Waco State Home

The state's rules for this home were strict. The Handbook of Texas says it took children from four to sixteen whom district courts judged dependent or neglected, but not children with a mental or physical disability, or those known to break the law habitually. Older boys worked the farm and dairy, older girls the laundry and dining room, and children could keep small earnings. After eighth grade they went on to Waco High School. The Texas Youth Commission later ran it, and in 1979 it was reorganized as a treatment center, the Waco Center for Youth.

What the plaque says

Waco State Home In 1919, the 36th Texas Legislature established a "state home for dependent and neglected children" in Waco to provide these children with care, training, and education. The Waco State Home, as it later was renamed, officially opened in 1922. Located on a hill that then overlooked the city of Waco, the campus was situated on land that had been part of Camp MacArthur, an early 20th Century Army training camp. Two brick dormitories were constructed to house the children, although additional facilities were built as needed. During the late 1930s, enrollment reached nearly 400 children. Houseparents provided supervision for those who lived on campus. Until the mid-1950s, the Waco State Home operated as an Independent School District to provide an education for dependent and neglected children. The home also managed a farm on the property, producing much of the food consumed by the residents. Its yields included dairy products, vegetables, and livestock feed. Until 1979, when the facility was closed, the Waco State Home provided care, training, and education to hundreds of needy children during their formative years, many of its former students have become active citizens of communities throughout the state. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 1.7 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 — 2.8 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 — 3.0 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 — 3.4 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.

More markers nearby

• Camp MacArthur, World War I Training Camp — steps away
• Texas Christian University — 0.9 mi
• The Methodist Home — 1.1 mi
• Proctor Springs — 1.3 mi