Fort Worth is famously the city where the West begins. It was the last “civilized” stop in the 19th century before settlers and colonizers headed West on cattle drives, in search of land to claim, or on their way to the California gold rush. For generations, even as it built up into a populous city and center of international industry, Fort Worth has held on to its Western persona, renovating the Thurber brick roads first paved in the late 1890s, preserving the Stockyard that once was one of the world’s largest livestock markets at the heart of Cowtown, and passing on the stories of the red light district in Hell’s Half Acre. There are (allegedly) haunted hotels galore and more steakhouses than you can shake a lariat at. However, the new shiny star in town is Taylor Sheridan’s TV productions.
Sheridan is the creator and showrunner for a universe of Western-themed nighttime soap operas that currently all run on Paramount’s networks and streamer. You’re likely most familiar with Yellowstone, from which spawned an entire cinematic universe revolving around the Dutton family of Montana, and their various dramas. In 2025, Sheridan signed a deal with NBC Universal that could end up being worth over a billion dollars, which will begin in 2029, for which he promised to create around 20 new shows.
While Sheridan wasn’t born in Fort Worth (that happened in North Carolina), he got to Texas as soon as he could, as the old saying goes. In high school, he acted in school plays and on the Stage West Theater. On weekends, he learned to be a cowboy at his grandparents' ranch in Cranfills Gap, a small town in Central Texas outside Waco, which his mother bought when he was eight. Sheridan has continued the split between country and city life, purchasing the sprawling 6666 Ranch in January 2022, which is about 200 miles outside Fort Worth in the little town of Guthrie, Texas, and the Bosque Ranch in Weatherford in 2020, which is about 30 miles away, making him the ninth-largest landowner in Texas. He opened the largest film studio in Texas in Fort Worth. Since then, he’s spent more and more time shooting shows in Fort Worth — Lioness, Landman, The Madison, Dutton Ranch, and 1883 have all used the city and its restaurants as a backdrop.