11 Unique Things To Do At The Fort Worth Stockyards

Looking for things to do in the Fort Worth Stockyards? This travel guide is all about how to spend a day at The Stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas.

On E Exchange Avenue, cattle hunched, long horns bowed down, angled away from the sun. Cloven hooves beat against the hot brick. A horseback lead, pinching reins, guided the steers, kicking up dust. Behind, more riders, dressed in vests and wild rags and long sleeves cuffing their wrists, ushered the cattle forward. 

I was sure this was a Western story.

Every year, since 2022, over eight million visitors project their twangs lilting, cowboys sauntering, guns slinging fantasies onto a 98-acre sweep of shops and saloons known as The Fort Worth Stockyards. At its peak, The Stockyards was the Wall Street of the West. At its start, The Stockyards was a boozy watering hole for drovers, waged long-distance cattle movers.

The drovers took longhorns up The Chisholm Trail, a prairie path cutting into the plains of Kansas. Jesse Chisholm, a Tennessee Native, raised by his mother in Cherokee Nation, originally scouted the cattle trail. Suck-tum-mah-kway, a Lenni Lenape trapper and Civil War hero suggested the route to Chisholm; Suck-tum-mah-kway had gone up the path in the spring of 1861, helping Union soldiers navigate an escape from Confederates. 

Chisholm’s cattle trail merged with local Texas trails later in the 1860s, and evolved post-war into The Chisholm Trail, a well-known cattle drive route.

Drovers still steer cattle within The Fort Worth Stockyards. The longhorn drive is slower, smaller, and more sedentary, but it’s enough of a tradition to bring downpours of tourists into Fort Worth’s hot, humid summers.

There’s a lot to see in this adult-friendly cowtown playground, so here are eleven selections for things to do at the Fort Worth Stockyards to help you plan your trip! 

Breakfast At Hotel Drover

“What do you think?” I ask Vyas as we sip coffee from 97 West Kitchen & Bar. The white chocolate caramel latte (split between two mugs) is our excuse to check out Hotel Drover. 

“It’s beautiful,” he says. His fingers trace the edge of a Go West coaster, bottoming out a water glass. Amber lights and morning sun bronze a board – loaded, dense, and filled with 97 West’s weekend-only taco shareable. You can easily find earthier tortillas and punchier toppings for $30 less in Texas, but Hotel Drover ropes you in. The entire property is devoted to design, including 97 West, where brunch service runs as warm and slow as Texas sunsets, forcing you to linger and luxuriate. 

In 2021, The Fort Worth Stockyards unbuckled Mule Alley, and the historic district’s belly slumped forward towards Hotel Drover. Once, there was scorched grass and trees so low that their branches scraped the ground; the smell of truck tires mingled with bales of hay. Now, there is no mud to track. 

Hotel Drover rose on that old lot, its lobby heavy with leather. Ranch rustic, country chic, Hotel Drover cemented The Stockyards as Texas Texas, a Texas that, no matter how you pictured it, was what you pictured.

Shop In Mule Alley

A gated roof, red as an Indian Paintbrush, leads to Mule Alley. At night, this Western-themed outdoor mall is blood moon bright. Lights swing like low-hanging stars between faded brick buildings, the former mule barns’ crescent humps branded by the soft glow of horseshoes. 

In 1911, a fire rattled The Stockyards’ wooden horse barns, rebuilt by 1912 with bones of brick strong enough to hold in flames. Now, Westward Whiskey is served in an old hayloft (Provender Hall). Chef Tim Love’s Tex-Mex restaurant, Paloma Suerte, lies less than half a mile from Lonesome Dove (also owned by Love). Brittany Cobb’s cute cowgirl concept, Flea Style, has a customize-your-own hat bar (Cobb also owns Wide Brim, Hotel Drover’s boutique). Lucchese Bootmaker sells bespoke boots but, like many businesses in Mule Alley, could use a lesson in customer service. 

Search For A Celebrity Name On The Texas Trail Of Fame

As I head from Mule Alley towards The Livestock Exchange, my feet stumble over the grooves of a name, one of many bronze markers pressed into the ground. Hollywood established its Walk Of Fame in 1958, and many other cities—Palm Springs, St. Louis, Miami, Toronto, even Fort Worth—have hopped on the bandwagon.

The Texas Trail Of Fame features Fort Worth recognizable names (Sid Richardson, Amon Carter) and authors like Larry McCurty (who won The Pulitzer in 1986 for his Western, Lonesome Dove) and Nat Love (whose autobiographical account of an enslaved Tennessean, who went West and became a cowboy, was published in 1907). In the early 20th century, one in four cowboys was African-American. And the most well-known Black cowboy, Bill Pickett (who invented steer wrestling), is honored with a bronze-cast statue outside The Cowtown Coliseum and a star along The Texas Trail Of Fame! 

Visit The Livestock Exchange

As time crept up to the mid-20th century, The Livestock Exchange deepened its place as the center of Cowtown’s cattle trade. These days, its tanned adobe facade hides a network of admin offices. 

Here’s when to drag your boots inside: it’s summer in Texas. You can’t bear the heat. You don’t want to be idle (or bored), so you enter a quirky little museum inside The Livestock Exchange. This tiny museum feels like a historian’s nest, tight with Texas pickings and black-and-white clippings. Everything here is incredibly random, from a bad luck wedding dress to the second oldest light bulb (it burned for a hundred years, and now burns for 24-hours a day). If you can embrace the chaos (I’m a little too Type A to), The Stockyards Museum is one of the most unique things to do at the Fort Worth Stockyards! 

See The Cattle Drive

The sidewalk outside The Livestock Exchange, where brick-paving bleeds into the brick of E Exchange Avenue, is the best place to see the cattle drive! Fort Worth Stockyards’ cattle drive moves twice daily, at 11:30 AM and then at 4:00 PM. Steers amble behind drovers. Crowds fill the street. Cool autumn breezes scatter the stench of sweat, cowhide, manure, and ammonia. The smells hold in the summer, but the drive is worth seeing for the cattle alone, their horns spread six to ten feet wide. 

Every detail draws from history, from the saddled horses to the curves of the drovers’ hats (Mexican drovers wear sombreros to represent vaqueros, Native Mexican herders who were the first cowboys in North America). 

Take A Break At The Stockyards River Walk

I slip to The Stockyards River Walk for a break from the crowds. The River Walk is a small, unadorned sidewalk trail along Marine Creek, a green curve wallowing beneath two arches. Depending on when you visit, Marine Creek’s water can be deep or shallow, murky, or skating over rocks. There’s no guarantee it will be clean (sometimes, there’s litter, sometimes, there isn’t), but it is always quiet. Ducks usually wade, and turtles pop their heads out of the creek! 

Listen To Live Music

Shade pools in the shadows of cowgirl and cowboy hats, speckling grass as visitors drift towards live music. Singers croon on patios and stages, crying heartbreak lyrics. There’s country belting in saloons and bars. 

The Fort Worth Stockyards leans into live music. Here are the events calendars for Tannahill’s Tavern, Second Rodeo Brewing, Rhinestone, and Pearl’s! 

Stockyards Station

I follow the scent of smoke and oak and find myself in Stockyards Station, a busy but hushed indoor mall. Families browse stores and, eventually, sit near food stalls. The alley, where The Grapevine Vintage Railroad clicks on tracks as it departs, is lined with shops, store lights canted on mounted horns and hides. 

A loud bang rents the silence. 

A single gunshot. 

A child screams. Nervous moms clamp their hands over their kids’ ears. Another pop pierces Stockyards Station. And Texas locals calm their families visiting from out-of-town. “It’s a play,” they say. I see shoulders loosen at those words: a play.

Right after the weekend cattle drive, Legends Of Texas puts on a comedy gunfight. Those directly facing the duelers know this is intended to be a kid-friendly, over-the-top Western hoot, but the sounds are loud and permeate. If you hear pistol shots in The Stockyards at 11:45 AM and 4:15 PM, it’s likely Legends Of Texas.

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See A Real Rodeo

One of the most popular things to do at The Fort Worth Stockyards is to go to the rodeo! In Cowtown Coliseum, you’ll see bullfighting, calf roping, bronc riding, and bulldogging. 

Bulldogging (AKA steer wrestling) was invented by Bill Pickett. And Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, the longest-running Black rodeo, travels everywhere from Atlanta to Oakland and makes a monthly appearance at Cowtown Coliseum every third Saturday between March and August (no dates are listed this year for July). Note: This event, celebrating Black cowgirls and cowboys, sells out fast. 

You can also get tickets to the Stockyards Championship Rodeo, a horse bucking, lassos looping, dust swirling series every Friday and Saturday at 7:30 PM! 

Check Out The World’s Biggest (And Smallest) Honky Tonks

Seeing the world’s biggest (and smallest) honky tonks are two of the most unique things to do at the Fort Worth Stockyards. Both fit like a glove right in the district (one significantly easier to slip into than the other). Billy Bob’s is the biggest honky tonk, a former open-air barn enclosed into a chunky block of a building that was an airplane factory in World War II and a discount retailer (Cook’s, a Walmart of sorts) in the mid-20th century. Now, it’s a nightclub, a dusty, low-lit, unlofty venue. If this is your first time visiting Texas, go for Billy Bob’s free line dance lessons! Here’s a schedule showing when lessons are offered. 

In a cheeky reference to Billy Bob’s, West Exchange’s Basement Bar claims to be the world’s smallest honky tonk. A flight of stairs takes you beneath the Stockyards to The Basement, a dank dive that smells like beer and old dollar bills. Basement Bar really does feel like the tiniest honky tonk in the world, so expect a lot of people in little space (and rowdy revelry after hours)!  

Get A Rooftop View Of The Stockyards

From the rooftop bar Ático, I can see Fort Worth’s skyline. Fort Worth, Texas, is old to the bone. Below sun-soaked buildings and big, long roads is the skeleton of a cowtown. And just beyond, you’ll find a river-banked landscape drenched in soft yellows, pale oranges, and smoky brown hues. 

In a way, Fort Worth is my home away from home. Though I ended up setting base near Dallas, specks of what I came down south for still exist in Fort Worth – the old Texas, the Texas I built up in my head and my dreams. 

And I watch that Texas (plus some modern trimmings) while sipping on a mocktail six floors above Springhill Suites near The Fort Worth Stockyards.

Fort Worth Stockyards Travel Tips

• Arrive at 9:30 AM so you can find parking! Parking closer to E Exchange Avenue costs $20 plus a service fee (I’m not sure what the service fee is for), and gets cheaper the further away from the cattle drive you are. This is the map I use to find parking.
• Here’s a detailed walking map of The Stockyards with all the businesses and where they are located!
• Public restrooms are inside Cowtown Coliseum and Stockyards Station.
• Bring water! The Stockyards is largely unshaded. There are a few indoor shops that blast air conditioning, but you’ll still feel thirsty.
• Try to be as close to the sidewalk during the cattle drive (a lot of tourists wear tall hats, making it hard to see).
• If you’re looking to dine in The Stockyards, I recommend H3 Ranch (a steakhouse) and Second Rodeo (a casual brewhouse).
• Bring cash because some businesses (most notoriously Joe T. Garcia’s) still prefer cash!

What are your favorite things to do at The Fort worth Stockyards? Let me know in the comments below! This is by no means a comprehensive list and I love hearing about your experiences.