The Fort Worth City Cable Channel (Charter/Spectrum channel 190) will be offline for a few weeks starting March 11 while facilities connections are being rerouted. You can watch City meetings on the City’s LiveStreams or on our YouTube Channel.
In 1888, a group of Fort Worth businessmen purchased approximately 2,500 acres north of the confluence of the Clear and West forks of the Trinity River and stretching to approximately present day North 29th Street. Operating under the name of Fort Worth City Company, the men hired Nathan Barrett, a landscape architect from New York, to layout a new settlement. Using precepts popularized by Frederick Law Olmsted and other landscape designers of the mid-19th century, Barrett’s design took advantage of the parcel’s topography and created a grid pattern that was bisected by axial and curving streets with the Tarrant County Courthouse perched high on the river’s bluff as the southern focal point. Near the north end of the development was Circle Park. Barrett’s original plan for the park was changed when the west side and north half of the parcel were divided into lots. The north half of the circle later was dedicated as school land and is now occupied by J. P. Elder Middle School (originally constructed as North Side Junior High in 1927) and J. P. Elder Middle School Annex (originally constructed as North Fort Worth High School in 1918). The original North Side High School (Circle Park Elementary School) that was constructed on the site in 1908 (with later additions) was demolished c. 1988 and replaced with the adjacent Manuel Jara Elementary School. The schools sit at the crest of a high hill which affords an exceptional view of the downtown skyline to the southeast.
Circle Park became a property of the City of Fort Worth when North Fort Worth was annexed into the city in 1909, the same year that the city’s first official park board was created. The southern part of the circle was left as park land but it remained largely unimproved until 1929 when plans designed by S. Herbert Hare of the landscape architecture firm of Hare and Hare were implemented. Work at that time included establishing proper grades and the planting of trees, shrubs, and a small rose garden. These improvements were provided at a cost of $25,061.46. By 1957, it was estimated that the park contained approximately three acres. A branch of the Fort Worth library was constructed on the north side of the park in 1967.
View animal, plant and insect species observed at Circle Park and make some of your own observations through iNaturalist. See link under the "Related information" Section.
Reserve this park on ActiveNet
600 Park Street, Fort Worth 76164 View Map
600 Park Street , Fort Worth 76164