Crawford

In August 2005 Crawford became a protest site. According to Wikipedia, Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, arrived at the Crawford Peace House on August 6 with a bus of veterans and set up camp on a roadside near President Bush's ranch, asking for a second meeting with him. Reporters soon called it Camp Casey. She spent most of the next four weeks here, and on some days as many as 1,500 supporters came. The plaque mentions the ranch but not the protest.

What the plaque says

Crawford Crawford Located in an area of McLennan County once inhabited by Tonkawa Indians, the community of Crawford grew slowly from an 1850S settlement centered around Tonk Crossing (two miles northeast). The first townsite was at the crossroads of the Waco to Gatesville and Belton to Fort Graham trade routes. The exact source for the town's name is unknown, but possibilities include Coryell City resident William Nelson Crawford, who graded the Tonk Creek Crossing, A.C. Crawford of Galveston, a director of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad, or Texas Ranger George Crawford, who was stationed here. Development increased following the Civil War, and the post office opened in 1871. By the latter part of that decade, the town included several stores, a tavern, a blacksmith shop and a school with an enrollment of about 100. In 1881, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad, building north from Temple to Fort Worth, bypassed the original townsite, and residents began moving here along the new line. Crawford experienced economic growth as a result, and there were soon four churches, a cotton gin and a grain mill. Incorporated in 1897, the town remained an important agricultural center throughout the twentieth century, at times boasting more than 700 residents, two banks and dozens of local businesses. In July 1999, Texas Governor George W. Bush and his family bought the former Englebrecht Ranch (Prairie Chapel Ranch) west of town. His election as President of the United States in 2000 turned the ranch into the "Western White House," the site of gatherings for U.S. officials and foreign heads of state. Crawford gained international media attention and served as the official voting place for President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. (2004)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 14 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 17 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 19 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Bosque Museum — 19 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Crawford — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Crawford — 0.2 mi
• St. Paul Lutheran Church — 0.4 mi
• Crawford Schools — 0.5 mi