Waco

Before Waco was a cotton capital it was Six Shooter Junction. After 1868 the town sat on a spur of the Chisholm Trail, and by 1871 between 600,000 and 700,000 cattle had come through, according to the Handbook of Texas. Cowhands bought supplies, then spent their money in saloons and gaming houses. A red-light district called the Reservation grew up, and the city licensed and regulated prostitution into the early twentieth century. Ministers campaigned against it in 1917, when the Army was trying to shield soldiers at Camp MacArthur from temptation, and the Reservation closed.

What the plaque says

Waco Founded 1849. Named for Waco Indians. Sent men to state frontier defense and Confederate Army in Civil War. Home of five C.S.A. generals. Civic facilities serve as populous Central Texas region, as do its financial enterprises. Home of Baylor University, Paul Quinn College, Cameron Park and annual Heart O'Texas Fair. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Suspension Bridge — 0.2 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 — 0.3 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 — 0.7 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.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 1.2 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.

More markers nearby

• McLennan County Medical Society — steps away
• "The Waco Horror": The Lynching of Jesse Washington — steps away
• Gerald-Harris Shooting — steps away
• Brann-Davis Shootings — steps away