The forks of the upper Trinity River supported the largest concentration of Indians in Texas in the early 1800s, a diverse mix of Caddo, Wichita, Shawnee, Delaware, and other bands. These communities, concentrated along Village Creek in present-day Arlington, were attacked in 1841 by Texas Militia under General Edward H. Tarrant, acting on orders from Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar (infamous for the statement “the only good Indian is a dead one”) to open the region for settlement. Members of these tribes were the people that John Neely Bryan had hoped would be his customers at the Dallas trading post (DS4) he established in 1841.
The Arlington town site, surveyed in 1876 and named for Robert E. Lee’s home in Arlington, Virginia, served as a water stop on the Texas and Pacific Railway, making it a regional distribution center. Beginning in the 1920s, entertainment businesses congregated in Arlington, starting with gambling at Top O’Hill Terrace and horse racing at W. T. Waggoner’s Arlington Downs, continuing with Six Flags Over Texas, the Dallas Cowboy’s AT&T Stadium (AW4), and the Texas Rangers’ Global Life Park (AW5). Arlington is a part of the continuous suburban sprawl between Dallas and Fort Worth.
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