Four State Parks Give Fort Worth Four Different Landscapes

Tarrant County has no state park, but Fort Worth sits between four landscapes that hardly feel related. Cleburne State Park wraps wooded trails around 116-acre Cedar Lake. Lake Mineral Wells puts climbers among the sandstone walls of Penitentiary Hollow in the Western Cross Timbers.

At Dinosaur Valley, tracks laid down about 113 million years ago cross limestone in the Paluxy River. Cedar Hill brings rare Blackland Prairie pockets and rugged limestone hills to the shore of Joe Pool Lake. One direction leads to a riverbed; another leads to prairie or a rock wall.

Use each park's live TPWD page for passes, alerts, and closures, especially when river levels or wet rock affect the day's plan. The surprise is how quickly Fort Worth's city map opens into spring-fed water, sandstone, dinosaur limestone, and prairie.