The History of The Rocket Club: Fort Worth's Iconic Nightclub
Published: April 30, 2025
Updated: April 30, 2025
The Rocket Club was a Fort Worth nightclub located northwest of downtown on Jacksboro Highway (State Highway 199). The entertainment venue with a bar, stage, and dance floor was established in 1946 by businessman William Byron Smith. Smith, who had been a welding foreman in Wichita Falls, moved to Fort Worth about 1945 and constructed the building at 2202 Jacksboro Highway. The club, with a seating capacity of 800, opened on December 20, 1946. One of the unique features of the building was a large canvas awning covering a portion of the dance floor, which could be retracted so that patrons could dance under the stars.
Jacksboro Highway and Height of Popularity
By the time the Rocket Club opened its doors, the stretch of Jacksboro Highway between Northside Drive and Lake Worth had earned a reputation for both entertainment and vice. Nightclubs like the Rocket, bars, liquor stores, prostitutes, and illicit gambling establishments, catered to workers from the Fort Worth Stockyards, military personnel from Carswell Air Force Base, cowboys and oil field workers from the surrounding “dry” counties, and even politicians and Fort Worth socialites. Nicknamed “Thunder Road” and often compared to Fort Worth’s Hell’s Half Acre, the highway relied on a measure of compliance from law enforcement to look the other way. While the Rocket was considered one of the more reputable clubs in the area, it was not excluded from occasional outbursts of violence and controversies.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s the club typically featured big bands, such as Denny Beckner’s Madcap Merrymakers, as well as comedians and other entertainers, including exotic dancers. The club occasionally featured African American acts. In 1949 the club’s manager, William D. Satterwhite, became manager of another Jacksboro Highway nightclub, the Skyliner Ballroom. He briefly managed both before leaving the Rocket to manage the Skyliner full-time.
Decline and Fate of Property
Changing musical tastes led to a gradual decline in the club’s popularity during the 1950s. In 1957 the club closed, and the Fort Worth Loyal Order of Moose Lodge leased the building. By June 1960 the Rocket reopened, and in 1962 it came under the management of Bud Irby, longtime manager of the Casino Ballroom (see CASINO BEACH). However, the Rocket never achieved its former level of popularity. Rhythm-and-blues groups and country bands displaced big bands at the club during the 1960s. In 1967 Fort Worth initiated an extensive, bond-financed street improvement program, which included sections of Jacksboro Highway. By then the post-World War II economic boom and crackdowns on gangster activity had robbed the area of much of its former notoriety and popularity, and once well-attended nightclubs like the Skyliner stood vacant. Several seedy clubs and motels were torn down to widen the highway. The Rocket carried on, though its prime years were long behind it.
In 1973 original owners William Smith and his wife Cordia sold the property, and subsequent owners used the building for a variety of different purposes. At different points the building was a rock-and-roll club, a Latin dance club, a skating rink, an indoor go-kart track, and a furniture store. In 1993 Charles Pack bought the building and opened A-1 Muffler & Welding, which the Pack family owned and operated for many years. Across numerous owners the original “Rocket” neon sign remained atop the building as a symbol of the club’s glory days as well as Jacksboro Highway’s wild past. In 2023 the sign was removed.
Bibliography:
Ty Cashion, The New Frontier: A Contemporary History of Fort Worth & Tarrant County (San Antonio: Historical Publishing Network, 2006). Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 18, 1946; October 10, 1992. Jeff Prince, “Jacksboro highway Rocket Sign Ain’t for Sale,” Fort Worth Weekly, February 16, 2011.
Time Periods:
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Timothy Ross Reed, “Rocket Club,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/rocket-club.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
TID:
XDR05
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- April 30, 2025
- April 30, 2025
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