Crystal Wise
Nostalgic neon signs, blinking lights, restaurants, bars, and a bevy of places to rest your head — squint for a bit on Camp Bowie West and you just might convince yourself you’re cruising down Las Vegas Boulevard. But open your eyes wide, and you’ll see drug deals, gang violence, and dubious characters occupying dingy motel rooms.
While most associate Camp Bowie Boulevard with classic brick roads, boutiques, and Lucile’s Lobstermania, when one continues to drive west — like, way west — and veers right at the fork that separates 377 from Camp Bowie West, a sudden sea change worthy of whiplash occurs. The street aligned with multiple Starbucks and some of the city’s most popular and pricey restaurants transforms into dollar stores, check-cashing services, weekly-rate motels, and windowless gentlemen’s clubs.
What was once the epitome of a vibrant highway in the heyday of road trips and motel stays has turned into a shell of its former self. Yet, remnants of its glorious past remain prevalent along this two-mile stretch of road — which extends from Alta Mere Drive to Interstate 820. And there are many — the city included — who are invested in the hope that history will repeat itself, and the old Highway 80 has better days ahead.
Crystal Wise
Past
Well before power steering came standard yet cars were becoming reliable enough to trek long distances, routes connecting large cities across the U.S. began to form. One such route that connected Washington, D.C., to San Diego was the Bankhead Highway. Part of the National Auto Trail System, this 2,500-mile stretch of piecemealed road went right through Fort Worth, some of the remnants of which remain active roads today.
According to local Bankhead Highway guru Dan Smith, an early route of the cross-continental road went through the middle of downtown Fort Worth and traveled along what is today Camp Bowie Boulevard. Once the road reached what is today the fork that divides U.S. 377 from Camp Bowie West, the road continued south along its current U.S. 377 route. However, at the fork was the Kuteman Cutoff, which served as a shortcut for motorists to travel to Weatherford. The Kuteman Cutoff would eventually become Highway 80.
In 1941, just north of what was now Highway 80, the U.S. military would establish Carswell Air Force Base. During the Cold War, Carswell served as a major Strategic Air Command base that housed some of the military’s latest heavy bombers.
That same year also saw the opening of the government-owned Air Force Plant 4, an aircraft manufacturing plant that initially housed Convair — which was eventually bought by General Dynamics in 1953.
Spillover from the base and an influx of employees at the new aircraft manufacturing plant created a necessity for new home sites in the area between Highway 80 and Carswell. This booming area, then called Western Hills but now known colloquially as Las Vegas Trail, increased both the population of Fort Worth and the need for additional businesses in the area.
Post-World War II also saw a significant boom in tourism. And Fort Worth, in many ways, was one of the city’s leading the way in highway construction — the city catering to the car-bound tourist. According to “Dallas-Fort Worth Freeways,” a chronicle of North Texas roadways by Oscar Slotboom, “In the 1953, Fort Worth and Houston were ‘neck and neck’ in freeway construction.” This, as Slotboom reports, was according to a delegation from Houston that visited the city famous for its Stockyards. In fact, in 1951, Fort Worth had 7.4 miles of freeway open to traffic, besting every other city in Texas.
Crystal Wise
Add all of this up, and Highway 80 just south of Carswell — then the western most part of the city — was primed for an economic boom. And that’s precisely what happened.
The front page of the Feb. 18, 1947, edition of the Star-Telegram featured a story on Highway 80 and the decision to raise sections of the highway due to high waters — declaring it an “all-weather route.” The piece went on to describe the famed highway as “the most frequently named strip in Texas.”
In the years that followed, Highway 80, in many ways, became Fort Worth’s own version of the famed Route-66. Mom-and-pop motels began popping up (targeting the tourist trade rather than permanent guests) and restaurants started opening.
A 1953 story in the Star-Telegram announced the construction of the Landmark Lodge — likely the most iconic of the street’s neon retro signs, at a cost of a whopping $200,000. The family that opened the motel, the Robinsons, had moved to Fort Worth the previous fall from the state of Washington.
These new establishments that flaunted contemporary designs and modern appeal catered to travelers, locals, and military personnel alike. Even tall tales of celebrity guests from the era persist — one of which includes actor Jimmy Stewart, a bomber pilot in World War II who remained a reservist and would visit Carswell, staying in one of Highway 80’s many roadside motels.
Other prominent names from the golden age of Hollywood like Bob Hope and Doris Day would frequent the nearby Western Hills Inn, which sat on the 6400 block of Camp Bowie, where a Tom Thumb and Goody Goody Liquors current sit.
“Some of the places that are there now began as really nice motels,” local historian, Richard Selcer, says. “And people going west or coming back east before [the construction of] I-20 would stop there when they came into town.
“It was the last stop before you hit miles and miles of nothing going through West Texas.”
But the end of the decade would also bring about the end of the prominence of Highway 80. Interstate 20 in Texas was designated in 1959 to replace the existing US Route 80. By 1967, the highway was officially complete from Louisiana to the western side of the city. In addition, Interstate 30 had expanded through Fort Worth, and it now ran just north of Highway 80. Thus, Highway 80, the once well-traveled bustling road filled with restaurants and motels, found itself in between two of the most-trafficked interstates in the nation.
Crystal Wise
Present
Things took a turn for the worst in the decades following the one-two punch of twin interstates bypassing Highway 80. New restaurants and motels opened along these eight-laned behemoths, making those that existed on the adjacent Highway 80 superfluous. The businesses would eventually shutter, their vacant buildings taken over by strip clubs, pay-by-the-hour motels, check-cashing services, and drab bars — the kinds of trades that attract sordid characters.
“You drive out there now, there are the remnants or the relics of those old motels,” Selcer says. “But, today, you wouldn’t want to stay in them.”
A curious stay by the writer of this article at one of these motels resulted in a night of constant noise through paper-thin walls, interactions with seedy personalities, and multiple questions about overall motel cleanliness.
In 1993 General Dynamics was sold, and the following year, Carswell Air Force Base shut down. This created a perfect storm of negative economic impact, accelerating what was already a socioeconomic slide caused by population shifts, neglect, and a lack of infrastructure investment. The area was now deteriorating at an exponential rate.
Today, the Las Vegas Trail is dominated by poverty (many live in the drab motels with retro signs or the low-income apartments erected between 1967 and 1985), a cycle of violence, substance abuse, unemployment, underemployment, anger, hopelessness, and general disorder. For decades, it’s all been a vicious cycle.
While this section of the city is home to only 1% of the population, it accounts for 4% of the city’s total crime. According to a recent story published by the Star-Telegram, the area’s median income is half of the rest of the city’s median income and has a 33% poverty rate, triple the city’s average.
“There just hasn’t been investment in a way that should happen around neighborhoods in that area,” Michael Crain, the area’s councilmember, says. “When General Dynamics was here, all of those businesses were supported up and down the strip. But they’ve turned into businesses that are not healthy for the neighborhood.”
While Taco Casas, burger joints, and even a Planet Fitness exist, they’re interspersed with cabarets and convenience stores that advertise food stamps. This area of Camp Bowie was also once part of the larger Camp Bowie Public Improvement District (PID), which saw improvements made on the street on or near where the street is clad in bricks and boutiques and coffee shops receive plenty of foot traffic. But business owners on the west side of Camp Bowie weren’t seeing improvements on their side of the street, and they elected to withdraw from the PID in 2017.
Crystal Wise
Future
In November of last year, the city of Fort Worth announced a plan to revitalize the Las Vegas Trail area after getting a third party, Interface Studio, involved.
“They (Interface Studios) have done this before,” Crain says. “Philadelphia is one of their main areas where they take areas and ask, ‘What do the residents of the area need? What are they looking for?’”
Ultimately, the firm recommended improved access to food, health care, and quality housing while also seeking improvements in public safety and education.
The city has now invested $3.5 million as part of its neighborhood improvement program. This will bring more streetlights, security cameras, and trash cans to the area. According to the Star-Telegram, they’re also looking at traffic solutions to deal with roads and speeding cars. The plan also calls for improvements to public safety and park specs, and a new network of trails will connect joggers, walkers, and bikers to the area.
Three years ago, the city purchased the Westside YMCA and rechristened it the RISE Community Center. According to an article published by Fort Worth Weekly, the center provides a food bank, job training, after-school care, and health living resources through LVTRise, a collaboration and partnership of private companies, human service organizations, and government agencies dedicated to helping residents of the Las Vegas Trail area. And, in 2021, the city opened RISE Library, which offers literacy programs and access to technology to residents.
The hope is that dropping crime rates, improving housing, and investing in the area’s educational programs will attract new businesses to come to the area. And, with a large cluster of midcentury modern buildings and a city willing to invest in the area’s improvement, Las Vegas Trail is primed for revitalization.
“The area is definitely ripe for investment,” Crain says. “I’d love nothing more than to see those motels turn back into places where people wanna stay. Because I think that will bring some other legitimate businesses back to the area. I put a lot of time and attention into the Las Vegas Trail area because it used to be that area where you really entered Fort Worth. And there are some great people who call Las Vegas Trail home. We are doing what we can — not just from a public safety perspective — but just making the area feel like a neighborhood again."
