It's crazy to me how much that area has exploded. It's like someone took this map and just spilled a gallon of yellow paint on it.
Also,
Greater Southwest Int'l aka
Amon Carter field... What a story! Paul Freeman's
Abandoned Airfields writeup on it has lots of cool pictures and stories. When I was in Dallas recently, I may have briefly nerded out when we crossed Amon Carter Boulevard... And I think it's cool that there's still a chunk of GSW's runway 17 on the southern border of DFW. Kind of crazy that they didn't use the existing airport and instead built an entirely new one. "Progress."
Kent:
You'd have to understand the depth of the animosity between Dallas and Fort Worth back in the day; DFW was the only (and best) choice, and in hindsight, an amazingly good decision. Still, who ever could have guessed the juggernaut that DFW would become? When it opened, only one airline had enough traffic there to justify its own terminal - Braniff! AA shared with Eastern.
Amon Carter Field, later renamed Greater Southwest International in an effort to make it not offensive (failed effort) was a pretty robust airport for its time, but it was (purposely) built entirely within the city limits of Fort Worth (said city limits reconfigured to encompass the airport without burdening the City of Fort Worth with the obligation to provide services to anyone on the way), which made it a non-starter for Dallasites.
More practically, the majority of critical business traffic was Dallas-oriented, and in those days, driving to ACF/GSW to travel was an absolutely ludicrous notion - start an airplane trip with an hour-plus drive? Nah.
Other issues - Amon Carter, who was Fort Worth's long-time mayor and owner of the Fort Worth paper (the Star-Telegram), after whom the airport was named, was a very substantial shareholder in American Airlines, while the Dallas airline of choice, Dallas-based Braniff International Airways, was Love Field based. Dallas folks rankled at being asked to drive to Fort Worth to fly on an airline largely owned by a man who was open and obvious in his expressions of contempt for Dallas (he famously was known to always bring a sack lunch with him when business brought him to Dallas so he could avoid spending money with a Dallas business).
Fact is, having the big airport between the cities was a good idea, one discussed at length for decades before it actually happened, but it took the CAB (Feds) refusing any more airport development funds until a deal was reached to actually make it happen. Politically, it was best, because neither side (Dallas nor Fort Worth) had to "blink" - it was imposed upon them.
So when all that started happening for real (mid-sixties), expanding GSW looked like a good idea, but not only was it politically impossible, GSW, while thoroughly modern by early 50s standards, was utterly inadequate to ever be expanded to become a useful airport of the scale DFW was destined to be; and the DFW Airport Board recognized this, and embarked on the audacious and well-crafted plan to build what is, operationally, perhaps the best airport in the world (especially airside). They acquired what most said was way too much property (while it was cheap), so they'd have room for expansion that many said would never come. Instead, it is huge and effective, and has room to grow a great deal more without crippling and stupid changes (hello, ORD and LGA).
The terminal GSW was a beautiful building, and Fort Worth maintained it like it was going to spring back in to operation; would have made a great set for a doomsday, "where did all the people go," kind of movie. My dad would take me there for airshows, and I even got one of my first airplane rides there during one airshow (it was in a brand-new Cherokee Six).
Happy to share more some day when we're (1) at the same table, and (2) holding frosty brews!
