Bedford

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Promotion: Nearby Tarrant County

Bedford, bisected by State Highway 121, is northeast of Fort Worth in the northeast quadrant of Tarrant County, north of the West Fork of the Trinity River. The first settlers arrived in the late 1840s in the Bedford area, located strategically between Fort Worth and Grapevine. Milton Moore of North Carolina established the community's first school in his log cabin in 1861 with a dozen or more students. A settlement developed in the 1870s, after Weldon Bobo moved from Tennessee and established a general store and gristmill to serve area farmers. Bobo and a group of farmers agreed to name their community Bedford, after the county in Tennessee from which many of them had come. Bobo, Moore, and others founded New Hope Christian Church in 1874, and the first official post office opened in Bobo's home in 1877. In the 1880s and 1890s Bedford was a booming town, with a population of 1,000 or possibly even 2,000 that surpassed that of all other Tarrant County towns except Fort Worth. In addition to the alleged twenty-eight businesses that served the town, the community was also the home of Bedford College, founded in 1882. The college, which was something of a combination high school-junior college, survived until fire gutted the building in 1893.

Shortly after 1900 the prosperity ended. In 1901 the Dallas-Fort Worth Interurban rail line was built south of the Trinity, and, closely paralleling it, U.S. Highway 80 was also soon completed through Arlington and Grand Prairie. The two new arteries diverted traffic away from Bedford Road. In 1903 the Rock Island Railroad also bypassed Bedford. Businesses and residents moved, and the post office closed in 1909. Though only Bobo's store and perhaps fifty residents were left in the business district, in 1912 the town built a new two-story brick school on the site of the old college. Truck farming and dairying were prevalent from 1910 through the 1930s, and there were no more than eighty residents in Bedford as late as 1940. The community's general store was maintained by the related Bobo and Fitch families from the 1870s to the 1960s.

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George N. Green | © TSHA

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Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.

Belongs to

Bedford is part of or belongs to the following places:

Currently Exists

Yes

Place type

Bedford is classified as a Town

Associated Names

  • (Bobo's)

Location

Latitude: 32.84639490
Longitude: -97.13501900

Has Post Office

Yes

Is Incorporated

Yes

Population Count, 2021 View more »

49,187