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For a number of years, the Arlington Historical Society has endeavored to recognize the history that Center Street represents to not just Arlington, but the entire Metroplex.  Now, HANA has joined in that effort with Arlington’s Parks Department.

Several HANA board members recently met with the city to implement a soft refresh of property at Center Street and Pioneer Parkway and install two historical markers.

Historical markers, you may ask?  

Turns out, many of us haven’t been aware of how today’s Center Street came to exist.  It's not the ordinary suburban thoroughfare it appears to be.

Long before Dallas or Fort Worth ever existed, Native Americans charted a path along the route that became today’s Center Street.  They traveled strategically along a ridge across higher ground parallel to what today we call Johnson Creek.  Indeed, the next time you drive or walk along Center Street south of Park Row, you’ll see how the thoroughfare is literally just a little bit higher than most of the cross-streets.

The Native Americans’ path went through a wooded Cross Timbers area from roughly today’s Arkansas Lane up to the West Fork of the Trinity River (today’s River Legacy Park area).  A particular feature of their trail was the naturally-occuring low-water crossing at what is now the pair of Center and Mesquite Street bridges.

As early as 1687, European explorers and traders are believed to have arrived.  They soon relied on the same pathway that Native Americans had already charted.  Rangers and soldiers would eventually come and trek what became Center Street to get between Bird’s Fort and Marrow Bone Spring.

Bird's Fort was an early military outpost located at the northeastern corner of what we know today as the Viridian mixed-use development.  Marrow Bone Spring was at the corner of today's Matlock Road and Arkansas Lane.

Although it survives only as a small city park, Marrow Bone Spring is an important historical site.  Extensive research by the Arlington Historical Society credits Marrow Bone Spring with hosting the 1843 “Treaty of Bird’s Fort” between the Republic of Texas and a confederacy of ten indigenous Native American tribes.  That treaty guaranteed a relatively peaceful trading relationship that helped facilitate the growth of not just Arlington, but all of North Central Texas.

In 1852, Colonel Middle Tate Johnson founded Johnson Station south of Marrow Bone Spring, which flourished as a trading post until 1876, when Arlington was established as a stop on the Texas and Pacific Railroad.  One of the railroad depot’s loading docks still exists at Center and Front streets.  

In 1854, a settler named James Hyden obtained a land grant along the trail between today's Park Row and Pioneer Parkway, where in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Elm Shadows and Mill Creek subdivisions were developed.  

Meanwhile, settlers had begun farming blackland prairie homesteads farther south from Marrow Bone Spring and Johnson Station, even down past where I-20 now runs.  They used the ancient Native American pathway to bring their goods to market in town, first to Marrow Bone Spring and Johnson Station, and then to mills, cotton gins, and the railhead in Arlington.

Today, at Pioneer Parkway, a small, triangular-shaped parcel of empty land remains, passed by hundreds of motorists every day who have no idea it represents some of the last open space from Arlington’s earliest, pre-settlement generations.  Before our popular Entertainment District, before General Motors, before the railroad, before Bird’s Fort, and before European explorers.

Indeed, the social, economic, historical, and cultural diversity represented by Center Street is surprisingly broad.  Maybe it's never been glamorous - it's always been a working transit trail.  But Center Street represents one of the most extensively-utilized human pathways in this part of Texas.  And if you think about it, that’s pretty remarkable.

All this is why the Arlington Historical Society has been awarded two plaques to honor Center Street’s trail.  And since this is in our neighborhood, HANA has joined with them to arrange for their public display, so more of us can learn about how unique our area is.

Not just to Arlington, but for the entire Metroplex.  And here we’ve been, living next to such history all along!  Our neighborhood really is the “heart” of Arlington.

• Special thanks to Barbara Salser and Floreen Henry