Arlington Historical Society

The Arlington Historical Society is a trustee of Arlington's historical legacy and an advocate for understanding Arlington's past. The Society was created August 27, 1887, as the Cemetery Society, with a mission to preserve the local historic cemeteries. Today, the Society's mission is to preserve Arlington's historic sites and structures, documents, photographs, and artifacts, and to provide educational programs focusing on history. The Society's dual mission of preservation and education serves citizens of all ages and encourages and supports historical preservation and education efforts throughout the state. The organization maintains the Historic Fielder House, the Knapp Heritage Park, and the Middleton Tate Johnson Family Cemetery (including the Early African-American Cemetery).

With a population of more than 365,000 and spread across 100 square miles, Arlington, Texas is located precisely midway between Dallas and Fort Worth. In both population and area, it has a unique distinction other than its "49 in population" standing.

Arlington's history is complex, its identity evolving over more than 150 years. It has been a frontier outpost, an agricultural center, a site of Indian battles, and a mecca for horse racing and gambling. It once was famed for its mineral waters, it has long been a college town (it has three colleges), and it hosts major industrial entities such as the Arlington General Motors Assembly Plant. Today, it is famed for Major League Baseball and amusement attractions that feature giant roller coasters, but it also has a high tech component that includes a nanotechnology incubator designed to introduce leading edge university research into the world of commerce.

Named in honor of Robert E. Lee's hometown in Virginia, Arlington rests squarely on the divide of two distinct geological strata, a vast "grand prairie" called the Eagle Fort, and an oaks-dominated woodland of gently rolling hills called the Eastern Cross Timbers. Its heritage is a colorful one, beginning with Native Americans and continuing through the explorations of the first Europeans and the earliest days of the Texas Republic. No less than six national flags have flown here.

The first non-Indian settlement here dates to the 1840s. Indeed, Arlington began as the failed Bird's Fort, evolving into the site of a Texas Rangers post (Johnson Station) authorized by Texas Republic President Sam Houston to serve as a dividing line between settlers and a collection of Indian tribes driven to the area by American westward expansion.

The Republic of Texas signed its first ever Indian peace treaty here in 1843 at Bird's Fort with nine tribes, including Cherokee, Delaware, Biloxi, Caddo, Keechie, and Waco representatives. Caddo tribes dominated early Indian settlements and were the first residents of the area, camping in such an abundance of settlements that one local waterway, Village Creek, was named for their presence. Early Caddos practiced agriculture near the waterway, their long-time presence established by numerous archeological digs. Caddo settlements were visited by the first European explorers to the area, including Cabeza de Vaca in 1535 and La Salle in 1687, and later by Texas Rangers, who defeated them in the Battle of Village Creek in 1841. These lands became part of the vast plantation holdings of Col. Middleton Tate Johnson, who arrived in 1846 from the Mexican War and took command of a Texas Rangers company at what became known as Johnson Station.