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is a city in Tarrant County, Texas (USA) within the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area. According to a U.S Census Bureau release, as of July 1, 2007 Arlington has an estimated population of 371,038. Arlington is the 7th largest city in Texas and the 50th largest city in the United States.
west of downtown Dallas, Arlington is home to the Texas Rangers' Ballpark in Arlington and the theme parks Six Flags Over Texas, which is the original Six Flags, Hurricane Harbor and the newly completed Cowboys Stadium. The city borders Kennedale, Grand Prairie, Mansfield and Fort Worth, and surrounds the smaller communities of Dalworthington Gardens and Pantego.
White settlement in the Arlington area dates back at least to the 1840s. After the May 24, 1841 battle between Texas General Edward H. Tarrant (Tarrant County is named for him) and Native Americans of the Village Creek settlement, a trading post was established at Marrow Bone Spring in present-day Arlington. The rich soil of the area attracted farmers, and several agriculture-related businesses were well established by the late nineteenth century.
Arlington was founded in 1876 along the Texas and Pacific Railroad. The city was named after General Robert E. Lee's Arlington House (in present-day Arlington County, Virginia). Arlington grew as a cotton-ginning and farming center, and incorporated in 1884. The city could boast of water, electricity, natural gas, and telephone services by 1910, along with a public school system. By 1925 the population was estimated at 3,031, and it grew to over four thousand before World War II.
Large-scale industrialization began in 1954 with the arrival of a General Motors assembly plant. Automotive and aerospace development gave the city one of the nation's greatest population growth rates between 1950 and 1990. Arlington became one of the "boomburbs," the extremely fast-growing suburbs of the post-World War II era. U.S. Census Bureau population figures for the city tell the story: 7,692 (1950), 90,229 (1970), 261,721 (1990), and 359,467 (2004 estimate). Tom Vandergriff served as mayor from 1951 to 1977 during this period of explosive development. Six Flags Over Texas opened in Arlington in 1961, and in 1972 the Washington Senators baseball team relocated to Arlington and began play as the Texas Rangers.
In January 1996, 9 year old Amber Hagerman went missing while riding her bike around her grandparent's neighborhood. She was found dead four days later, when a man discovered her while walking his dog. Her abduction and murder led to The AMBER Alert System.
Arlington is the largest city in the world without a fixed bus route system of mass transit.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 99.0 square miles (256.5 km²), of which, 95.8 square miles (248.2 km²) of it is land and 3.2 square miles (8.3 km²) of it (3.24%) is water.
Johnson Creek, a tributary of the Trinity River, and the Trinity River itself, flows through Arlington.