Travel back to 1849. A troop of soldiers is ordered to northeast Texas to protect settlers scattered along the wild southern plains. One soldier writes, "Buffalo all around. There were more panthers than I have seen before or since. Antelope without number, and wild turkeys in every tree."

The soldiers proceed to build a fort and name it in honor of Major General William Jenkins Worth. Fort Worth, Texas is born.

Skip ahead 17 years to 1866, the first full year of peace since the Civil War ended. As in most wars, sacrifices were called for. Now, those who did their parts want the good life again. They desire shoes on their children's feet, and meat on the kitchen table. Way down in Texas, longhorns are running free on the open range. If only Texans could get these cattle to a railroad, what a beef bonanza there would be!

Young men are hired to drive the longhorns along the Chisholm Trail, through Fort Worth and the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) to Abilene, Kansas, the closest railroad stop. And an American icon, the cowboy, is born.

Present-day Stockyards National Historic District

Fast forward to the present. In Fort Worth's Stockyards National Historic District the cowboy culture and the mythology surrounding it are celebrated. So are the railroad, the ranchers, the meat packers, the auctioneers and everyone else who had anything to do with bringing meat to market.

Yet until 10 years ago, something was missing in today's stockyards: cattle. That changed on June 12, 1999. In honor of the city's sesquicentennial that year, a new tradition started: the Fort Worth herd daily cattle drives. Twice a day, roughly a dozen cattle are corralled and driven down Exchange Avenue to an observation area where visitors gaze at these 2,000-pound animals with six-foot horn spans. There modern-day cowboys, dressed in authentic 1880s attire, chat with visitors about cattle and the industry which turned this fort city on the plains into Cowtown USA.

To add a full dinner to this hors d'oeuvre, consider taking a guided walking tour of the Stockyards district. Today many of the cattle pens are home to shops selling Western art and apparel and restaurants serving catfish and barbecue. But tourists who browse the stores in Stockyards Station or along Exchange Avenue and Main Street haven't really seen the stockyards. What they've seen is a prime example of adaptive reuse. The walking tour lets visitors inside places that would otherwise deny them entrance. And even those settings they can enter mean little without words to put them in the perspective of history. For example, one learns that cattle drives continued along the Chisholm Trail well into the 1890s when Fort Worth boosters began seriously looking into building their own meat packing plants.

A local newspaper explained, "Steaks should be sweet and juicy. Yet, cattle arrive in the North exhausted from riding in a crowded boxcar with little food or water. They suffer shrinkage. The juices in their meat have evaporated. And those Northerners must eat dry, tasteless steak."

Local prayers were answered by corporate gods named Armour and Swift. The Chicago-based meat packing firms had Fort Worth plants up and running by 1904. Northerners now had their steaks sweet and juicy.

In the late 1950s they still had sweet and juicy steaks, although Fort Worth's big plants had less to do with it. By then trucks were moving meat. Since proximity to a railroad was no longer necessary, there were smaller, streamlined competitors. The huge packing plant was an anachronism. Armour shut down its Fort Worth plant in 1962, Swift in 1971. The plants were razed. Armour's office burned in the late 1960s. Swift's office was once an Italian restaurant and is now being used by XTO Energy.

Insider's Look at the Stockyards on a Guided Tour

At one point a guide escorts visitors to the top of an elevated catwalk, where they overlook over rows and rows of animal pens, where live beef lived in one-room, open air apartments. Today it's a livestock ghost town, with cement troughs and brick floors still in place. Why were cattle pens paved with brick? Brick is fireproof and easy to wash with a hose, and clean animals in the stockyard meant clean animals at the packing house.

The view from the catwalk emblemizes the city of Fort Worth. At one's feet are the cattle pens; two miles distant is the downtown skyline; iron and wood with a backdrop of steel and glass. There are plans to put the pens to use once more, to hold cattle for sales of special breeds.

In 1960, an auction arena was built. Cattle were taken from the pens to the arena, still used today for private specialty sales. Because of the arena's rickety seats and ragged upholstery, we chose to sit at the base of the chairs to watch a three-minute-long videotape in which a motor-mouthed auctioneer spews current prices as the animals parade by below. Yes, some cliches are real.

Today most cattle are sold in the Livestock Exchange Building via closed circuit television. Animals no longer have to be moved and cattlemen no longer need to leave their homes. A camera operator takes a portable camera into the pasture and videotapes the cattle. Broker representatives in Fort Worth take bids by phone from ranchers across the country.

Stockyards Museum

One place those not on a guided tour can step inside is the Stockyards Museum. It holds a pleasant clutter of items no early 20th century resident of Fort Worth would have been without: a washboard, a sewing machine, saddles, for example. There are also Swift and Armour employee group photographs taken during the depths of the Great Depression.

"We have probably every country in Europe represented here," said Sue McCafferty, former president of the North Fort Worth Historical Society, as she directed our eyes towards the photos. "Czechs, Greeks, Germans, as well as Blacks and Hispanics all worked here. Each had their own church which was also their cultural center. Everyone had their own identity but they lived and worked together."

The museum is located inside the Livestock Exchange Building, built in 1902 in the Spanish mission style and according to McCafferty, "the most modern building that could be built at the time." It was also long known as the "Wall Street of the West." At one time commission companies had offices here, along with a bank, post office and rail and telegraph offices. Activity was as hectic as it was on the floor at the other Wall Street. Today things are more placid. The offices of the Texas Angus Association, Superior Livestock Auction (a video auction production company) and several unrelated businesses are here.

More Fort Worth Sights

The noise and commotion has been transferred elsewhere in the district. In Cowtown Coliseum at 121 East Exchange Avenue indoor rodeos, a tradition dating to 1918, take place most weekends of the year. The White Elephant Saloon at 106 East Exchange Avenue predates the coliseum. It was in this tavern that what is considered the last great Old West gunfight took place in 1887. Nowadays it is the home of considerably less violent nightly live western music shows and a display of myriad cowboy hats.

Then there is Billy Bob's, situated in a former animal exhibition barn and promoted as the world's largest honky-tonk (capacity 6,000). It was often said when the site was in its first incarnation that workers came here after hours to clean up after the animals. Today it is said they come here after hours to clean up after the party animals.

The walking tour took us where no uninvited person can go -- backstage, where country music's best have left their own souvenirs. Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks, Tanya Tucker, Carlene Carter, Willie Nelson, and so many others have autographed the walls in Billy Bob's dressing room. In a nearby hallway is the wall of fame, where many of the same have their handprints embedded in cement, a la Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Jackson's and Brooks's are dotted with lipstick prints; Willie Nelson's was cracked; now he has a new one.

If you do not stay at the Stockyards Hotel (outlaws Bonnie and Clyde did in the 1930s), at least take a walk through Booger Red's Saloon, named for a Texas rodeo star. The bar stools have saddles on them and jutting out from the tin ceiling are belt-driven fans. To allow for increased seating, the restaurant portion of Booger Red's was expanded and reopened in 1998 in an adjacent room as Hunter Brothers H3 Ranch.

The Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame is located inside what once were horse and mule barns. Rodeo greats, men and women both including Ty Murray and Charmayne James, are honored with photos or video highlights, while visitors whose cowboy knowledge goes no deeper than Roy Rogers can distract themselves by eyeing collections of everything from antique wagons to cowboy boots.

More icons of the West are outside. In front of the Cowtown Coliseum is a bronze sculpture of African-American cowboy Bill Pickett, twisting and turning with steer in hand. At the corner of North Main Street and Stockyards Boulevard is "Texas Gold," one of the world's largest bronze castings, portraying a cowboy leading his herd up the trail.

And we thought Texas Gold referred to oil.

Photos courtesy Fort Worth Convention & Visitors Bureau.