What's with the DFW metroplex?

Travel Info
Fort Worth was first, it put Dallas on the map, and now Dallas is bigger. How'd that happen?

Travel Tips

Actually, that's incorrect. Fort Worth and Dallas were settled at about the same time, and there's always been something of a rivalry going. It was said that when they first started up to come to Fort Worth to fight Indians and to Dallas to fight mosquitos.

I really don't know why Dallas grew faster, although cotton may have something to do with it. I'm more familiar with Fort Worth (having grown up here), so I don't know what role cotton played in Dallas - it doesn't figure into FW history. Fort Worth got it's start with the cattle industry, and then the oil industry later. Just sort of personality wise, it's always seemed that Dallas was always more interested in status and making money, whereas FW was always more about pursuing the things we love.

Another anecdote about our history. When the towns were very young, a panther was found sleeping in the middle of Main Street one morning. The Dallas paper taunted that Fort Worth was so boring that even the panthers fell asleep. FW turned that around and made the panther a mascot. Source(s): Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.

Other Travel Tips
Cotton sells better and employs more people than beef.

Dallas hit it big as a cotton market (later Oil came in to play). Fort Worth was a cow town. Beef sales are regional, the cotton sales were international.