Almost 150 years ago, in an act of sneery superiority, the Dallas Herald published a story about Fort Worth. In it the paper’s correspondent described a city so languid and lifeless that he claimed he’d spotted a large panther snoozing on Main Street, “undisturbed by the rush of men or the hum of trade”.
That insult, made when the neighbouring cities were competing for business during the Long Depression, didn’t quite land as expected. While gales of laughter erupted 30 miles down the road in Dallas, Fort Worth leant into the tale of the fictitious feline. Panther-themed murals appeared across the city and the local newspaper added a panther to its masthead. Soon a crouching panther was added to local police badges and fire engines, before an enormous bronze likeness became a permanent addition to Main Street. The intended slight had become an enduring symbol of the city’s strength.
A century and a half later, business is booming in Panther City. The fastest-growing metropolis in America last year, it is drawing so many young creatives it has been dubbed “the new Austin”. Attracted by a buoyant TV and film industry, a blossoming restaurant and bar scene and reliably sunny weather, not to mention a lack of state income tax, the population has swelled in recent years to nearly one million, dwarfing Las Vegas and San Francisco. Now the hospitality industry has responded, with the opening of a new wave of design-driven boutique hotels.
The latest five-star opening, which has A-listers such as the model Bella Hadid beating a path to north Texas, is the Bowie House Auberge (pronounced “boo-wee”, named after the 19th-century pioneer and creator of a specific kind of blade — so a knife man, not the Starman). It’s part of the US hotel group Auberge Resorts Collection.
Situated in the middle of the city’s Cultural District, an easy lasso toss from the world-class Kimbell Art Museum, the property has been corralled to feel more like an upmarket country house than a hotel, and is decorated with a panache that is equal parts equine and postmodern. At its heart are cosy nooks, leather armchairs and warm, tonal rugs scattered across a ranch-style common area, anchored by an epic mirrored bar. (Picture the home of a larger-than-life Texan aunt, who loves cocktails and modern art almost as much as she loves horses.)
Advertisement
The 106-room, four-story hotel also has a smart Auberge Spa, plus a rooftop pool with a cocktail bar and cabanas. Locals are fighting to get reservations at the restaurant, Bricks and Horses, for its elevated Texan cuisine: every type, style and preparation of steak you could imagine (my favourite was Oscar-style, topped with crab meat, butter sauce and white asparagus spears).
Fort Worth’s acceleration is such that the Bowie House Auberge isn’t the only new five-star hotel in town. In fact, it’s not even the only new five-star on the street. A short way down Camp Bowie Boulevard is the Crescent, a striking, light-filled, contemporary art-focused property that opened in November 2023, housing a sprawling Canyon Ranch spa and a killer rooftop bar.
Arguably the biggest star of the bunch, however, is Hotel Drover, in the old Stockyards (cattle houses) three miles north of downtown. The hotel, which has won multiple awards since opening in 2021, incorporates the vibe of two of Panther City’s other nicknames — “Funky Town” and “Cowtown” — to design perfection, creating a hipster-friendly combination of casual cool and haute cowboy culture, from its exposed wooden floors to its leather-clad columns. The 200-room property has plenty of unique tricks up its sleeve too, from a lavish tree-lined pool overlooking the Trinity River to bespoke cowboy hat and boot stores in the lobby.
Guarded by the statue of a towering neon gunfighter, Hotel Drover sits at the head of Mule Alley, a newly restored street that is the poster child for the Stockyards’ multimillion-dollar facelift. Here, formerly decrepit warehouses and stables have been transformed into glitzy westernwear stores and restaurants, curated by chefs such as Tim Love.
“I always tell people that if they’re visiting Texas and they want to see Los Angeles, they should go to Dallas,” Love says as I tuck into sizzling venison fajitas at Paloma Suerte, his Mexican restaurant on Mule Alley (mains from £14; palomasuerteftx.com). “But if they’re visiting Texas and they want to see Texas, they should come to Fort Worth.”
Advertisement
Love is a giant of the dining scene here, with eight high-end establishments to his name, plus the White Elephant Saloon, an infamous bar that was the scene of Texas’s last legal shootout in 1887, and the backdrop to many western shows since — most notably Walker, Texas Ranger in the 1990s, when Chuck Norris would relax with a cold beer here after delivering roundhouse kicks to unwitting criminals.
The bar looks pleasingly familiar today, and still hosts live music every night, but the Stockyards around it have evolved considerably in recent years. Yes, the Cowtown Coliseum opposite still hosts weekend rodeos, and yes, there are still cattle drives down these old streets twice daily, but the blocks themselves are gentrifying at what can only be described as a gallop.
“It feels like there’s a very real sense of momentum about Fort Worth now, and it was all sparked by the Stockyards renovation,” Love says. “They treated this place with an almost Vegas-like vision, fitting all the jigsaw pieces together to make the Old West new and stylish again. To be fair, it’s worked to perfection; everything is going gangbusters now.”
Even Hollywood has taken note. Since Fort Worth founded a film commission in 2015 and helped to launch state-of-the-art production studios here, the city has been inundated with filming requests. The Yellowstone showrunner Taylor Sheridan, a Fort Worth native, has been leading the charge, hosting world premieres at Hotel Drover while filming large parts of the Yellowstone spin-off 1883 and Lawmen: Bass Reeves in the Stockyards, as well as the forthcoming Land Man, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Ali Larter, Jon Hamm and Demi Moore.
• US travel guide
• The 17 tips that will save you thousands on your next US trip
Advertisement
It’s not just the film industry, though. Creatives of all kinds are making a beeline for Fort Worth like the cattle drovers of old, bidding to make their fortunes here like Sheridan and a fellow Fort Worthian, the platinum-selling musician Leon Bridges. Rent is lower here than in rival cities, work opportunities more plentiful, and studio space more available.
“There’s a fantastic creative economy here for small independent artists,” says Sheena Bellow, a photographer whose studio, Ruby Bellows, I visit to have a tintype portrait with my wife created. It’s an old-fashioned style of photo printed on a thin sheet of metal (from £59 per photo; rubybellowstintype.com). “This ain’t called Funky Town for nothing,” Bellow says.
Arguably the funkiest part of town right now is Near Southside, an Austin-like enclave across the freeway from downtown, packed with intimate live music venues, beer gardens and envelope-pushing independent restaurants. Clustered around the main drag, Magnolia Avenue, are dining hotspots including the barbecue joint Heim (mains from £10; heimbbq.com), the seafood restaurant Walloon’s (mains from £13; walloonsrestaurant.com) and the vegan place Spiral Diner (mains from £9; spiraldiner.com).
Near Southside still has a welcome whiff of the local secret about it, but that won’t last for long. Its first luxury boutique hotel, the Nobleman, is set to open at the end of 2024, closely followed by the National Juneteenth Museum, a cultural centre charting the path to freedom for enslaved people in the US, bringing international attention to this understated neighbourhood (nationaljuneteenthmuseum.org).
For now, here amid the bohemian coffee shops, bookstores and beer patios of Near Southside, you’re as likely to be rubbing shoulders with a graphic designer or tattoo artist in westernwear as a real cowboy in work attire. The artsy New West may have arrived, but the rugged Old West never left.
Jonathan Thompson was a guest of Visit Fort Worth (fortworth.com) and the Bowie House Auberge, which has room-only doubles from £309 (aubergeresorts.com/bowiehouse)
Advertisement
Sign up for our Times Travel newsletter and follow us on Instagram and X