HANDLEY, TEXAS. Handley was on a site now in eastern Fort Worth in central Tarrant County. It developed when the Texas and Pacific Railway arrived there in 1876; a post office opened that year and was named for Confederate major James Madison Handley. By the mid-1880s the community had a church, a school, and a half-dozen businesses. Handley's population in 1903 was 156, and by 1915 it reported 905 residents and forty businesses. Its population continued to grow rapidly, as did that of nearby Fort Worth, and by the mid-1940s Handley had more than 3,000 residents. Fort Worth's growth, however, outpaced the railroad town, and in 1946 it annexed Handley.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Janet L. Schmelzer, Where the West Begins: Fort Worth and Tarrant County (Northridge, California: Windsor, 1985).

David Minor