Dalworthington Gardens began as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era policies supporting the back-to-the-land movement, which encouraged urban workers to live on and cultivate rural property. After Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act into law in 1933, authorizing a subsistence homestead program, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt saw this area near Arlington as a possible site for the Homestead Project while visiting the area. In December 1933, a corporation was formed and titled Dalworthington Gardens, Inc., combining the names of nearby Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington. Early the next year, the federal government bought property south of Arkansas Lane near Arlington, and by June Civil Works Administration workers had arrived to clear the area for 80 development sites. Only people from the Dallas or Fort Worth areas qualified to live there. By May 1935, most construction was complete, but the new residents faced problems including lack of gas, faulty water and sewage piping, and unfenced property. Even so, residents worked together to build a tight-knit community and established a community house that became a center of activity. In 1949, residents petitioned to incorporate the colony as a town. Surrounded today by Arlington and Pantego in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Dalworthington Gardens remains the only subsistence homestead project existing as an autonomous community in Texas.