Since 1942, scientists, engineers, and production workers have been at work in McGregor, Texas, helping win wars, achieve spaceflights, and work towards lunar missions. In its early years, the…

R. T. Dennis and Co. helped furnish the homes of Central Texas for nearly seventy years. Known for its exceptional quality furnishings, R. T. Dennis thrived in downtown Waco and served as the premier…

Owens-Illinois Inc., one of the largest glass bottle manufacturers in the world, originally came out of the famous Glass Capital of the World—Toledo, Ohio—in 1903. With its success came expansion, and…

Situated just off of Waco's historic traffic circle, Circle Hardware Supply stands as one of the city's longest-running businesses. Originally founded by Frank Stevens in 1945 as a small lumber…

After Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the United States into World War II, production increased dramatically at home to aid the war effort overseas. In short order, munitions factories popped up…

The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company began its corporate existence in the days following the Civil War and was intended to funnel business from Kansas City and points north and east to a new…

The Geyser Ice Company complex has long outlived its heyday when it supplied ice for trains loaded with meat and vegetables, and when icemen drove their red horse-drawn wagons through Waco’s dusty…

General Tire & Rubber Company came to Waco in late 1944, the company’s second plant after its Akron, Ohio, headquarters. The company originally constructed the plant in order to supply equipment for…

Waco’s rapid development established it as one of the most significant urban centers of the South by the late nineteenth century. Home to one of the longest-spanning suspension bridges in the country,…

Though L. L. Sams and Sons became one of the nation’s largest and most popular church furniture suppliers in the twentieth century, it developed from humble beginnings. Rev. L. L. Sams, a traveling…