Handley was a town in

Tarrant County, Texas Tarrant County is located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of 2020, it had a population of 2,110,640. It is Texas' third-most populous county and the 15th-most populous in the United States. Its county seat is Fort Worth. Tarrant County, one of ...

United States. It is located between

downtown Fort Worth Downtown Fort Worth is the central business district of Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Most of Fort Worth's tallest buildings and skyscrapers are located downtown. Attractions Sundance Square Sundance Square began as an effort by Sid Bass to ...

and Arlington along

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, and includes the Central Handley Historic District. It is now a part of Fort Worth.

History

Handley was established in 1884 by retired

Confederate Confederacy or confederate may refer to: States or communities * Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities * Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...

Major James Madison Handley of

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. Handley created a

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

just seven miles from the center of Fort Worth on land that was included in the Sara Gray Jennings Survey of 1856, and a very small community began to grow around him to the west. According to the ''Fort Worth Gazette'' newspaper of 1888, the most that could be said for the area was that it was good for hunting foxes. By 1901 Handley had 12 houses and 80 residents. Handley as a town began to grow when the Northern Texas Traction Company bought land in the southern part of the community where it developed a holiday resort called Lake Erie. The company developed its lake and added a roller skate rink, a dance hall, restaurant and rides on a pier above the water.

Interurban

In 1902 the

Northern Texas Traction Company The Northern Texas Traction Company was a subsidiary of Stone & Webster that operated the streetcar system and interurban lines in Fort Worth, Texas. The Northern Texas Traction Company began with the purchase of the City Railway of Fort Worth b ...

linked the city of

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

to the east and the city of Fort Worth to the west with its own electric

interurban streetcar The Interurban (or radial railway in Europe and Canada) is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 a ...

line. In 1905 the street cars were moving at 8 mph, but by 1923 the speed had picked up to 65 mph.

Annexed by Fort Worth

In 1946 the city of Fort Worth annexed Handley as a community and its independence came to an end. In that year it had 510 school students and a total population of around 1,000. Fort Worth had a population of well over 100,000 residents.

Today

After years of neglect The Historic Handley Development Corporation has now revived a retro-historic version of Handley. Its once famous "Lake Erie" is no more, having been absorbed by the northern part of Lake Arlington, the street cars and their rail lines disappeared long ago and the Traction Company power station is now operated by

Exelon Exelon Corporation is an American Fortune 100 energy company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and incorporated in Pennsylvania. It generates revenues of approximately $33.5 billion and employs approximately 33,400 people. Exelon is the largest ...

. Its one and two story frame homes are engulfed in trees that populate the neighborhood formed by Meadowbrook Drive to the north, Hitson Lane to the east, Lancaster Avenue to the south and Loop 820 to the west. Each year the HHDC hosts the Handley Street Fest and Car Show the 2nd Saturday of October. The HHDC is currently developing the Historic Handley Railroad Museum at the corner of Handley Drive and East Lancaster Avenue. They are already in possession of a restored Union Pacific Caboose and hope to add other cars soon, and will also be opening a museum displaying many pieces of railroad history.

External links

* {{coord, 32.74, -97.21, format=dms, type:landmark, display=title History of Fort Worth, Texas Neighborhoods in Fort Worth, Texas Former cities in Texas