The Traders Oak

Fort Worth's first lasting business opened under this oak, because the army would not let it any closer. When Camp Worth went up in 1849 on the bluffs where the West and Clear forks of the Trinity River meet, federal rules kept merchants at least a mile from the post. So Henry Clay Daggett and Archibald Franklin Leonard built a log trading post at a safe distance, among a stand of sprawling live oaks near Cold Springs. It worked. Soldiers, settlers and Native Americans came to trade and to rest at the springs, and the store became the first successful business in Fort Worth. In 1850 the first election in what is now Tarrant County was held in front of it, and the voters chose Birdville as county seat. The county's first court sat inside. When the army abandoned the fort in 1853, the two traders moved their business up to an empty building on the bluffs. The tree stayed where it was. The city's heritage register calls it perhaps the best-known tree in Fort Worth, says it has grown here for well over 200 years, and has it marking the spot where the trading post stood. What the register does not give is the species. The cabin went up among live oaks, but nobody has written down that this is one of them, so we list it simply as an oak. If you know which, tell us.