Ross

The railroad built Ross and then took much of it away. The Houston and Texas Central reached the site in the early 1870s, and a post office named for Lawrence Sullivan Ross opened in 1880. In 1882 the Texas Central extended northwest to Albany while the Missouri, Kansas and Texas passed a mile or two east. By 1884 Ross had a gristmill, a gin, a store, two churches, and fifty residents. The Texas Central abandoned part of its track in 1929 and the rest in 1967, but Interstate 35 brought business, and residents voted to incorporate by 1980.

What the plaque says

Ross This community has historic ties to the settlement of White Rock (1 mi. W), one of the earliest in McLennan County. When the rail terminus was established here in 1873, bypassing White Rock, residents moved to the new town that developed. It was named in honor of Lawrence Sullivan Ross, the ranger, confederate general, and McLennan County Sheriff who later became governor of Texas and a noted educator. Because of the area's rich farmland, the town of Ross developed early as a center of European immigration and agricultural trade. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 8.4 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 — 11 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 — 11 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 — 11 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

• John Silas Edens — 1.0 mi
• Saint Mary's Cemetery — 4.4 mi
• Saint Paul's Church of Gerald — 4.8 mi
• McLennan County — 5.7 mi