Live in Bluebonnet Hills
The 1930s bungalow streets between TCU's stadium and Bluebonnet Circle, wholly inside the City's TCU overlay, where more homes were rented than owned in 2020 and the census counted fewer people than in 2010.
Bluebonnet Hills was platted in 1929 on the Elijah Sutherland survey, south of the new Texas Christian University campus, and most of it was built out in the 1930s under deed restrictions that set a $3,500 minimum for a house. This guide takes the area the Bluebonnet Hills Neighborhood Association files with the City, about 123 acres west of University Drive and south of Berry Street, where the 2020 census counted 960 residents, down from 1,070 on the same ground in 2010, and owners lived in only 46% of the occupied homes. All of it is inside the TCU Residential Overlay, which the City approved on 2 December 2014 to hold a one-family house to three unrelated occupants. Zillow's typical value for ZIP code 76109, $688,194 in August 2026, covers 25,373 people from TCU to Tanglewood and is not a Bluebonnet Hills price.
The bungalow streets below TCU's stadium, where the university's neighbors now rent as often as they own
The area the Bluebonnet Hills Neighborhood Association registered with the City of Fort Worth (OBJECTID 44301 on the City's Neighborhood Organizations layer, about 123 acres). The association's City record describes it as West Berry Street from Stadium Drive to South University Drive on the north, University Drive and the west side of Bluebonnet Circle on the east, Butler Street from University to the 3700 block of Park Ridge Boulevard on the south, and Stadium Drive on the west; traced against the Census Bureau's road file, the filed line runs down Stadium Drive to South Hills Avenue, east along South Hills, south on Park Ridge Boulevard to West Butler Street, east to University and back north. It is not the TCU campus, which lies north of Berry Street, and it is only the western half of the 1929 plat, which also ran east of University Drive. It stands in this guide for the streets around TCU: the City's TCU Residential Overlay around the university covers 2,498 acres and about 17,600 residents, and this association's area is wholly inside it. All of it is in Tarrant County, Fort Worth ISD and City Council District 9.
Bluebonnet Hills was platted in 1929 on the Elijah Sutherland survey, just south of the campus Texas Christian University had moved onto in 1911. The street on its western edge was renamed Stadium Drive when TCU built its football stadium there that year, and most of the houses, prairie bungalows and Tudor cottages, went up after the Bluebonnet Hills Development Company began work in 1932, under deed restrictions that set a $3,500 minimum. This guide stands in for the streets around TCU, and it has to say which streets: the area the Bluebonnet Hills Neighborhood Association files with the City, about 123 acres from West Berry Street south to Butler Street and from Stadium Drive east to University Drive and Bluebonnet Circle. The 2020 census counted 960 people there, down from 1,070 on the same ground in 2010.
The TCU Residential Overlay is the condition of owning here. Every block is inside it. The City approved it on 2 December 2014 after neighbors, this association among them, complained that houses were being rebuilt as rentals for students: in a one-family zoning district, no more than three unrelated people may live in a house, down from the five the general code allowed. Houses already lawfully rented to four or five were grandfathered, and lose that for good if the occupancy lapses for two years. The City's zoning staff told the student newspaper that enforcement runs almost entirely on neighbors' complaints. The result shows in the count: owners lived in only 46% of the 442 occupied homes in 2020, 238 were rented, and 86 of the 528 homes stood empty on census day.
No price index follows the association's line. The ZIP code, 76109, runs from TCU west to Tanglewood, and Zillow's typical value for it was $688,194 in August 2026, up 5.4% on the year, well above the City's MLS median of $327,000 for a single-family sale; this guide found no published figure for these blocks alone. The six taxing units on a Fort Worth ISD address add to 2.18908 per $100 for 2025, and the Tarrant Regional Water District takes no homestead exemption at all. A homestead valued at the ZIP figure owes about $12,211 a year, the same house held as a rental about $15,065, and a homestead at the city median about $5,044. No public improvement district reaches the area. The arithmetic is on the Fort Worth page.
The flood risk here is the storm drains, not a river. FEMA's map puts none of the area in a flood zone. The City maps what FEMA does not: 13.1% of the area is in a City Flood Risk Area drawn from its study of the Bluebonnet Hills storm sewers, which has regulated building since 15 July 2024, and a fifth of it is in either that or an advisory high-water area the City files under the Clear Fork of the Trinity. About 101 residents live on blocks in one or the other. The City's gas well layer shows no well or pad site inside the line; the nearest producing well is about 0.9 km from the reference point.
The bus is hourly. Route 053 stops at University Drive and Bluebonnet Circle once an hour. The nearest 15-minute route, 006, is at McCart Avenue about 0.9 km east, and TEXRail's T&P station downtown is about 6 km away. On TCU home game days, five more in 2026, Amon G. Carter Stadium fills across Berry Street.
- Ask the City's development services whether the lot and its neighbors are zoned one-family or two-family before you offer
- Ask whether any house on the block is grandfathered to keep four or five unrelated tenants
- Look up the lot on the City's flood risk layers as well as FEMA's, and price a flood policy either way
- File for the homestead exemption with the Tarrant Appraisal District once you live there
- Run the exact address through Fort Worth ISD's School Finder, since the district publishes no zone map
How Bluebonnet Hills got here
- 1864Elijah Sutherland is the original grantee of the survey the neighborhood is laid out on.
- 1911Texas Christian University, its main building in Waco destroyed by fire in March 1910, moves onto a fifty-acre campus that Fort Worth offered in the city's southwest.
- 1929The 165.5 acres of the Sutherland survey are platted as Bluebonnet Hills, divided by University Drive. The street on the western edge, platted as Edgevale Street, is renamed Stadium Drive when TCU builds its football stadium on it.
- 1930Houses begin to go up on the western side of University Drive, the part the association files today.
- 1932The Bluebonnet Hills Development Company begins the work that builds out most of the neighborhood, under deed restrictions requiring every house to cost at least $3,500.
- 1937The whole area is annexed by the city; the city limit had run down the middle of the blocks on Berry Street.
- 1945L. H. Wentz and John J. Harden of Oklahoma begin developing their portion of the land, finishing in the early 1950s.
- 1949The City dedicates the park in the middle of Bluebonnet Circle, to preliminary plans by the landscape architects Hare and Hare; walks and planting follow in 1951.
- 1989The seat wall around the circle's park is built, with a berm in the middle to break drivers' line of sight and cut accidents.
- 2010The census counts 1,070 residents on the blocks inside today's association line.
- 2014The Bluebonnet Hills association speaks in support at the Zoning Commission on 8 October, and on 2 December the City approves the TCU Residential Overlay, cutting the unrelated occupants allowed in a one-family house from five to three.
- 2020The census counts 960 residents and 528 homes; 238 of the 442 occupied homes are rented.
- 2024From 15 July the City regulates building in its own mapped flood risk areas, which here cover 13.1% of the association's area around the storm drains.
A pocket park inside, the first traffic circle on the edge, and Forest Park across the campus
Inside the line, Worth Hills Park is a City neighborhood park of about an acre and a half. On the eastern edge, Blue Bonnet Circle Park fills the middle of what the City calls Fort Worth's first traffic circle: 1.25 acres, dedicated in 1949 to plans by Hare and Hare, ringed since 1989 by a seat wall, and open from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. North of the campus, Forest Park runs along the Clear Fork with the zoo and one of the City's two public pools.
What the map does not show: the heat. The normal at Meacham brings about 105 days a year reaching 32 °C, and the shade here is mostly street trees.
24 places, with real drive times
Road-adjusted distance and drive time from the centre of the community to each destination, nearest first. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 24 places, nearest first.
Method: distances are straight lines from the population-weighted center of the association's 2020 census blocks, multiplied by a road factor, with a tiered speed model for the drive: honest ranges, not routed times.
Every gym within reach
The nearest City pool is the summer-only Forest Park Pool, the nearest City community center is Victory Forest, and the nearest YMCA branches are downtown and on McCart Avenue.
- Forest Park Pool: about 3 km, June to August
- Victory Forest Community Center: about 4 km
- Amon G. Carter, Jr. Downtown YMCA: about 9 km
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Forest Park Pool open | One of the City's two public pools, at 2850 Park Place Avenue. Its 2026 season ran from 9 June to 9 August, closed Mondays, noon to 6 p.m., at $6 for an adult and $5 for a child; it reopens next summer. | 5–8 min |
| Victory Forest Community Center open | The nearest City community center on the City's layer, about 3.1 km east in a straight line on the south side, one of the 23 centers the Park & Recreation department lists. | 6–10 min |
| Amon G. Carter, Jr. Downtown YMCA open | The YMCA of Metropolitan Fort Worth's downtown branch, at 512 Lamar Street. | 10–15 min |
| Ryan Family YMCA open | The YMCA's branch at 8250 McCart Avenue on the south side, the other one within about ten kilometers. | 13–19 min |
The free option is the sidewalks and the loop around Bluebonnet Circle.
Fort Worth ISD, one address at a time
Every block is in the Fort Worth Independent School District. For 2026-27 its School Finder sends the reference point to Westcliff Elementary on Clay Avenue, rated B (82) for 2026; to the McLean 6th Grade campus and then McLean Middle on Stadium Drive, rated C (76) and B (88); and to Paschal High on Forest Park Boulevard, rated B (87) after B (80) for 2025.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Westcliff Elementary School | Fort Worth Independent School District | 4300 Clay Avenue, south of the association's line, prekindergarten to grade 5. It is the elementary school Fort Worth ISD's School Finder returns for the reference point for 2026-27; the district publishes no zone map, so blocks near the edge may be zoned elsewhere, and older neighborhood write-ups split this area between Westcliff, Lily B. Clayton and Tanglewood. The Texas Education Agency rated it B, 82, for 2026 and B, 83, for 2025; 65.9% of its students counted as economically disadvantaged. |
| McLean 6th Grade | Fort Worth Independent School District | 3201 South Hills Avenue, just south of the line: the district's finder sends the reference point's sixth graders here and its seventh and eighth graders to McLean Middle. Rated C, 76, for 2026 after B, 82, for 2025. |
| McLean Middle School | Fort Worth Independent School District | 3816 Stadium Drive. The finder lists it for grades 7 and 8; the Texas Education Agency lists it as grades 6 to 8. Rated B, 88, for 2026 after C, 79, for 2025; 54.9% of its students counted as economically disadvantaged. |
| Paschal High School | Fort Worth Independent School District | 3001 Forest Park Boulevard, the zoned high school for the reference point. Rated B, 87, for 2026 after B, 80, for 2025, with a graduation rate component of 95.9. Confirm every assignment for the exact address with the district's School Finder. |
Those are one point's schools. The district publishes no zone map, and an older realtors' profile split these streets between Westcliff, Lily B. Clayton and Tanglewood elementaries, so run the exact address through the School Finder before you rely on any of them.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel: the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- The Tarrant Appraisal District values every property as of 1 January; last year's bill is due by 31 January
- Highs near 14 °C and lows near 2 °C at Meacham, with about 11 nights at or below freezing on the 1991 to 2020 normal
- Penalty and interest start on unpaid property tax bills on 1 February
- Highs near 16 °C, 61 mm of rain and about seven freezing nights
- The Cowtown ran on 28 February and 1 March in 2026; its 2027 date is not yet posted
- Highs near 20 °C and 80 mm of rain
- Tarrant County's records hold 12 tornadoes in March since 1880, the start of the spring peak
- April has the most tornadoes on the National Weather Service's Tarrant County record, 33 of 110 since 1880; hail, the largest cause of paid homeowners losses in Texas, comes with the same storms
- Highs near 24 °C and 78 mm of rain
- 15 May, or 30 days after the appraisal district mails its notice if that is later, is the deadline to protest a value
- The Charles Schwab Challenge fills Colonial Country Club, about 3 km north, from 24 to 30 May 2027
- 102 mm of rain and 21 of the county's recorded tornadoes since 1880
- Highs near 33 °C, with about 22 days reaching 32 °C (90 °F) on the normal
- 102 mm of rain, tied with May as the wettest month before autumn
- The Forest Park Pool's season ran from 9 June in 2026
- Highs near 35 °C, with about 28 days reaching 32 °C and about nine reaching 38 °C (100 °F)
- 55 mm of rain
- The hottest month on the normal, highs near 36 °C and about 11 days reaching 38 °C
- TCU's 2026 home season opened at Amon G. Carter Stadium, across Berry Street, on 29 August
- Highs near 31 °C, with about 15 days still reaching 32 °C
- 66 mm of rain; FEMA's map puts none of the association's area in its flood zones, but the City maps 13.1% of it for storm-drain flooding
- 113 mm of rain, the wettest month on the normal, and highs near 26 °C
- TCU plays at home on 3, 24 and 31 October 2026, the 24th its homecoming, with game-day traffic and parking along Stadium Drive and Berry Street
- TCU's last home games of 2026 are on 14 and 21 November
- The GM Financial Parade of Lights runs downtown on 22 November 2026
- Highs near 19 °C and about two freezing nights
- Highs near 14 °C and lows near 3 °C, with about nine nights at or below freezing
- 67 mm of rain; the year's tax bill is due by 31 January
- Tarrant County's record holds 11 December tornadoes since 1880, more than any other month outside spring
Every photograph in this guide's library is above
This library holds one photograph and the page has already printed it. The credits are in the footer.
About these photographs. Openly licensed images geotagged in or near Bluebonnet Hills, found on Wikimedia Commons and served from there with full attribution. Inline photos elsewhere on the page may still come from the site's shared Fort Worth library.