Hurst

Welcome to Hurst

Hurst sits in northeast Tarrant County, in the cluster of suburbs people call the Mid-Cities, wedged between North Richland Hills, Bedford, and Euless. It's central in a way few DFW towns are. State Highways 183, 121, and 26 plus Loop 820 all touch the city, downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas are each about a 25-minute drive, and DFW International Airport is minutes east. The housing is mostly single-family, heavy on 1950s-to-1980s ranch homes on larger lots, a lot of them with no HOA. That's the appeal and the trade-off in one. You get space and freedom, but plenty of these houses are 40 to 70 years old and will want updating.

Hurst is served by Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD, not Fort Worth or Dallas ISD. The district crosses city lines, and its grade setup is a little unusual: elementary runs pre-K through 6th, junior high covers 7th through 9th, and high school is 10th through 12th.

• Elementary: Bellaire, Donna Park, Harrison Lane, Hurst Hills, and Shady Oaks are the campuses inside Hurst.
• Junior high: Hurst Junior High serves much of the city, with parts of Hurst zoned to Central Junior High.
• High: Most of Hurst feeds L.D. Bell High School (located in Hurst); some addresses fall in the Trinity High School zone in Euless.

Hurst is better on parks than its size suggests. Chisholm Park in North Hurst is the big one at 50 acres, with a stocked fishing pond, a 1.5-mile trail loop, ball fields, playgrounds, and an aquatics center. Central Park in South Hurst is the civic hub, home to the Hurst Recreation Center, the Central Aquatics Center, and a tennis center. Vivagene Copeland Park and the adjacent Bellaire Park add sports fields and a walking-trail system, and a regional trail runs along the north side of town linking North Richland Hills, Hurst, Colleyville, and Grapevine.

The city's signature event is Stars & Stripes, the Independence Day celebration at Hurst Community Park with live music, food trucks, a kids' zone, and fireworks, usually held on or around July 3rd. Beyond that, a lot of the calendar clusters at North East Mall, which programs seasonal events and hosts things like food-truck festivals, and the city's parks and recreation department runs a steady slate of community and library programs through the year.

Hurst's center of gravity for shopping is North East Mall, a Simon super-regional mall and one of the largest in Tarrant County. It's anchored by Macy's, Dillard's, Dick's Sporting Goods, JCPenney, and Primark, with an 18-screen Cinemark and the open-air Shops at North East Mall next door. Dining spreads along Grapevine Highway and Precinct Line Road, from Texas barbecue at Soulman's to Mediterranean, Vietnamese, and Korean spots.

Hurst takes its name from William Letchworth Hurst, a Tennessee farmer who settled the area around 1870. In 1903 he agreed to let the Rock Island Railroad lay track across his land to connect Fort Worth and Dallas, on the condition it build a depot and name the stop for him. Because another Texas town already held the name, the community briefly went by Ormel, which had a post office from 1904 to 1909, before reverting to Hurst. It stayed rural until the 1950s, when Bell Aircraft announced a helicopter plant here and residents voted in 1951 to incorporate and avoid being annexed by Fort Worth. Growth took off from there. North East Mall opened in 1972, DFW Airport in 1974, and the population climbed from about 8,500 in 1958 to more than 40,000 today.

Hurst is a solid pick for buyers who want an established single-family neighborhood at a price that still beats much of DFW, with a location that splits the difference between both downtowns and sits minutes from the airport. Just go in knowing most of the stock is 1960s and '70s ranch homes, so budget for updates and get the inspection right. And confirm the school assignment before you fall for a house, because HEB ISD crosses city lines and the L.D. Bell versus Trinity split isn't obvious from the map.

• City of Hurst
• Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD (school boundary locator)
• HEB Chamber of Commerce
• North East Mall