Bedford

Welcome to Bedford

Bedford sits in northeastern Tarrant County, wedged between Hurst and Euless, the three towns that give the Hurst-Euless-Bedford "Mid-Cities" its name. It runs along the Airport Freeway (State Highway 183/121) roughly halfway between downtown Dallas and downtown Fort Worth, with DFW International Airport a short drive east. The housing is almost all single-family, built out during the suburban boom that carried Bedford from 2,000 residents in 1960 to more than 44,000 by 1990, so expect established brick homes and ranch-style layouts on mature lots rather than new construction. Recent median sale prices have run in the high-$300s to low-$400s, around $218 a square foot, and the market moves fast, roughly a month on market. It fits families and commuters who want a central DFW address over a big yard or a brand-new build. The trade-off is age: this is a built-out town, so most homes have decades on them and true new-construction inventory is thin.

Bedford is served by Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD, which is headquartered in Bedford and runs an unusual grade split: elementary is K-6, junior high is 7-9, and high school is 10-12.

• Elementary: Bedford Heights, Meadow Creek, Spring Garden, Stonegate, and Shady Brook all sit inside Bedford.
• Junior High: Bedford Junior High is in town; parts of Bedford also feed Central Junior High and Harwood Junior High.
• High School: L.D. Bell High School (in Hurst) and Trinity High School (in Euless). Which one a Bedford address is zoned to depends on the neighborhood. Bedford Junior High feeds L.D. Bell, Harwood feeds Trinity, and Central feeds both.

The anchor is Generations Park at Boys Ranch, a 68-acre park the city calls its signature green space. It packs in more than three miles of trails, a small urban lake with a spray fountain, a disc golf course, ball fields, and an outdoor aquatics facility. Inside sits The Center, a multi-generation recreation building with an indoor pool and slides, an indoor track, a gymnasium, and a fitness floor. There's also a Bark Park for dogs, plus a scatter of neighborhood parks mapped in the city's Parks and Trails guide.

Bedford's signature event is the free Beats & Eats Fest, held over Labor Day weekend at Generations Park at Boys Ranch. It's the current name for what was, for years, the nationally known Bedford Blues & BBQ Festival, rebranded to broaden the music beyond blues while keeping the food-and-live-music formula. The historic Old Bedford School also hosts concerts and community events in its restored auditorium through the year.

The landmark is the Old Bedford School, a restored early-1900s schoolhouse that reopened in 1996 as a community center and event venue with a well-kept auditorium. Day to day, shopping and dining cluster along the Central Drive corridor and the Airport Freeway retail strips, with the usual Mid-Cities mix of chains, local Tex-Mex, barbecue, and antique shops. The Bedford Public Library and the Boys Ranch rec campus round out the places people actually spend their time.

Settlers reached the area in the late 1840s. In the 1870s Weldon Bobo moved from Tennessee, opened a store and gristmill, and he and fellow farmers named the community Bedford after the Tennessee county many had left. A post office followed in 1877, and through the 1880s and 1890s Bedford boomed to as many as 2,000 people, with roughly two dozen businesses and Bedford College, founded in 1882 and lost to fire in 1893. Then the railroads and highways bypassed it. The post office closed in 1909 and the town shrank to about fifty residents. Fear of being swallowed by fast-growing Hurst and Euless pushed Bedford to incorporate in 1953, by a 55-to-20 vote, with 475 people. Postwar suburbanization did the rest: past 10,000 residents by 1970 and more than 47,000 by 2000.

Bedford is a strong fit for families and DFW commuters who want a central, established address without Southlake or Grapevine pricing. The one thing to nail down before you fall for a house: the high school. Bedford splits between L.D. Bell and Trinity depending on the street, so run the exact address through the HEB ISD boundary locator instead of assuming. And go in knowing this is a mature, built-out town, most homes have some age on them, so budget for updates and lean on inspection.

• City of Bedford — parks, events, and city services.
• Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD — schools, calendar, and the School Boundary Locator for exact zoning.
• HEB Chamber of Commerce — local business and relocation info for the three-city Mid-Cities area.