Tarrant County Texas map
32.77° N · 97.29° W · County seat: Fort Worth · 904 sq mi · Central Time
Tarrant County holds 2,110,640 people, third among Texas counties behind Harris and Dallas, in 904 square miles — a smaller footprint than most rural counties in the state. It is the western half of the Metroplex: one very large city, one city of nearly 400,000 with no downtown to speak of, and a ring of two dozen suburbs packed edge to edge between them.
Centered on downtown Fort Worth. I-820 loops around the city; I-30 runs east through Arlington toward Dallas; the mid-cities suburbs fill the northeast quarter below DFW Airport.
Where Tarrant County is
The county was created in 1849 out of Navarro County and organized the following year. It is one of the counties carved from the Peters Colony land grant, and it takes its name from Edward H. Tarrant, a militia commander who led campaigns against the tribes living on this stretch of the Trinity in the 1840s. Fort Worth began the same year as an Army post on the bluff above the West Fork.
Six counties touch it: Denton to the north, Dallas to the east, Ellis at the southeast corner, Johnson to the south, Parker to the west and Wise to the northwest. The Tarrant–Dallas line is the seam of the Metroplex, and Dallas is 29 miles east of downtown Fort Worth along I-30. Nothing in the county is far from a freeway; the whole thing is about 30 miles across.
Cities inside the county
Figures below are the 2020 census count for the part of each place lying inside Tarrant County. Fort Worth, Grand Prairie, Mansfield, Grapevine and Southlake all spill across a county line.
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Fort Worth (part) | City · county seat | 900,675 |
| Arlington | City | 394,377 |
| Grand Prairie (part) | City | 71,146 |
| North Richland Hills | City | 69,912 |
| Mansfield (part) | City | 67,415 |
| Euless | City | 61,027 |
| Grapevine (part) | City | 50,632 |
| Bedford | City | 49,949 |
| Haltom City | City | 46,083 |
| Keller | City | 45,764 |
| Hurst | City | 40,417 |
| Southlake (part) | City | 30,558 |
| Colleyville | City | 26,051 |
| Benbrook | Town | 24,528 |
Watauga, Saginaw, White Settlement, Forest Hill, Richland Hills, River Oaks, Kennedale, Everman, Lake Worth, Sansom Park, Blue Mound, Pantego, Dalworthington Gardens, Westworth Village, Westover Hills, Edgecliff Village, Lakeside and Pelican Bay are also incorporated here.
Freeways and arterials
- I-30 – the east–west spine, from Parker County through downtown Fort Worth, then Arlington and Grand Prairie toward Dallas.
- I-35W – north–south through downtown Fort Worth, up past Alliance toward Denton, south toward Burleson and Hillsboro.
- I-20 – crosses the southern third through southwest Fort Worth, Arlington's south side and Mansfield's edge.
- I-820 – the loop around Fort Worth, joining I-20 on the south side to make a complete ring.
- I-635 – ends in the county's northeast corner at SH-121 beside DFW Airport.
- SH-121 and SH-183 – the paired airport freeways through the mid-cities, carrying Euless, Bedford and Hurst traffic between Fort Worth and DFW.
- SH-360 – the north–south freeway through Arlington and Grand Prairie, from Mansfield up to the airport.
- SH-114 and SH-26 – across the north end through Southlake, Grapevine and Colleyville.
- US-287 and US-81 – northwest out of Fort Worth toward Decatur in Wise County, and southeast toward Waxahachie.
- US-377 – southwest from Fort Worth past Benbrook Lake toward Granbury.
The Trinity forks and the county's lakes
Two branches of the Trinity River meet here. The West Fork comes in from the northwest through Eagle Mountain Lake and Lake Worth; the Clear Fork comes up from the southwest below Benbrook Lake. They join just north of downtown Fort Worth, and the combined river runs east across Arlington's north side into Dallas County. The floodway levees along that reach are why central Fort Worth has a band of open ground between downtown and the Stockyards.
Water covers 39 of the county's 904 square miles. Eagle Mountain Lake and Lake Worth are West Fork reservoirs built for Fort Worth's supply, Benbrook Lake is a Corps of Engineers flood-control lake on the Clear Fork, Lake Arlington sits on Village Creek between Arlington and Fort Worth, and Grapevine Lake laps the north line shared with Denton County.
Airports and rail
DFW International Airport straddles the Tarrant–Dallas line, and its western terminals and runways sit in Tarrant County beside Grapevine and Euless. Fort Worth Alliance Airport, an industrial cargo field in the far north, anchors a large warehouse and distribution district along I-35W. Meacham International is the older general aviation field north of downtown, and Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base — the former Carswell Air Force Base — occupies the west side of Lake Worth.
Two commuter rail lines run out of Fort Worth Central Station. The Trinity Railway Express, jointly operated with Dallas, follows the old Texas & Pacific alignment east through the mid-cities to Dallas Union Station. TEXRail runs northeast from downtown through North Richland Hills and Grapevine to Terminal B at DFW. Amtrak's Texas Eagle and Heartland Flyer both call at the same station, and BNSF Railway keeps its headquarters and a large yard in the county.
Stockyards, museums and stadiums
The Fort Worth Stockyards, north of downtown on the old cattle-shipping pens, are the county's best-known historic district — brick pens, the livestock exchange building and Exchange Avenue, kept working as a visitor quarter. The Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo runs each January at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in the Cultural District west of downtown, where the Kimbell Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth stand within a few blocks of one another.
Arlington's entertainment district, in the crook of I-30 and SH-360, holds AT&T Stadium, Globe Life Field and Six Flags Over Texas, the first park in that chain, opened in 1961. Texas Motor Speedway carries a Fort Worth address but lies just over the north county line in Denton County, at I-35W and SH-114.