizations such as Historic Fort Worth to try to discover more.