Helen Marie Taylor is a native Wacoan who has dedicated her life to preserving history through her efforts in museums, organizations, and foundations. She worked on a council for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and served as president for both the James Monroe Memorial Foundation and the James Madison Museum. In an attempt to preserve the local history of her hometown, Taylor focused her efforts on opening a local history museum in Waco, Texas: The Helen Marie Taylor Museum of Waco History, also referred to as the Taylor Museum.

Many citizens of Waco showed interest in the idea of a local history museum centering on the need to connect to one’s past through the story of the community. Many believed this museum would help them better understand where they came from and how their community developed into what it is today. Helen Marie Taylor bought the old Barron Springs Elementary School in the 1980s and began restoring it in order to create her museum. Starting in 1991, she held a few public gatherings in the museum, and it officially opened in 1993.

The Taylor Museum focused on many different aspects of Waco history. For instance, one of the exhibits concerned the Waco Indians. The museum staff thought it was very important to give homage to the first people who lived in the Waco area, especially considering that the Taylor Museum is located on the land that held the homes of many of these Indians. This exhibit included artifacts, images of what the area might have looked like at the time, and even sounds of what it might have sounded like at the time.

Two exhibits portraying well-known aspects of Waco history reside on the second floor of this building. One room presents a detailed to-scale model of the Branch Davidian compound. Another portrays the Cotton Palace, which served as the center of Waco for several years, as cotton was the staple of Waco’s economy following the Civil War. The size of this exhibit, compared to the others in the Taylor Museum, reveals the Cotton Palace's importance in Waco history.

Perhaps the most well-known display in the Taylor Museum is the “We the People…” exhibit, which focuses on American history in the colonial period. Helen Marie Taylor had a love for early American history and used the museum to present this history to Waco through artifacts such as George Washington’s silk vest, a musket from the Revolutionary War, and a chair from the Constitutional Convention.

Though the museum shows many other aspects of Waco’s history than those described here, it passes over some important aspects such as the Chisholm Trail, the Waco Tornado, and the educational history of Waco. The Taylor Museum closed just five years after its opening due to problems with the board of directors and a lack of variation in exhibits, causing public disinterest.

However, the museum has not sat empty since its closure. Various organizations, including the Historic Waco Foundation, recently met with Helen Marie Taylor to discuss reopening the museum. These groups recognize the important role the Taylor Museum played in connecting individual histories through the community’s past. The discussions reflect the organizations’ desire to reopen the museum and diversify the exhibits in order to portray a true sense of the Waco community. Currently, groups of ten or more people are allowed to take self-guided tours of the museums and school groups may visit on field trips.

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In the years leading up to 1870, the Brazos River proved to be both a blessing and a curse to the city of Waco. During that time, no bridges spanned the eight hundred miles of river flowing through Central Texas, forcing cattle drivers moving up the Chisholm Trail to find shallow fording areas. Waco's shallow banks provided one of these opportune locations, and the Chisholm Trail brought a great deal of trade to the small city. Yet the river also posed a serious transportation issue for merchants and travelers. Although Waco pioneer Shapely Prince Ross ran a ferry for those wishing to cross, the river became impassable for days or even weeks during flood season. It became clear that a better means of crossing the river was necessary, both for locals and those passing through. The close of the Civil War, however, left the city of Waco and McLennan County without funds for such a project. Plans to build a bridge across the Brazos initiated in 1866, when the Texas State Legislature granted a charter for the foundation of a private company, the Waco Bridge Company. The charter provided the Waco Bridge Company a monopoly on transportation across the river for the next twenty-five years, allowing no other bridges to be built within five miles of their bridge. A budget of twenty-five thousand dollars was set for the construction of the bridge, and after much deliberation, the shareholders chose the steel cable suspension bridge design due to its cheapness and ease of transport. 

John T. Flint, president of the Waco Bridge Company, hired Thomas M. Griffith, a civil engineer from New York, for the project. Griffith was an accomplished enginner who, early in his career in 1854, built the first bridge spanning the Mississippi River in frontier Minnesota. Griffith arrived in Waco in October 1868 to begin preliminary plans for the bridge. The Roebling Company of Trenton, NJ, was commissioned to provide cables and bridgework. This is the same firm that would later provide materials for the Brooklyn Bridge. After the parts arrived in Waco by oxcart, local labor began to assemble the suspension bridge. The bridge was officially completed and opened to through traffic in 1870. At the time, it was the longest suspension bridge west of the Mississippi River.

The economic benefits of the bridge immediately became visible to the city and surrounding area. In the following decades, Waco became the capital for cotton and cattle in Central Texas, rivaling Dallas in size by the 1900s. Built just at the edge of the business section of the city at First Street and Main Street, the Suspension Bridge stimulated the growth of Waco by providing a steady stream of traffic through the city. The bridge itself also supplied economic revenue. The 1866 charter allowed the Waco Bridge Company to charge a toll as long as the company properly maintained the bridge. The bridge collected enough in tolls in the first year of operation to completely pay off its mortgage. The toll quickly became unpopular, and many began searching for ways to circumvent it. Ultimately, McLennan County bought the Suspension Bridge from the Waco Bridge Company for a sum of $75,000. It was then sold to the city of Waco for one dollar, with the provision that the city would maintain the bridge and eliminate the toll. Many citizens called for the “unsightly bridge” to be removed in 1913. Rather than tear down the historic bridge, the city re-floored it, stuccoed over the red bricks, and replaced its wooden trusses with steel. Over the next century, the bridge underwent renovations several more times and continued to serve vehicular traffic until 1971. By that time, other options for crossing the Brazos River existed, such as the Washington Avenue Bridge and the Herring Avenue Bridge.  Today, the bridge serves only pedestrian traffic. It is the centerpiece of Indian Springs Park on the river, and stands as a reminder of Waco’s rich history.

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