Compare & Contrast Parker County, TX (Dallas, Fort Worth: homes, universities, to live in)

[PhinneyWalker]

I am pretty familiar with Tarrant County which is a good county to live in in my humble opinion. What about Parker County? How does Parker County compare to Tarrant County?

I know Weatherford is in Parker County and is the county seat. Never been to Weatherford or the surrounding towns myself, e.g. Aledo which is pretty tiny. What is out there??? There are no universities or major cultural draws is there???

[Threestep2]

You may want to drive out to Weatherford. It is not a dot on the map.

[PhinneyWalker]

Originally Posted by Threestep2

You may want to drive out to Weatherford. It is not a dot on the map.

I have never driven that far out. Weatherford is really far, but I have heard it is a nice little city.

[elnina]

It's a nice city and close to Fort Worth, about 30miles/30 min with a car. Great historic homes and eye candy courthouse.
Here to read about this town:
https://weatherfordtx.gov/721/Brief-History
https://www.experienceweatherford.com/
Plenty of things to do:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attracti...ord_Texas.html

[Threestep2]

Originally Posted by PhinneyWalker

I have never driven that far out. Weatherford is really far, but I have heard it is a nice little city.

25-30 miles is not "that far out" in Texas

[ChristieP]

Originally Posted by Threestep2

25-30 miles is not "that far out" in Texas

Totally agree. "Far out" to most Texans is far west Texas' tiny oilfield towns, such as is Sheffield, Iraan, Crane, etc.

OP, take a drive to Weatherford on a weekend. It's a nice place.

[PhinneyWalker]

Originally Posted by ChristieP

Totally agree. "Far out" to most Texans is far west Texas' tiny oilfield towns, such as is Sheffield, Iraan, Crane, etc.

OP, take a drive to Weatherford on a weekend. It's a nice place.

Hi ChristieP. It is subjectively very far out for me given my transportation concerns. Even in my younger days, a 50 to 60 mile round trip was far, but now it is not doable at all.

I desperately wanted to go there a couple of years ago given the terrible freeze and the snow in the forecast since the local wild bird store here closed the previous August, and I knew the birds were going to suffer terribly, but I just could not make that trip. I did the next best thing and ordered a large bag of black oil sunflower seeds from Amazon---which was nowhere near as good as the fresh seed I could have purchased at the wild bird store, but it would have been better than starvation.

Sadly, the package was lost in transit, and by the time I could reorder and receive another bag, the snow had begun to melt. Goodness knows how many birds we lost that year. Believe me, though, if I could have gotten to Weatherford and the wild bird store there, I would have done so. People who have good, solid, reliable transportation for that sort of drive are fortunate indeed, but not everyone is that fortunate.

[supfromthesite]

I used to drive to Stephenville pretty often and one day I was headed home and stopped at a gas station outside of town. Met a lady there that lived in weatherford and she said it was a great place!

Question: is it possible to live in weatherford and commute daily to Fort Worth? How long would the commute be?

[PhinneyWalker]

^^^ I do not doubt Weatherford is nice. Many people have told me this.

Well, I do not need a daily commute per se as I am retired, but if I wanted to commute from Weatherford to my current home, it would be at least a 50 mile round trip each day. Anyone who had to do this sort of commute say 5 days a week would be putting 16K miles a year on her automobile, and given the cost of petrol these days, her monthly petrol bill would be very large indeed. Then there is the time factor to consider. That sort of drive would take a minimum of one hour per day or five hours per week. The upshot is for me it would not be worth it. I would much rather live within 2-3 miles of my office.

[RonnieinDallas]

Originally Posted by supfromthesite

I used to drive to Stephenville pretty often and one day I was headed home and stopped at a gas station outside of town. Met a lady there that lived in weatherford and she said it was a great place!

Question: is it possible to live in weatherford and commute daily to Fort Worth? How long would the commute be?

Yeah a lot of people do it. A lot of Lockheed employees live in Parker County which is on the western side of Fort Worth. Weatherford it’s self doesn’t have a lot of industry. It also lacks any large concentration of white collar employment. There are 2 hospitals and a lot of large car dealerships. I assume most people commute outside of the community for work or work for a small business.

I-20 and I-30 probably weren’t too bad 10-20 years ago but with all the growth and development I bet that commute will start to get worse and longer. Plus, you’re looking into the sun both ways.

Fort Worth is also sort of limited in industry. They don’t have the large corporate and tech presence Dallas has. They also don’t have as many financial service jobs. Fort Worth’s bread and butter has always been pork barrel federal spending on defense. Lockheed and Bell are big there. American Airlines is way over on the Far East side of Fort Worth. Downtown Fort Worth is frequently overestimated as a job center. A lot of the big names in downtown pulled out over the last decade and many of the office buildings are or have been converted to other uses. At one time downtown Dallas had more vacant office space than Fort Worth had in total, in the entire city.