Rendon

The community of Rendon is located off Farm Road 1187 about twelve miles southeast of downtown Fort Worth in southern Tarrant County. Settlement began in the area, originally known as Cross Roads, by the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1880 the Hopper family came there. Other pioneers included the Norwood and Haddock families. The Norwood family helped organize a church which held both Baptist and Methodist services. In 1891 a post office opened under the name of Rendon, after Joaquin Rendon, the original land grant holder in the region. W. L. Norwood served as the first postmaster and also owned a general store. By the mid-1890s the town had flour mills, two gins, a blacksmith, and a population of twenty-five. On October 23, 1897, W. L. Norwood sold three acres for the site of a schoolhouse and graveyard. The oldest marked stone in the cemetery at that time dated to 1882. Summer "singing schools" were held in the church before it disbanded in 1914, but that same year, a Baptist church was organized. In the early 1900s Rendon maintained its population of twenty-five, and the school and church served area farmers. By 1950 the population had increased to eighty, with three listed businesses. Rendon organized its own volunteer fire department in 1954. The school was consolidated with the Mansfield Independent School District in 1967, and the population remained consistent at ninety residents throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Commercial development along nearby Interstate Highway 35W and the sprawl of urban Fort Worth resulted in dramatic population increases in Rendon during the 1990s. Estimates ranged from 7,734 in 1991 to 8,414 in 1996. In 2000 the census reported 9,022 residents.