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The community of Mosier Valley is located in what is now far east Fort Worth on bottomland near the north bank of the Trinity River. Sources vary on its origins. One states that it was established in the 1870s by Robert and Dilsie Johnson and ten other formerly enslaved families who had worked the J. K. or T. W. Mosier plantation in Missouri. The Tarrant County land was given or sold to the families by the Mosier and Lee plantation families. Another source states that Lucy Lee gave Robert and Dilsie Johnson forty acres as a wedding present. Other families who joined them were former slaves and descendants of Isaac Parker, perhaps best known as the uncle of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white captive of the Comanches who became the mother of Quanah Parker, the most influential Comanche leader (and whose Parker County cabin is now part of Fort Worth’s Log Cabin Village). Members of the Mosier Valley community were a close-knit group engaged in farming, sharecropping, as laborers and handymen, or domestics for white families in the nearby-towns of Euless, Bedford, and Hurst. Life centered around Oak Grove Baptist Church (established in 1874 and now known as St. John Missionary Baptist Church) and an elementary school was established in 1884. A successful syrup mill was established by John Calhoun Parker around 1900.
The community likely reached its highest population of approximately 300 residents between 1910 and 1930. A new school was constructed in 1924. For many years, it remained a separate community with few infrastructure improvements despite the fact that its elementary school was a part of the Euless school district. In fact, in 1949, the school district’s superintendent attempted to have the community’s elementary students bused to “colored” schools in Fort Worth, on the grounds that it would be cheaper to do that then to continue to support a separate (and woefully inadequate) school for the students. Mosier Valley parents, with the assistance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sought an injunction against the school district to prevent the busing. U. S. District Judge Joe Dooley ruled that Texas law provided that students had a right to be schooled in their own communities. Despite resistance from the district, a new school was constructed for the students in 1953 on the site of the 1924 school. It remained in operation until 1968 when the school closed and the Euless district was integrated. The school building served as a community center but was later demolished. An Official Texas Historical Marker commemorating the history of the school was erected on the site in 1983.
Mosier Valley was annexed into Fort Worth in 1960 as the city expanded its boundaries to the east in anticipation of the construction of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Even with this action, infrastructure improvements were slow to reach the community and for many years, residents felt neglected. The creation of a park had been a long-sought goal of the community and that goal became a step closer to reality in 2014 with the city’s acquisition of four acres that had formerly contained the site of the school.
View animal, plant and insect species observed at Mosier Valley Park and make some of your own observations through iNaturalist. See link under the "Related information" Section.
Reserve this park on ActiveNet
11220 Mosier Valley Road, Fort Worth 76040 View Map
11220 Mosier Valley Road , Fort Worth 76040
Mosier Valley Park Hours: Open from Dawn to Dusk