Fort Worth, TX Photo - The Stock Yards building, the center of a historic livestock-market district in Fort Worth, Texas

The Stock Yards building, the center of a historic livestock-market district in Fort Worth, Texas. The arrivial of railroads in 1876 made Fort Worth an important livestock center. Fort Worth Union Stockyards opened for business on January 19, 1890, covering 206 acres. By 1886 four stockyards had been built near the railroads. Boston capitalist Greenleif W. Simpson, with a half dozen Boston and Chicago associates, incorporated the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company on March 23, 1893, and purchased the Union Stock Yards and the Fort Worth Packing Company. By 1907, the Stockyards sold a million cattle per year. Fort Worth remained an important part of the cattle industry until the 1950s. Business suffered once livestock auctions were held closer to the where the livestock were raised. To the Stockyards consist of mainly entertainment and shopping venues that capitalize on the "Cowtown" image of Fort Worth.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.