llustrations By Lauren Deitzer
Prologue: The Bear Who Moved to Fort Worth, a Fable
There once was a bear who realized he no longer liked where he lived. The bear, like many other bears from his hometown, was a bit of a character. He loved “catching rays”; shoehorned the word “hella” into every other sentence; and adhered to a glutton-free, dairy-free, and meat-free diet. For the sake of this story, we’ll call this bear “California.”
While California enjoyed his home’s temperate weather, lax marijuana laws, and its Disney theme park, the cost of his honey-only diet and crumbling studio apartment and his inability to find gainful employment — despite being a highly qualified bear — made him consider moving elsewhere. He would also regularly curse the traffic, smog, and “freaking earthquakes and wildfires.”
While searching for a new place to live, California discovered a city where he could thrive. Unlike his previous home, this place had the friendliest people (though they tended to contract “you” and “all” into a single word), an abundance of affordable housing, jobs aplenty, less traffic, and no state income tax. Though he felt the city could use more honey-only restaurants and 70-degree days — along with a better metro — he was happy to call this new place home. For the sake of this story, we’ll call this apparent Promised Land “Fort Worth.”
In his new city, California was bringing in six figures and hibernating in a two-bed, two-bath loft downtown. He was happy. Heck, he was so happy that he told all of his bear friends back home about Fort Worth, singing the city’s praises and urging them to join him. And join him they did. All of them.
And they loved it. They loved it so much that they each invited their own friends to join them, who in turn invited their friends, too.
Though all the new bear residents liked Fort Worth, they also felt it could improve. And, since there was now an abundance of fellow sun-loving bears in the area, they could make some changes and bring some of the wonderful things they enjoyed about their old home to this new city. So, eschewing all the barbecue in town, new honey-only restaurants opened and cries for a better metro ensued … among a few other things.
But with all these new bears in Fort Worth, California noticed the city started to look a heck of a lot like the place he left — the place where he no longer wanted to live. Congestion increased, smog filled the air, the cost of living went up, and California even wondered if he once felt an earthquake.
It now seemed the only difference between Fort Worth and his old home was a lack of 70-degree days.
1. The Battle for Fort Worth
In our state’s supposed decades-long war with California — a feud of rhetoric and policy between the nation’s two most populous states whose identities are greatly at odds — Fort Worth might be its biggest and most important battleground.
Technically, Fort Worth isn’t experiencing anything different from the rest of the state. In case you were unaware, Californians are moving to Texas — a lot of them. And they are doing so en masse. In 2022, over 102,000 Californians made the jump to the Lone Star State, with neighboring Dallas bearing the brunt of the migration. This mass exodus from the Golden State is as much a result of California’s problems as it is a result of Texas’ policies and opportunism. This past year, Texas held the top spots as both the most moved-to state and the least moved-from state — simultaneously possessing the highest in-migration and the lowest out-migration rates. This, of course, means that the state’s cities are growing at a staggering rate — with Fort Worth being tops among the big ones.
llustrations By Lauren Deitzer
But this growth has also stirred anxiety among the city’s longtime, and even not-so-longtime, residents. Anecdotally, there’s a fear that out-of-state transplants bring with them more traffic, a higher cost of living, and cultural and political differences that don’t mesh with their vision of the city. They fear that big changes will come with little warning, and the city could become unrecognizable seemingly overnight.
“I think this is perhaps a subjective assessment,” assistant city manager Fernando Costa said when asked about resident anxiety stemming from the migration of Californians.
Fair enough.
Regardless, stoking such fear has played out on the political stage. During the 2018 gubernatorial election, “Don’t California My Texas” became a political catchphrase and rallying cry for Governor Greg Abbott, who places the disparity and dispute between California and Texas squarely on the shoulders of right versus left policies. “Texas is being California-ized, and you might not even be noticing it,” Abbott said in 2015 when asked about city councils enacting tree-cutting ordinances and local fracking and plastic bag bans.
And therein lies the double-edged paradox. The state government, lauded for its tax and regulatory policies that many feel are responsible for the state’s growth — growth that brings new people and new ideas — also show an unwillingness to be open to such new ideas or to veer from the “Texas model.” Conversely, new residents who wish to veer from such a model might be tampering with the very thing that brought them to the state to begin with.
Of course, politically, this point may be moot. A CNN exit poll for the 2018 senate race found that a majority of native-born Texans had voted for Democrat Beto O’Rourke to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz actually owes his reelection to a 15-point margin of victory among transplants. While this is merely one data point, it does show that a larger percentage of California transplants may be averse to interfering with the “Texas model” than one might presume.
llustrations By Lauren Deitzer
While some may fear political change, to say that the Californication of Texas is exclusively a red or blue matter is to oversimplify the change that could play out. And, as this change inevitably does play out — of all the cities in Texas — it’s Cowtown that has the most to both gain and lose.
Fort Worth represents something that Texas, as a whole, holds near and dear to its heart. It’s a steadfast traditionalism and embrace of its roots that longtime state residents tend to romanticize. A yeehaw cowboyism.
To concede such a distinct identity — to concede an In-N-Out in the Stockyards or a Tommy Bahama in Mule Alley — is near blasphemy to traditional Texans.
After all, Fort Worth is where the West begins, not where the West Coast begins.
Your traditional Fort Worthian with a mouthful of tobacco and ears full of hair would likely say that Austin, Dallas, and Houston are already gone — battles long ago lost in the great Cali-Tex War that continues to wage. “Those cities quickly ceded to those sunbaked yippies,” he might say. So, in a sense, Fort Worth represents Texas’ last stand — San Jacinto reincarnated.
But, as the city wages this battle of cultural preservation, it’s simultaneously itching to become a world-class, modern city — a city of innovation and progress. And to achieve such lofty goals, taking gulps from California’s population drain isn’t just helpful, it’s a necessity. Thus, Fort Worth, by its nature, carries two competing interests.
But according to Costa, the city’s navigating these waters with atomic clocklike precision.
“I think Fort Worth, to a great extent, has managed to achieve two purposes that in some cases could be conflicting,” he says. “On the one hand, being a very welcoming community — being open to new ideas, new ways of doing things. On the other hand, holding on to its heritage and preserving what’s best about our culture.”
In fact, one could argue the city leans into and has doubled down on its cultural identity, perhaps even banking on this differentiator to spearhead growth — Mule Alley and Hotel Drover being recent examples. But the city’s certainly not putting all of its eggs in one basket. Agents of growth exist all around town.
Over the last 10 years, TCU started attracting an increasingly large number of undergrads from California, a bevy of West Coast-based companies relocated their headquarters to Fort Worth, and Taylor Sheridan brought large Hollywood productions to the city. All of this, and more, has led to over 177,000 more people now calling Fort Worth home. How many of these relocations came from California, you might ask?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2017 and 2021, the most out-of-state relocations to Tarrant County came via California, with 7,097 Californians moving to the county in that five-year period. This outgains the next closest state, Florida, by over 4,500 people. Of course, to put this in perspective, over 109,000 people in total moved to Tarrant County in that same time frame — the vast majority of which came from within Texas itself (Dallas accounted for 5,120 new Tarrant County residents). So, our new Californians only accounted for 6.5% of new residents to the area.
But ask any long-tenured Fort Worthian, and they’ll tell you the city’s overrun with ’em.
llustrations By Lauren Deitzer
2. The Great California Exodus
The ongoing California Exodus, as the media has coined it, is far from humankind’s first mass migration. As long as Homo sapiens have been able to walk, they’ve been hitting untrodden routes in search of a better life — the American Dream before the Bering Strait was ever crossed.
In those days, people migrated in search of climates where more food was available. As society elected to become more complicated and Adam Smith’s theories took a stranglehold on our lives, the reasons to pick up and move became economical. Today, the main drivers for state-to-state migration are leaving high-cost-of-living areas and seeking warmer climates. And since Southern California’s weather is on repeat at 70-degrees and sunny, we can nix that reason.
Though he spoke primarily about Californians sending their sons or daughters to TCU, the university’s dean of admissions, Heath Einstein, hit on another motive that might supplant climate.
“I think there’s a cultural element,” Einstein says. “And this is not a value judgment on my part. It’s just a reality for families who feel like California is a little too politically liberal for them. Texas is a really reasonable landing spot.”
Brandi Fields, who previously served in the U.S. Navy, and her husband, Marlon, and their two sons moved from Los Angeles to Aledo in 2021. Marlon, whom she met while he served as a Marine, was an LAPD officer for 25 years. After their son transferred to TCU in 2020 — a decision steeped in the states’ differing COVID policies (TCU had reopened its campus by then, while California remained shut down) — the family, after paying a few visits to the city, decided to make the Fort Worth area their home.
“That changed the entire trajectory of our life because Texas was still open and operating,” Fields says. “We liked everything about Texas that wasn’t California.”
Fields’ story is a reminder that one should not discount COVID’s impact on the influx of Californians. In the year 2021, there was an 80% increase in California migration to Texas — among that increase was Fields and her family. But COVID, and people’s opinions of each states’ response, is also a microcosm of the general political divide between the two states. While COVID might have been a heavy straw that broke the camel’s back, Fields expressed that she had long been agitated by California’s politics.
“I know a ton [of people] who have moved to Texas; they’re Republican, right? They don’t like the Democratic ruination of California, if you will,” Fields says. “And then for us personally, I will say that no state income tax helped because [Marlon] could retire and not have to work as hard as he would’ve if we stayed in California. So just everything about the political environment [is what convinced us to move].”
Anecdotally — and if one looks at recent election returns — Fields and her family are likely representative of a large swath of California transplants who fled the West Coast to live in a city that they felt aligned with their political and religious values. However, no data points exist to determine the political leanings of incoming migrants. The only thing we can determine is that those leaving California for Fort Worth are not carbon copies. While they may very well be outliers, not all California transplants are Republicans.
One such newcomer is Erma Sinclair, who is currently attending seminary at TCU’s Brite Divinity School. Originally from Los Angeles, Sinclair moved to the Bay Area to attend UC Berkeley, where she received her bachelor’s in African American Studies.
“After I graduated in the Bay Area, getting financial stability was like pulling teeth,” she says. “Working ministry and doing nonprofit work made it especially difficult — my housing situation could not get stable. I moved six times in six years.”
llustrations By Lauren Deitzer
Her pain is not uncommon. According to Zillow, the average price for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is over $3,400 per month. In Fort Worth, a similar apartment is less than half that at $1,600 per month. If one lived in the Bay Area, this difference would be extrapolated across all expenses; the cost of living in San Francisco is nearly 100% higher than Fort Worth. Likewise, housing prices across the three largest metropolitan areas in California — Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco — are 2 1/2 times the average cost of a home in Fort Worth. Heck, they’re over 50% higher than the average price of a home in exceedingly expensive Austin.
Looking to continue her education — and get out of the vicious circle of annual moves — Fort Worth became an attractive destination for Sinclair and her spouse after she researched seminaries that met her specific criteria. “I was looking everywhere,” she says. “I looked up seminaries that were queer-affirming and had a justice angle, and one of them happened to be in Fort Worth. What do you know?”
Her surprise was, she admits, rooted in assumptions. “In California, there’s an air about Texas, just like there’s an air about California in Texas,” Sinclair says. “We speak in two different languages. We talk about liberation. We talk about creating spaces for reparation. And that is not a language that, at first glance, one would assume is happening in Texas. But that’s what you hear, and that’s what you see. There is such good work happening in this state.”
Asked whether she’s an outlier — someone with progressive views moving to Fort Worth from California — Sinclair admitted her case may be unique.
“I would say yes, but the optimist in me hopes no. But I will say that there are large numbers of people coming to Fort Worth. They’re not necessarily coming from California, and they’re not coming because Fort Worth is a conservative city. They’re coming because Fort Worth provides them opportunity. And those are the people I relate to most.”
Assistant city manager Fernando Costa tells me that, from what he can see, Fort Worth is more culturally diverse than it’s ever been, which is important for the city to celebrate. He also suspects this is a product of the influx of people from all around the country.
“People are moving to Fort Worth because they want to live here, and they have brought much vitality to our community,” he says. “I’m not sure that folks coming here from California or anywhere else have changed Fort Worth except for the better.”
3. The End of the Gold Rush
In 19th century California, when cruel blood sport served as a typical Sunday matinee, vaqueros would publicly pit a bear (typically the now-extinct California grizzly) against a bull for show. The fight would serve as the marquee event with an undercard of equally unconscionable contests — dogfights, cockfights, etc. According to reports, while the bull would often attack first, lunging at the bear, the grizzly was understood to hold the advantage and usually came out the victor.
Since Fort Worthians are predisposed to think of bovines as representative of Cowtown, the rest of the metaphor is almost too obvious to point out.
llustrations By Lauren Deitzer
Such exhibits like the above occurred while California was under Mexican rule, which itself was a newly independent nation — still working out the kinks of governing. Texas was in a similar boat but would soon revolt and become a nation of its own for a short time. Both were giant, sweeping, seemingly impenetrable lands — Texas, at this time, having a little over 200,000 residents, and California with 10,000 residents. And with Manifest Destiny entering its peak powers, both Texas and California would become states — Texas by annexation and California by force.
Soon after, in 1848, a young carpenter named James W. Marshall found gold flakes in a river near Coloma, California, and what ensued was droves of people of every country, race, status, and social class converging on the state in hopes of striking it rich. California became the land for prospectors, opportunists, and dreamers — and it would stay that way until 2020. While most gold had already been “panned out” by 1849, the influx of people created a new ecosystem where opportunities beyond prospecting became aplenty. An estimated 300,000 people moved to California during the Gold Rush, increasing the state’s population exponentially.
In some ways, the rush never ceased. With temperate weather and an abundance of opportunity, the West Coast continued to grow by an average of 48% every 10 years through 1930. And Texans were not immune to California’s temptations and welcoming arms. When the Dust Bowl swept through Texas in 1934, an estimated 66,000 Texans migrated to California — this during a decade when migration rates dropped nationwide. Not surprisingly, during the Great Depression, California saw the highest population growth of any state.
While agriculture remained the state’s biggest industry, the ensuing decades’ growth of film and television — and Hollywood’s geographic monopoly on the industry — would ensure steady economic and population growth. It didn’t hurt that most stars of the silver screen called Southern California home and were routinely filmed next to desert mountains and palm trees. Continuing to diversify, innovative tech companies would soon pop up and Northern California’s Silicon Valley would become a mecca of the computer, electronic, and internet industries. Again, leading to more growth. By 1970, California had usurped New York as the most populous state in the U.S. Since then, the state hasn’t come close to relinquishing this title while California’s population has doubled. It’s been a good run for the West Coast, but the Gold Rush might finally be over.
So, what the heck happened, California?
While one’s answer likely depends on their political persuasion, one has to only follow the money — specifically the money taken from Californians’ wallets — to understand why.
The past three years, California’s growth hasn’t just slowed. No, the state is bleeding residents. Since 2020, California’s overall population has dipped by 600,000 people. While one can place some of the blame on COVID and the state’s subsequent response, the population has continued to decline despite reopening post pandemic. For the third consecutive year, the Golden State’s population has shrunk, meaning problems exist outside of the pandemic.
And California’s current troubles are not a sudden reversal of trends. Since 2000, the state has experienced its slowest rates of growth ever recorded. And between 2010 and 2020, California’s population growth rate was slower than the rest of the U.S., causing it to lose a congressional seat for the first time in the state’s history — Texas, meanwhile, gained a couple.
And it’s not just people they’re losing, but whole dang companies, too. And similar to the state’s fleeing residents, many of these companies are coming to Fort Worth.
Since 2020, 88 companies have moved from California to Texas. While Austin made headlines with the very public relocation of Tesla, eight of these 88 companies now operate out of Fort Worth. These companies, many of which have been in business for decades, run the gamut as far as industries are concerned. Among the eight that have moved include a trim manufacturer, sign manufacturer, boot maker, AI software company, and a real estate firm.
“A lot of companies in California have found that the business environment — more specifically the tax structure and the regulations — may not be to their liking,” assistant city manager Fernando Costa says. “And they often find that Texas’ more permissive regulatory environment and its lack of a state income tax might be more appealing.”
According to Costa, the city has been intentional about attracting companies based in California, and he admits they’ve seen a certain degree of success.
“We don’t have a California strategy per se,” Costa says. “But we do have an economic development strategic plan, and we try to use our economic incentives strategically to attract the right kinds of employers and the right kinds of entrepreneurs to Fort Worth. And it happens that California is a large source of jobs. Many, many large employers in our target industries happen to be located in California.”
llustrations By Lauren Deitzer
4. Texas California University
Dean of admissions Heath Einstein doesn’t know if all those Californians finally became aware of TCU following the Horned Frogs’ Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin in 2011. There was some speculation over whether this win was at the root of why so many young Californians attend TCU — to the point where the school is jokingly referred to as Texas California University.
“I can’t confirm if that’s 100% true,” he says. “If you look at the numbers, the trend [of Californians attending TCU] had already been underway. But you could see the curve moving upward after that appearance. We can’t prove that that was the reason, but it certainly didn’t hurt.”
For the fall 2023 semester, of TCU’s 12,785 students, 1,595 hailed from California, which easily holds the largest state representation outside of Texas. The next closest was Illinois with 353 students. Even one who’s not big on math can identify the wide disparity.
“TCU enrolls more Californians than any private school outside of the state of California except for three colleges,” Einstein says. “NYU, Boston University, and BYU, which are all very large private schools; we are far and away much smaller than they are. And we enroll more Californians than any school in Texas.”
And it’s not without purpose. TCU has two regionally based members of their staff permanently camped out in California — one who covers the north and one the south. That’s not to say that this is at the expense of other regions, Einstein, who also hails from Orange County, is quick to say. But it is clear that the university sees Californians as a target demographic. According to Einstein, Californians would find TCU enticing for a number of reasons, including the ease of travel (thank you, DFW Airport); the school, while competitive, is not impossible to get into (especially when compared to California schools); and the warm weather. In many ways, TCU is a microcosm of the city as a whole — attracting people from the West Coast for many of the same reasons as the city itself.
According to the data, there’s been a steady increase of students from California every year since at least 2011 — the earliest year I could pull data — growing an average of 88 students per year. And while California’s share of TCU students has similarly risen, the percent of TCU students from the Golden State only stands at 14% of the student body, far less than most might assume.
Jaden Gaskins, a senior at TCU who arrived from Orange County, wouldn’t have been surprised if Californians made up the majority of TCU students. “I haven’t talked to the dean of students, so I don’t have the actual number, but it’s a very high percentage, whatever it is,” she says. “I can’t say there hasn’t been a single class, social event, or night I’ve been out that I haven’t met at least one [fellow student] from California.”
You don’t have to press Gaskins to talk up the school. After arriving at TCU in 2021, largely on the advice of a college counselor, Gaskins compared her first visit and subsequent football game to Disneyland. While perhaps unintentional — or maybe not — the Orange County theme park is an apt comparison if we are to think of TCU as a slice of Cali. But after a couple of years going to class and experiencing the city outside the campus walls, Gaskins also admits observing prejudice and stereotyping due to her geographical upbringing. In other words, being from California.
“Every single time that I say I’m from California, or specifically a TCU student from California, and even more specifically from Orange County, I get a couple looks and preconceptions about where I’m from,” she says. “The majority of the population moving from Orange County is of a wealthier status. So, there’s a lot of prejudice toward the idea of wealthy people moving into a new place just because they can.”
It should be said that Gaskins, to throw egg in the face of those showing prejudice, is on a majority scholarship and works her way through school at a downtown restaurant — far from a freeloader.
While she sings Fort Worth’s praises despite the occasional animus, once Gaskins graduates, she has opportunities that will lead her elsewhere. But saying sayonara to Cowtown after four years isn’t a matter of course. Quite the contrary, many California students stay and earn their Fort Worth stripes, and they may even bring others with them.
“There’s undoubtedly a long-term impact on the Greater Fort Worth community because a lot of students will stay here after college,” Einstein says. “And we have a lot of parents of California students — I’ve heard this repeatedly — who will say, ‘I’m going to buy property in North Texas because as soon as my student graduates, I’m going to come live here also.’
“There’s a little bit of an avalanche effect. One student comes here, they have a positive experience, they’ll go back and tell their friends, they come back to their hometown, settle in, establish roots, and they’re flying the TCU banner on football Saturdays and away we go.”
llustrations By Lauren Deitzer
Epilogue: The New Fort Worthian
With all of this information, and it is a lot of information, Fort Worthians can do one of three things: They can side-eye Californians and continue to reminisce about the way things were; swear off the city and move to California in protest; or embrace the opportunity that this growth brings to the community.
Projections indicate that growth will continue. And, more specifically, growth will continue from California. According to a study by moveBuddha, the Fort Worth-Dallas metroplex is set to become the most populated area of the country by 2100 — the same year Texas is to supplant California as the most populated state.
With growth comes traffic, rising home prices, increased cost of living, and poorer air quality. Fort Worth can’t be a world-class city without growth, and it can’t have growth without the growing pains. To put it bluntly: The city can’t have its cake and eat it, too.
Ultimately, Cowtown can learn from the mistakes California made so there’s no Cali-ing of the things that make it a distinguishable Western city and a popular destination for hard-working folks seeking refuge from high costs of living. This includes improved infrastructure, education, and finding ways to reduce congestion and emissions that cause unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone — namely public transportation.
And there’s little reason this can’t be done without compromising the city’s identity. Saying “Howdy,” sporting boots, and possessing family values do not preclude a place from being among the best in the world.
And the people arriving? The Californians coming in by the truckloads to declare our city New Los Angeles? Heck, maybe they’re just Fort Worthians born in the wrong place, which, in itself leads to the inevitable question: What makes a Fort Worthian?
To sum it up in one word: welcoming.
“Fort Worth, unlike some other cities, has had an open door,” Fernando Costa says. “There are some communities even in North Texas that have had no growth or slow growth policies that they’ve seen, and not every community has been as inclusive as Fort Worth. Not only has Fort Worth grown in numbers, but we’ve become a much more diverse community. And I think we’re known for being welcoming of different cultures. I think it’s consistent with our Western heritage that we treat people with dignity and welcome folks.”
So, how does the fable of the Bear Who Moved to Fort Worth end? Fort Worth and the Bears figured it all out, of course. The Bears remembered why they moved to such a wonderful city in the first place, and the people of Fort Worth learned to withhold judgment and discovered the honey-only diet to be quite trimming.
