Waco University

Waco University did more than the plaque lets on. The Handbook of Texas says its girls' department opened in 1866, with boys and girls taught in separate buildings, and that in 1868 a program in surveying and civil engineering began. Wartime nearly ended collegiate work, yet the primary and preparatory departments grew to 192 students in 1863 and 1864. In its last year before the 1886 consolidation with Baylor it had nineteen teachers and 385 students, fewer than the plaque's early-1880s figure of over 400.

What the plaque says

Waco University In 1861, Dr. Rufus C. Burleson (1823-1901) resigned as President of Baylor University (then located at Independence) to become head of the Waco Classical School, which had been founded in 1856 as the Trinity River Male High School by The Rev. Solomon G. O'Bryan. For 25 years Burleson worked tirelessly to make Waco University, as it was renamed in 1861, the pre-eminent Baptist college in the state, and by the early 1880s enrollment had reached over 400 students. In 1886, the Waco and Independence institutions were unified as Baylor University at Waco. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dr Pepper Museum — steps away
  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 — 0.6 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.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 0.6 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.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 0.7 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

• First Baptist Church of Waco — steps away
• Katy Park — 0.2 mi
• Brann-Davis Shootings — 0.4 mi
• The Waco Tornado — 0.4 mi