McLennan County

The 1860 census counted 3,811 free residents in the county, and 270 of them held 2,395 enslaved people. The Brazos bottomland supported large cotton plantations. At the secession convention in January 1861 Richard Coke voted to leave the Union, and county voters approved the ordinance 586 to 191, though Waco's mayor from 1862 to 1866 was a Unionist. Between 1863 and 1866 property tax receipts fell 73 percent, and slaves made up more than 38 percent of the loss. In 1869 voters chose Edmund J. Davis over Andrew J. Hamilton for governor, 797 to 606.

What the plaque says

McLennan County Created January 22, 1850. Organized August 5, 1850. Named in honor of Neil McLennan 1787-1867. Came to Texas in 1835. Located on the Bosque River in 1840. Built the first dwelling a log cabin, in McLennan County Waco, the county seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 4.7 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.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 5.4 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 5.6 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 5.8 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.

More markers nearby

• Louis Moore — 1.9 mi
• Toliver Chapel Baptist Church — 4.3 mi
• Paul Quinn College — 4.5 mi
• Doris Miller — 4.6 mi