Brief History
Handley was established in 1884 by retired Confederate Major James Madison Handley of Georgia. Handley created a plantation just seven miles from the center of Fort Worth on land that was included in the Sara Gray Jennings Survey of 1856, and a very small community began to grow around him to the west. According to the Fort Worth Gazette newspaper of 1888, the most that could be said for the area was that it was good for hunting foxes. By 1901 Handley had 12 houses and 80 residents.
Handley as a town began to grow when the Northern Texas Traction Company bought land in the southern part of the community where it developed a holiday resort called Lake Erie. The company developed its lake and added a roller skate rink, a dance hall, restaurant and rides on a pier above the water.
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“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)