April 2017 | Business View Magazine

62 63 Bedford, Texas Bedford, Life at the center B edford is a suburban city located in northeast Tarrant County, Texas, in the “Mid-Cities” area between Dallas and Fort Worth. The area’s first settlers arrived in the late 1840s, and by the 1880s and ‘90s, Bedford was a booming town, with a population between one and two thousand. But its nascent prosperity ended in the early 1900s, when two important rail lines, the Dallas-Fort Worth Interurban and the Rock Island line were built, bypassing the city. Businesses and residents moved, and the post office closed in 1909. Truck farm- ing and dairying were prevalent from 1910 through the 1930s, but there were no more than eighty residents in Bedford as late as 1940. Bedford’s population began to grow again slowly after World War II, because of the construction of nearby military bases and defense plants, and the opening of the Bedford Boys Ranch, a home for wayward boys aged ten to fourteen. By 1970,