Proctor Springs

The springs nearly became something else. By around 1900 the popular gathering place was being commercialized, and when Wacoans pushed to make it a park, businessman W. C. Lawson bought the land for $25,000. Flora Cameron, widow of lumberman William Cameron, then revealed she had bought it through Lawson to give it away. Her May 24, 1910 gift of 125 acres came with $5,000 for development and conditions protecting the name and barring commercial enterprise. About 15,000 people attended the dedication three days later. William Cameron had opened a Waco lumber yard in 1876.

What the plaque says

Proctor Springs One of numerous watering sites used by frontiersmen; a picnic spot for early Waco. Deeded on May 24, 1910, by Mrs. William (Flora B.) Cameron and family to city of Waco as original grant for William Cameron Park--named in honor of the deceased (1899) civic leader and businessman. The original 125-acre park was increased to 500 acres in 1920. In keeping with park's theme of "natural scenic beauty to be preserved for the pleasure of the people", the Waco Garden Club in 1970 restored the bird sanctuary, arboretum, and native wild flower preserve. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Suspension Bridge — 1.5 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.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 1.7 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.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 2.2 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.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 2.6 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.

More markers nearby

• The Methodist Home — 0.4 mi
• Waco City Waterworks — 0.7 mi
• Mount Zion United Methodist Church — 0.8 mi
• Texas Christian University — 1.0 mi