I’ve had Fort Worth on my mind lately, though I’ve never been to the city in Texas. Two or three years ago, I was at a trivia contest at WAMC’s auditorium, the Linda.
The final question said the state with the most Top 15 US cities by population had the 15th-largest city. We had to name the city. So which state would it have been? Some in our group said California, but I was positive it was Texas. My problem is that I didn’t know the rankings. I knew Houston was a Top 5 city and assumed Dallas was up there. Austin, where a friend lives, has been growing like crazy. I think we picked San Antonio, actually bigger than Dallas.
The answer was Fort Worth. Fort Worth? It never crossed my mind. I thought it was just a Dallas suburb. According to Wikipedia, the 2025 estimate is that it is now a Top 10 city in the US, bypassing Austin.
A recent NYT Connections had the answer as FORTH, but my second guess was WORTH because of that experience.
I haven’t been to Texas since about 1995, when I was at a work conference in Galveston, which I enjoyed tremendously.
Texas wants you anyway
In the New York Times, the piece ‘They Picked the Wrong Candidate’: 12 Texas Swing Voters on the Paxton-Talarico Race asked some questions I found interesting.
“All of you have lived in Texas for 10 or more years. What has changed the most about Texas in the time that you have lived in the state?” One replied: “The initial joy of living here over the last decade has definitely deteriorated. I don’t love living here anymore. I don’t like the weather. It’s like a desert seven months of the year. Initially, I thought I could deal with it. Now it’s like I’ve got to hibernate for a few months of the year.”
Moderator: “And has that changed in the last 10 years? Is that different?” Another replied: “It feels like the summers are hotter and the winters are colder. And the cities have grown so much. When I was a kid, San Antonio to Houston seemed so far away. Now you’re at the edge of one and into the other within about two hours.”
I found this insight useful. The cliché is correct: everything’s bigger in the Lone Star State.
To me, Fort Worth’s population explosion is matched or exceeded by other locales in the state. Of the U.S. cities with the greatest growth in 2025 compared with 2020 by percentage, four of the top 10 (Georgetown, New Braunfels, Conroe, and Lewisville) and eight of the top 20 were in Texas.