The Gone Cold Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.

Listener discretion is advised.

As the 1950s were coming to an end, so was the illusion that Fort Worth, Texas was a place immune to the type of violent

crime that was so prevalent in the big city 25 miles to its east, Dallas.

Ready to welcome a new and prosperous decade.

Fort Worth had certainly grown into a new town, and with industries like steel and oil

setting up shop there in the previous couple decades.

The city was no longer the place that metropolitan Dallasites once snubbed their noses at

for being too sleepy.

The city that a Dallas lawyer said in 1875 was so slow and uneventful he saw a panther asleep

on the steps in front of the courthouse.

Now this lawyer, Robert E. Cowart, wasn't actually from Dallas.

He'd moved there from that boring town he sought to insult with the sleeping panther bit.

But Cowart was at least somewhat right.

At the time, cattle trading was Fort Worth's biggest economic driver, and even that industry had taken a big hit following a brutal winter in 1873.

That terrible winter also laid waste to much of the city's brothels, gambling

dens, and saloons in the Fort Worth's Bloody Third Ward, or Hell's Half Acre.

For at least a few years span, the debauchery and lawlessness of Hell's Half Acre rivaled that

of the infamous town of Deadwood, South Dakota. But Fort Worth, obviously, wasn't as prepared for a hard winter as those folks were up there.

This was at least part of the point Cowart sought to make with his snarky remark.

As a lawyer, there just wasn't much action for him in Fort Worth anymore, not like there

was in Dallas anyway. But that's the way Fort Worth residents liked it.

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