BENBROOK, TEXAS. Benbrook is at the intersection of Interstate Highway 20 and U.S. Highway 377, ten miles southwest of Fort Worth in southwestern Tarrant County. It was established by settlers from Tennessee and other southern states about 1857 and originally called Miranda. In 1876 the Texas and Pacific Railway extended its tracks through the area. The community was renamed for James M. Benbrook, a native of Indiana, who had come to Tarrant County about 1874 and played an important part in persuading the Texas and Pacific officials to build their line through the site. Benbrook opened a post office in 1880. The local school registered sixty-four students and employed one teacher during the 1905-06 term. By the middle 1920s, when its first population statistics were reported, only twenty persons lived in Benbrook, a number that remained constant through the following decade. The onset of the World War II brought an increase in the population, which was 100 in the late 1940s and 617 a decade later. By 1957 the town had twenty businesses. The completion of Benbrook Reservoir in the early 1950s contributed to the community's development. Benbrook grew along with the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In 1965 the population was 3,300; it reached 9,900 by 1976 and in 1990 stood at 16,564. In 2000 the population was 20,208.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Janet L. Schmelzer, Where the West Begins: Fort Worth and Tarrant County (Northridge, California: Windsor, 1985 Ruby Schmidt, ed., Fort Worth and Tarrant County (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1984 Kathleen E. and Clifton R. St. Clair, eds., Little Towns of Texas (Jacksonville, Texas: Jayroe Graphic Arts, 1982).
