Belted Galloway cattle grazing in a green pasture behind a wire fence, with wooded hills on the horizon in Bosque County.
Carol M. Highsmith / public domain via Library of Congress
Texas · Region

Waco, Temple & the Heart of Texas

Waco Mammoth National Monument, the Ranger museum, Dr Pepper Museum and Suspension Bridge, Temple's depot, Mother Neff and Meridian parks, Clifton and two courthouses.

11 places to explore

The Brazos, the Bosque and the Leon cross this country, which the Handbook of Texas gives to the Tonkawa, Waco and Tawakoni before settlement. Mammoths came first: at Waco Mammoth National Monument a nursery herd of at least nineteen Columbian mammoths drowned in a Bosque flood 65,000 to 72,000 years ago. The Tonkawa used a cave at what is now Mother Neff State Park in the 1800s.

Settlers followed the water. Fort Fisher, a Ranger post of 1837, stood near a Waco Indian camp on the Brazos, and the Waco Suspension Bridge, opened in 1870, carried the cattle trade over it. Norwegians led by Cleng Peerson reached Bosque County in 1853, and the Bosque Museum in Clifton keeps a chair he made. Temple began in 1880 as a Santa Fe construction camp.

Dr Pepper began at a Waco drugstore in 1885, and Baylor holds what it calls the world's largest Browning collection. Hillsboro's courthouse burned on January 1, 1993 and was rebuilt by 1999; Hamilton's limestone courthouse dates to 1886-87. Civilian Conservation Corps crews built the parks at Meridian, where World War I veterans dammed Bee Creek, and at Mother Neff, which began as six acres Isabella Neff left the state in 1921.

What to See in Waco, Temple & the Heart of Texas

11 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Natural Areas

Entrance sign of Waco Mammoth National Monument, a limestone pillar with the National Park Service arrowhead beside a rust-brown sign, with trees behind.

Waco Mammoth National Monument

Waco

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.

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Hikes & Trails

Limestone entrance portal of Meridian State Park with a carved plaque reading 1933 Meridian State Park 1934, framed by cedar trees.

Meridian State Park

Meridian

A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.

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Stone pavilion with a broad arched opening and a low gabled roof, set among bare trees at Mother Neff State Park.

Mother Neff State Park

Moody

A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.

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Historic Sites

Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum

Temple

The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

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Towns & Gateways

Curved limestone facade of the Armstrong Browning Library on the Baylor campus, with tall stained-glass windows above a garden.

Armstrong Browning Library

Waco

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.

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Bosque Museum

Clifton

A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.

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The low stone-faced Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum building with its name across the roofline, seen across a lawn with the Brazos River behind it.

Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum

Waco

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.

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Architecture

The limestone Hamilton County Courthouse with crenellated corner towers, a columned portico and a small white cupola, under a blue sky with flags flying.

Hamilton County Courthouse

Hamilton

A limestone courthouse of 1886-87 on the Hamilton square, built after the county's 1878 courthouse burned, enlarged in the early 1930s and rededicated in 2012 after restoration.

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Cream limestone Second Empire courthouse in Hillsboro with a clock tower and mansard roofs, seen from the corner of the square.

Hill County Courthouse

Hillsboro

Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.

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The Waco Suspension Bridge crossing the Brazos River, its cream-stuccoed towers at each end and a truss deck hung from cables, with two stone piers in the water.

Waco Suspension Bridge

Waco

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.

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Industry & Mining

The yellow-brick front of the Dr Pepper Museum with three stone arches over green-striped awnings and a plaque reading Home of Dr Pepper between the dates 1885 and 1906.

Dr Pepper Museum

Waco

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.

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Waco, Temple & the Heart of Texas rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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