Why’s Fort Worth called Panther City? The legend behind Cowtown’s other nickname
A reader asks the Star-Telegram: Why is Fort Worth known as Panther City? We live west of Fort Worth and I personally seen a few mountain lions in our neighborhood, and my neighbors have photographed some. Is “panther” really another name for a mountain lion?
Thanks for the question! The origin of our nickname “Panther City,” as legend has it, is based on our rivalry with Dallas that dates back to the era of the Wild West.
Star-Telegram columnist Bud Kennedy has written about this before. Back in the 1870s, Fort Worth was said to be such a sleepy, drowsy town that a mountain lion slept in the street. (A panther is indeed a mountain lion. It’s also called a puma, cougar, painter and catamount — there are nearly 40 names for this cat species, according to the Fort Worth Zoo, which has three.)
“The way the Panther story goes,” Kennedy wrote, “Dallasites made fun of us, and residents rose up and turned the big cat into a symbol of civic pride.”
Over the years, the name stuck. You’ll hear it in reference to Panther Island, the future entertainment and residential district planned for just north of downtown. A panther is on city police badges. Fort Worth’s baseball teams made the Panthers and Cats nickname nationally famous. The city’s white and black high schools, later Central, Paschal and now-closed I.M. Terrell, both took the Panthers nickname.
More on the legend from Bud:
Fact check: Nobody ever actually saw a panther.
A Baptist parson known for dramatics, the Rev. A. Fitzgerald, was trying to shock his sleepy congregation one Sunday in February 1875. He told them he saw an outline in the dust on West Weatherford Street [at Throckmorton Street] where a big panther must have been sleeping.
Poking fun, the Dallas Daily Herald mockingly reported a “wild panther wandering at will.“
Fort Worth got riled up. The city adopted two cubs as town mascots. and the nickname “Panther City.”
The legendary “sleeping panther” truly roared a year later when townfolk, up against a deadline, pitched in themselves to help build bridges, lay ties and extend the first railroad from Dallas near what is now the Trinity Metro T&P Station in Fort Worth.
We now have two panther sculptures. But still no panther.
MORE: Check out historic photo galleries from the Star-Telegram archives here, including these:
- Keller, Texas, during the 1920s-1950s
- Greater Fort Worth International Airport’s 1953 grand opening
- Fort Worth Stock Show, 1930s to 1950s
- Creepy clowns in Fort Worth
- Queen Elizabeth visits Texas in 1991
- Historic Fort Worth snowfalls, from 1880s to 1950s
- Labor Day in Fort Worth over the decades
- Sept. 11, 2001, in Fort Worth and DFW airport
- Churches in the Fort Worth region, back to the 1800s
This story was originally published October 25, 2022 at 10:19 AM.
