Arlington Map
Arlington fills the gap between Dallas and Fort Worth — some 20 miles from one and 15 from the other — and its roughly 404,000 residents in 2024 close the top fifty.
Where is Arlington?
Arlington is in north-central Texas, roughly midway along the thirty-odd miles between Dallas and Fort Worth, with the Dallas/Fort Worth airport immediately to the north. Austin is about 200 miles south and Houston some 250 miles southeast. There is no open country in any direction: the Metroplex is continuous urban area for 40 miles across.
Arlington at a glance
| State | Texas |
| County | Tarrant County |
| Population | 403,672 (2024 Census estimate) |
| Rank among US cities | No. 50 of the 100 largest |
| Time zone | Central Time |
| Region | South (West South Central division) |
No. 50 on the 2024 list is a margin of 10,875 people: that is how far Arlington trails Tampa, while Aurora is 542 further back. Within Texas it comes seventh of fourteen, behind six others, from Houston down to El Paso. Against Texas's 31.29 million residents, though, that is only about 1.3%. It holds about 18% of Tarrant County's 2,230,708 residents.
Arlington in Texas
Arlington is in Tarrant County but is not its seat — that is Fort Worth, which is why a city this size can be easy to miss on the Texas county map. Seven of the state's top-100 cities sit in this one metropolitan area: Arlington, Dallas and Fort Worth, with Plano, Irving, Garland and Frisco on the Dallas side. The Texas state page shows how much of Texas is concentrated in its four metro areas.
Prairie, timber belt and reservoirs
The city sits on the Grand Prairie, a band of shallow-soiled limestone grassland, with the Eastern Cross Timbers — a strip of post oak on sandier ground — running through the western part of town and separating it from the blackland soils Dallas was built on. These prairies form the eastern approach to the Great Plains, which begin in earnest a couple of hundred miles west. The West Fork of the Trinity River runs along the northern edge, and Lake Arlington and Joe Pool Lake are both reservoirs, since north Texas has no natural lakes of size.
Cities near Arlington
In the same metro: Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Irving and Garland. The US map with cities shows how the Texas cities cluster.