What began as a small collection of native animals in the 1950s grew into the Cameron Park Zoo Wacoans know today. Cameron Park Zoo rests on fifty-two acres of land near the Brazos River, and is a popular stop for local families, school groups, and travelers making their way to Austin or Dallas on Interstate 35.

Originally organized by local wildlife enthusiasts, the collection of animals came together for the purpose of education and with the goal to showcase real, live animals to the public of Central Texas. In 1955, wildlife volunteers displayed mammals and reptiles at the Heart O’ Texas Fair. The small exhibit attracted donations from the visitors who supported the formation of a zoo. After the fair, the animals moved to a pet shop display in Waco on Twenty-Fifth Street. In 1956, the animals moved again to a fire station, and then in 1960 the animals moved to a permanent ten-acre site by Lake Waco and the Madison Cooper Municipal Airport known as the Central Texas Zoological Park.

During its early years, the park was a large collection of animals held in various enclosures with a food preparation area made of rock walls and a dirt floor. At its location by Lake Waco, staff members of the Central Texas Zoological Park worked hard to make the zoo operate professionally. Civic groups of volunteers raised money to build a nursery clinic for the animals and a kitchen to prepare food. Throughout the 1970s, zoo docents organized educational programs for McLennan County residents and the zoo built an entryway facility with a gift shop and ticket office. With all these moves forward, however, the zoo’s infrastructure and income could not support the dream of a sophisticated and scientific organization or the growth and nutrition of the animals. The zoo needed to move and rebuild. In order to make the dream a reality, community members interested in wildlife conservation joined the board of directors and pushed towards legitimacy and a more sophisticated institution.

In the late 1970s, the zoo became an entity of the city of Waco, and the discussion of moving locations began. Leaders of the zoo recognized Cameron Park as the perfect location because of the abundance of flora and fauna, ponds, and other natural elements that many city zoos have to build. Interest in the project gained momentum throughout Waco, and members of local civic organizations became heavily involved with raising money to move the zoo. After voters defeated a referendum to move the Central Texas Zoo from Airport Park to Cameron Park 1983, a county bond election was held and a vote passed in support of the zoo’s move to Cameron Park for 9.6 million dollars. The new zoo, known as Cameron Park Zoo, opened its doors on July 18, 1993, on fifty-two acres of lush land with over forty animals in natural habitats.

Since its opening in 1993, Cameron Park Zoo built new attractions such as a reptile house, Lemur Island, an African lion exhibit, and more. In 2005, the Brazos River Country exhibit opened to showcase indigenous plants and animals found on the banks of the Brazos River. In 2009, the Asian Forest exhibit opened with orangutans, Sumatran tigers, and Komodo dragons. Cameron Park Zoo is a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and the staff provide care, training, and nutrition to animals. The Cameron Park Zoo not only is a recreational place to see animals, but is an educational resource for students from early childhood to graduate school education. The zoo holds seminars for international research and plays a large part in wildlife conservation by caring for endangered species and returning animals to the wild.

Today, Cameron Park Zoo is home to over 1,700 animals that are given care from the staff and veterinarians. The zoo continues to host opportunities to learn about the wildlife in the forms of school field trips, educational events, and fundraising events, and it is one of the top sites to visit in Waco.

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The Brazos River proved to be both a blessing and a curse for Waco, providing a constant water supply, means of transportation, and fertile farming ground, but also serving as a site of frequent flooding and destruction. This tension shaped the history of the communities which developed upon the banks of the Brazos.

The longest river in Texas, the Brazos is 840 miles long and drains an area of 41,700 square miles. Spanning from its headwater source in New Mexico to where it drains into the Gulf of Mexico, the river flows through varying terrain, from canyons to the rolling plains of West Texas to its meandering course through the relatively flat Coastal Plain.

Efforts to improve the Brazos and to make it navigable were begun as early as 1870. McLennan County cotton planters began looking for a water route to ship their produce at lower prices than railroads could offer. Barges and steamboats, notably the Kate Ross captained by early Wacoan Shapley Prince Ross, plied the river for a while until the channel shifted and more railroads came into the county. A bridge constructed in 1870 spanning the banks of the Brazos increased the amount of commercial activity within the city.

Notable attempts to build a series of locks and dams on the Brazos were made under the terms of the River and Harbor Act of 1905 and later under a New Deal project in the 1930s. However, the river shifted its course multiple times and floods wrecked construction sites.

Frequent flooding made life near the Brazos River a struggle for many Wacoans. On May 27, 1885, a tornado and flood resulted in the deaths of eleven people and $300,000 in property damage. In 1913, tumultuous flood waters inundated much of East Waco and took the lives of two people. The flood which occurred in September of 1936 resulted in $1.5 million in property damage in the county, especially in East Waco, although no lives were lost.

A United States Army Corps of Engineers study in 1937 recommended a series of dams on tributary streams of the Brazos and a major dam at Whitney on the main stream as the best means of controlling floods. World War II intervened, but in 1946, the first tributary dam was begun in Belton, and soon thereafter the Whitney Dam began to rise on the Brazos. The Flood Control Act of 1954 authorized a dam on the Bosque River at Waco, and as well as several others in different cities in line with the 1937 study.

When Waco Dam was finished in 1965, it completed, with the Whitney Dam, the major flood control instruments to protect Waco and the lower Brazos Valley. The floodplain at Waco became available for development. In 1967 Waco voters approved a $1.5 million bond issue to build a channel dam to create a bank-level lake through the heart of the city for recreation and beautification purposes. Lake Brazos was filled in 1972.

The Brazos River Authority, an independent organization established by legislation in 1929, continues to develop and manage the waters of the entire Brazos River basin. Today, the river continues to serve as an important water source for power, irrigation, and other resources for Waco and McLennan County, as well as other regions throughout Texas.

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Edward Charles “E. C.” Blomeyer’s time in Texas was brief but well documented. From telephone poles to animals, floods to parades, and much more, the amateur shutterbug committed many views of early 1900s Texas to film. During his time in Waco, Blomeyer also became one of the early pioneers in the telephone industry in Central Texas.

Born in Missouri in 1882, Blomeyer moved in 1912 with his family to Waco, Texas, to work as auditor for the Brazos Valley Telegraph and Telephone Company. He came with knowledge of the telephone industry gained while working for the Southeast Missouri Telephone Company in Charleston, Missouri, where he served as a manager and rate collector. He would spend only eight years in Texas, but his knowledge and experience quickly helped to improve a rural, and in some areas quite primitive, telecommunications network.

In 1914, Blomeyer began working for the Texas Telephone Company after it expanded to include many independent companies in Lorena, Mart, McGregor, Moody, Waco, West, and the Brazos Valley Telegraph and Telephone Company. This expansion of the Texas Telephone Company gave Blomeyer many opportunities for improving the existing telecommunications infrastructure. He first served as secretary-treasurer of the Waco-based Texas Telephone Company and worked his way up to be president by 1918.

With his keen interest in the telephone industry and engineering, Blomeyer was also a prolific writer, contributing articles to several publications including: The Magazine of Business; Telephony: The American Telephone Journal; Business: A Magazine for Office, Store and Factory; Public Utilities Fortnightly; American Telephone Journal; and Popular Mechanics. He was also known throughout the telephone industry as the author of a series of booklets titled: Letters to Managers. By 1934, copies of the ten-book series offering advice to managers in all fields of business numbered over three million in circulation.

But Blomeyer wasn’t just a career man—he was a photographer as well, capturing many images of Waco. He recorded many scenes of the booming city including trains, airplanes, bridges, rivers, animals, military, the cotton industry, and significant events. His professional interests overlapped with his hobby, providing a rare look into the early telecommunications network in and around McLennan County. These scenes include many early telephone poles—some of which are just sticks with wire attached to barbed wire fence posts. Additionally, Blomeyer documented his travels, with destinations ranging from Galveston, Texas, to Niagara Falls.

In 1920, Waco lost one of its pioneering men in the telecommunications industry. When Blomeyer went to work for the Automatic Electric Company, based in Chicago, he and his wife left their residence at 930 North Seventeenth Street (as indicated on the Waco History map). He stayed with the company as it changed ownership throughout the years, eventually merging with what would become GTE (General Telephone & Electronics). Blomeyer retired from the telephone industry in 1956, having worked his way up to the position of vice-president of GTE. After retirement, he spent some of his remaining years in Palm Beach, Florida, where he died in 1964.

A year later, to recognize his life's work in the telephone industry, E. C. Blomeyer was inducted into the Independent Telephone Hall of Fame. Additionally, the widow of Edward Charles Blomeyer, Amma, donated funds to Palm Beach Atlantic College enabling the establishment of the E. C. Blomeyer Library, dedicated on March 9, 1969. The library is now called the Warren Library as a series of donations has enabled Palm Beach Atlantic University to expand since its beginning in 1968. E. C. Blomeyer's legacy carries on as a benefactor of this university, in his writings, photographic record, and contributions to the telephone industry, including that of Central Texas.

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A picturesque limestone bluff situated high above the Bosque River, Lovers’ Leap is as dangerous as it is beautiful.

On June 28, 1917, the Cameron family purchased a tract of sixty acres featuring the cliff area known as Lovers’ Leap. Though it had been the site of many picnics and romantic excursions, Lovers’ Leap had yet to receive formal designation as a park site. The Camerons originally leased the land to the federal government with the understanding that when Camp MacArthur troops no longer needed it as a recreation space, it would be added to Cameron Park. On September 3, 1920, the Cameron family acquired the remaining 191 acres between Cameron Park and Lover’s Leap, thereby ensuring the bluff would remain a central attraction in one of Texas’ largest municipal parks.

Associated with the cliff is a folktale involving two star-crossed Native American lovers. As recounted by Decca Lamar West in her popular 1912 booklet The Legend of Lovers’ Leap, Waco Indian maiden Wah-Wah-Tee secretly accepted a marriage proposal from a handsome Apache brave despite the enmity between their tribes. The two hoped to elope but were thwarted in their effort to run away quietly at night by Wah-Wah-Tee’s father and brothers who objected to the union. Cornered at the edge of a steep cliff above the Bosque, Wah-Wah-Tee and her brave chose to embrace one another and leap into the swollen river below rather than face a lifetime apart. The bodies of the two, still holding tightly onto one another, found a final resting place on the banks of the river close to the site of their first meeting. While stirring, no historical basis exists for the tale. It is most likely a byproduct of late-Victorian romanticism and efforts to promote one of Waco’s natural wonders to outsiders.

Since its establishment as an official outlook, Lovers’ Leap has presented a genuine safety concern. In an effort to safeguard the public from the cliff’s edge while not obstructing the splendid view of the surrounding countryside, park authorities constructed short stone walls. However, select visitors in pursuit of a better vantage point sometimes ignored these barriers, leading to personal injury or in certain cases death. In order to improve safety at the outlook and spruce up its appearance in time for the park’s centennial, the city of Waco constructed new fences in 2009 and removed foliage on the cliff face to enhance the view from the designated overlook plaza. 

For more than one hundred years, Wacoans and tourists alike have been drawn to the dangerous beauty of Lovers’ Leap.

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