Settlers of the Texas Frontier were undeniably an eclectic bunch, and the founders of Waco were no exception. One of the main organizers of the new city was a Jewish, Jamaican-born Spaniard named Jacob de Cordova. De Cordova was not only instrumental in the founding of Waco, but he would soon be the largest landholder in the fledgling state of Texas. In his life he explored more territory than famous voyager Cabeza de Vaca and brought more settlers to Texas than Stephen F. Austin.

Jacob Raphael de Cordova was born to Judith and Raphael de Cordova in Spanish Town, Jamaica, on June 6, 1808. Judith died during childbirth, and Raphael resented the infant Jacob for her death, so he sent Jacob to be raised by an aunt in England. Though far from family, Jacob received an incredible education in Europe and was proficient in five languages: English, French, Spanish, German, and Hebrew. These would all come in handy when recruiting and dealing with settlers from around the globe. Fortunately, he eventually moved back to Jamaica to live with his family, and he and his father grew very close.

De Cordova was just a boy when he first set his eyes on the land that would become his passion and his home. In 1819, Jacob traveled to the United States with his father, and they made a side trip to the Spanish territory of Texas. Though only eleven years old, de Cordova was captivated by the area and vowed that he would return.

By the mid-1820s, de Cordova had decided to move to the United States for good, yet he first sought a colder climate, as he thought the heat and humidity of Jamaica contributed to his poor health. He set off for Philadelphia, where he married the daughter of a pioneer family, Rebecca Sterling, and settled for a few years. Rebecca identified as Baptist, but her Christian faith and Jacob’s Jewish faith never appeared to cause any discord in the marriage. The couple had five children during this period: William, Henry, Joshua, Jenney, and Elizabeth. But the cold did not bring the rejuvenation de Cordova had hoped for, and after a massive blizzard in 1836, the couple moved south to New Orleans. De Cordova thrived in New Orleans and set up a successful import/export business. But he really had his eyes on Texas, what he later called “the brightest star in the constellation of the American Union.” After getting his feet wet in the business world, he decided to move his family to Galveston, where his life as a true Texan began.

De Cordova quickly became a naturalized citizen of the Republic of Texas. He moved from the small, swampy town of Galveston to Houston, where his business expanded greatly. With his new citizenship, he also found new ways to serve the Houston community. He helped found the Houston Chamber of Commerce, became an alderman in 1844, and was elected representative to the Second Texas Legislature in 1848. Additionally, he took it upon himself to found an Odd Fellows Lodge, a chapter of one of the oldest fraternal organizations dedicated to service and helping those in need. He served previously as Grand Master of a lodge in Louisiana, and he went on to found three additional Texas lodges. Jacob de Cordova had fully invested himself in the betterment of the community.

In 1845, de Cordova dove into his biggest venture yet. Alongside his half-brother Phineas, Jacob founded what would become the largest land agency in the state of Texas. The two brothers were well suited to run a business together, as Phineas did the office work and Jacob went out and surveyed, bought, and sold land. It was Jacob’s expertise in this area that led him to Waco as well. A man named Jonas Butler hired Jacob in 1848 to lay out a town on some land he owned on the Brazos River. After making the city layout, de Cordova hired George Erath to survey plots for settlement. De Cordova also received one-fifth of the interest of the land, and he held full power of attorney for the land transactions. De Cordova and Erath agreed to sell the plots for five dollars apiece in town, and three dollars outside the city. Mrs. Sophia St. John then hired him to sell her land on the other side of the Brazos, what was called the La Vega land grant. Rebecca de Cordova insisted the new town be named Lamartine, but Erath vehemently protested. Instead, the town was named Waco after the local Native American population, the Waco, or Wi-iko, tribe. Jacob de Cordova and George Erath later fought to make Waco the county seat of McLennan Country when it was formed in 1850, and, of course, won. Interestingly, de Cordova never lived in Waco. He settled with his family on an estate farther north on the Brazos at Kimball’s Bend. He named the settlement Wanderer’s Retreat, the same name as his previous estate in Guadalupe County, and lived there until his death.

De Cordova’s career soon extended far beyond agent work in Waco, and his agency eventually owned more than one million acres of Texas property. From his extensive knowledge of the state, he created the first accurate map of the state of Texas, which his agency sold for twenty dollars. The map proved to be much needed, and he continued to update it throughout his life. Having such a great love for Texas and such a large stake in its settlement, de Cordova set off on an advertising campaign to recruit settlers. He delivered lectures on Texas in New York, Philadelphia, and even Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. To reach all the places he could not travel, he wrote two treatises on Texas—The Texas Immigrant and Traveler’s Guidebook and Texas: Her Resources and Her Public Men. He also ran two newspapers, De Cordova’s Herald and Immigrant’s Guide and the Southwestern American.

Despite his dedication to settling Texas, things did not go as planned for de Cordova. The land agency fell on hard times, and Jacob found himself in a massive amount of debt. He had invested in Confederate war bonds, and then during the war the Union blockade had stopped immigration to Texas. On top of that, he refused to foreclose on any current settlers when they could not pay their debts. This combination quickly spelled trouble, and de Cordova found himself in the middle of several lawsuits when his creditors came collecting.

But he was not out of ideas just yet. Jacob started purchasing equipment and making plans to harness the Brazos River’s water power. This project would power textile mills and boost manufacturing along the river from the Gulf of Mexico to Waco and beyond. But this dream did not become a reality, as de Cordova died in 1868 before all the machinery arrived. He was originally buried near the Brazos in Bosque County, but he and his wife’s bodies were later moved to the state cemetery in Austin.

After his death, de Cordova’s substantial land holdings—spread across forty-eight Texas counties—were divided up to pay his debts. This was no simple task, and it took over sixteen years for lawyers to untangle his agency’s assets and distribute its holdings. Much of the land was sold for as little as twenty-five cents an acre, and settlers often remarked it was “rich man’s land for a poor man’s price.” So, though de Cordova did not reap the benefits of all his lands, he still did indirectly help populate the state he so loved. Yet his greatest legacy remains the city of Waco. Jacob was right when he said of Waco, “She will be my daughter, and a beautiful daughter she will be.”

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Dubbed the “Athens of Texas” by many who praised the veritable wealth of knowledge found within the city, Waco boasted a host of educational institutions and news sources which promoted the distribution of information. First established in 1865, just a few years after Waco incorporated, the Waco Examiner was one of the city’s first newspapers.  John Wesley Downs published the first issue of the Waco Examiner in 1865. As editor in chief, Downs employed Henry Payne as his assistant editor and J. M. Conrad to run the paper’s mechanical department. Conrad printed the semiweekly, four-page paper using a Franklin common press, a handpress which used a large wooden screw to create an impression upon paper. As the reputation of the Waco Examiner grew, Downs expanded the paper’s services. In 1868, Payne and Conrad sold their interests to Downs. Shortly thereafter, Downs began to offer a weekly publication in addition to the semiweekly subscription. By November of 1873, the popularity of the Waco Examiner had reached unseen heights. Downs quickly altered the structure of subscriptions once again, eliminating the semiweekly issue and instituting a new daily paper.

As more Wacoans subscribed to the Daily Examiner, Downs’s profits also increased. In 1873, citizens could purchase a yearly subscription to the daily paper for $8, or receive the weekly issue for $2.50 per year. By the late 1880s, the daily subscription cost $10, while the price of the weekly issue had dropped to $1.50. Downs continued to develop the business and began to offer customers the option to purchase the paper for one, three, four, and six months at a time, in addition to the yearly subscriptions.

The Examiner papers were associated with the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, an organization which worked to advance agricultural and political causes on behalf of farmers throughout America. In 1873, the Weekly Examiner was made the official mouthpiece of the Patrons of Husbandry in Texas. When the paper reached a circulation of thirteen thousand, Downs changed the name to the Daily Examiner and Patron. Downs’s support of the Grange led him to purchase the Waco Telephone, another paper which served as a mouthpiece for the Texas Grange, and to incorporate it into the Daily Examiner. The paper became known for a short time as the Waco Daily Examiner and Telephone. Downs continued to support the granger movement until it adopted the greenback policy, an attempt to return to currency not backed by gold, around 1878. On May 18, 1875, the Examiner office burned down, completely destroying Downs’s printing equipment. The paper remained out of print for two months while Downs recovered from the losses. Although the paper appeared once again in July, Downs sold it just a few years later in 1882 to Captain John E. Elgin. In September of 1884, the firm of Bartow, Cravens, and Leachman purchased the paper from Elgin. The new firm focused more broadly upon local, regional, state, national, and international news rather than the interests of the Grange. On November 24, 1887, the paper changed firms again. The Examiner Publishing Company, directed by Frank P. Cravens, continued to run the paper until it ceased publication in 1888. By the late 1880s, the Waco Examiner claimed to have the largest circulation record of any paper in Texas. In a town where life increasingly depended upon agriculture, the paper sought to protect the interests of farmers while fostering discussion and sharing information. 

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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, the once small frontier town owed a great portion of its success to the cotton industry. The strong agricultural tradition established by Stephen F. Austin and Waco’s earliest settlers in the mid-nineteenth century flourished into an international trade system. Farmers grew, ginned, and shipped this “white gold” not only throughout Texas, but also to Europe, South America, and India. Waco reigned in the South as the “King of Cotton” until the onset of the Great Depression.

By 1900, cottonseed was second only to lumber as the most important cash crop in Texas. Mills sprang up all over the state as Texas established itself as the leading processor of cottonseed in the nation, and one of the largest suppliers of cooking oil, vegetable shortening, margarine, and salad oil—byproducts of cottonseed oil.

On January 29, 1910, J. T. Davis established Brazos Valley Cotton Oil, Inc., in Waco. The main operations of the company took place at a mill located on the block between Webster Avenue and Jackson Avenue in the heart of Waco’s business district.

From its onset, the locally owned mill contributed enormously to the economic wealth of the city by purchasing thousands of tons of cottonseed annually from farmers, and employing up to seventy-five men. The railway ran adjacent to the mill, bringing in shipments of cotton from local gins in order to be processed. Workers then extracted oil from the cottonseed to be used for both culinary and industrial purposes. After the mill’s completely modernized machinery processed the seed, the oil was shipped all over the world. In order to prevent unnecessary waste, the mill sold unused meal as cattle feed.

Davis grew the company quickly, and by 1924 had already acquired a second company, the Valley Mills Cotton Oil Company. Though the Great Depression marked the decline of Waco’s cotton industry, business at the cotton oil mill continued for many years. The firm faced several setbacks in the mid-twentieth century, such as the fire which erupted in the mill in 1943, destroying the hull house and mixed feed plant. Yet operations continued, and even flourished. By 1950, workers completed construction on the two 120-foot-tall silos which today are noted as some of Waco’s most notable landmarks.

The latter half of the century saw a turn in the cotton mill’s fortunes. A serious drought followed by widespread Central Texas flooding in 1957 led to sporadic production, and in September the Small Business Administration granted the Brazos Valley Cotton Oil Company a disaster loan. However, the firm was unable to recover, and in July of 1958, stockholders sold the company to David C. Blintliff Interests of Houston. In the mid-1960s, ownership of the plant changed hands again, and the mill served as a storage facility for JPM Feeds. The facility sat vacant in the 1990s, although the Murphys, owners of JPM Feeds, retained ownership of the property.

In 2014, well-known television personalities and Wacoans Chip and Joanna Gaines purchased the mill from Gary Murphy with a vision to restore and repurpose the historic site. After receiving approval from the city, the pair began construction work on Magnolia Market, a $1.4 million project which was completed in October of 2015. Though the festival marketplace offers modern additions such as a retail showroom, a monthly antique and craft market, and a food truck court, the Gaineses are working to retain the historic integrity of the site through efforts such as the preservation of the original silos.

For nearly half a century, the mill bolstered Waco’s economy through its support of local farmers, provision of jobs, and international commerce. Today, the adaptive reuse and preservation efforts of the Gaineses ensure that the mill will retain this role at the heart of the city’s economic development for many years to come. 

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The establishment of Waco Village in the nineteenth century laid the foundation for what would evolve into the vibrant commercial city that is Waco. The humble beginnings of this town were developed upon the site of the Wi-iko, or Waco Indians’ agricultural village. Attacks from Cherokee and pressure from white settlers and the US government drove this subtribe of the Wichita from their land in the 1830s, and out of Texas by 1859.

A company of Texas Rangers established Fort Fisher near the deserted Indian village in 1837, but abandoned it just a few months later because of its remote location. In 1844, George Barnard opened a branch of Torrey’s Trading Post just south of the former Ranger site. Known throughout Texas, this chain of trading posts played a vital role in Sam Houston’s peace policy with the American Indians.

Jacob De Cordova, a Texas politician and colonizer, acquired a large amount of land in this area in 1846, and his surveyor George Erath convinced him to establish a town at the site of the old Waco Indian village. In 1849, Erath laid out plots of land for the first block of the new town, pricing them at five dollars apiece for the new village. Farming plots sold for two to three dollars each. The majority of the property owners desired to name the town “Lamartine” in order to honor a French poet, but Erath convinced them to name the village after the town’s predecessors.

In the following years, Waco Village grew rapidly. On January 22, 1850, the Texas State Legislature established McLennan County. In August, the county organized its structure of government. Waco Village was chosen as the county seat, or administrative center, of McLennan County primarily because of De Cordova’s efforts to develop government services for the public. He designated several plots of land to be donated to the city for the establishment of schools, churches, and other public buildings.

Waco Village continued to develop as other settlers arrived in the Waco area throughout the 1840s. These people became farmers, ranchers, and plantation owners, in addition to filling many other needed occupations on the frontier. Many chose to sell their goods to the Texas Rangers who remained in the area. Waco soon grew into a regional hub for trade of all kinds. In order to continue this growth, De Cordova invited several notable citizens to move to the village, such as Texas Ranger Shapley Prince Ross. Ross ran a ferry across the Brazos River as trade expanded the once small village. Ross also established Waco’s first hotel in the 1850s and served as the village’s postmaster for a time.

The development of the cotton industry sped the growth of Waco Village, and in 1856 the village was incorporated as a town. As a regional hub for trade, Waco Village served an important role in the early Central Texas community. Its rapid economic growth provided the base for Waco to develop as a strong industrial and agricultural center of the South. 

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The city of Waco derives its name from the agrarian indigenous group that originally resided in the area. The Waco, or Wi-iko, Indians were a tribe of the Wichita that arrived in Central Texas in the 1700s. The tribe’s early history is difficult to establish because of a lack of written records due to their oral tradition. Spanish settlers first wrote of an encounter with the Waco Indians in 1772, when Athanase de Mésière noticed two villages during his trek up the Brazos River.

Life in Waco Indian Village centered upon the tribe’s agrarian pursuits. The Wacos farmed crops such as melons, pumpkins, lima beans, and corn. During planting and harvesting seasons, they resided in their permanent village, which consisted of beehive-shaped dwellings that were constructed from poles and thatched with grasses and willow. After harvesting the crops in the fall, the Waco Indians traveled the plains, hunting deer and buffalo in order to feed the tribe. While hunting, they lived in makeshift, temporary teepees.

Tensions rose as more white settlers arrived in the area in the early nineteenth century. As settlers encroached upon their land, the Wacos raided white settlements, often stealing horses and occasionally murdering settlers. Stephen F. Austin wanted to attack the village in order to establish a colony and prevent further raids, but the Mexican government denied this request. In 1824, Austin sent a delegation to meet with the Wacos and, after some negotiation, established a peace treaty.

Some accounts say that a band of Cherokee from East Texas raided the Waco Indian Village in 1829 in order to avenge some stolen horses. Others tell of a smallpox epidemic which devastated the village. Although it is not clear if these accounts speak specifically of this native settlement, it is known that a permanent Waco Indian village no longer existed upon the Brazos River after 1830. The loss of the village dealt a serious blow to the Waco Indians. Encroaching settlers forced them to move slowly farther and farther up the Brazos River.

The tribe signed several treaties in the mid-nineteenth century with the US government. Each treaty referred to the Waco, Tawakoni, and Wichita people by the name “Wichita.” The first treaty gathered the Wichita at the Brazos Indian Reservation in North Texas, on the Brazos River, a few miles south of Fort Belknap. After a treaty in 1859, federal troops moved the Wichita to a reservation in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. In 1900, the government broke up the reservation territory into individual plots, ending the Wichita Indians’ communal way of life.

The Waco Indians became a part of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and continued to reside in Anadarko, Oklahoma. In 1912, Clint Padgitt brought a group of the Waco Indians back to Waco in order to participate in an exhibition at the Texas Cotton Palace Exposition. Escorted by Indian fighter John Ross, the Waco Indians resided in a fabricated village, exciting much interest and drawing record crowds. They lived in teepees, did war dances taught to them at the beginning of the exposition, and wore native “costumes,” curious combinations of modern and native clothing.

Today, the Waco Indians continue to reside in Oklahoma. Several tribal leaders returned to visit Waco in 2014 for the rededication and correction of the historical marker commemorating the location of the Waco Indian Village. Waco city leaders and historians cite this visit as a start to developing a better relationship with the people who originally inhabited this area and from which the city draws its name. Wichita leaders believed that restoring connections with Waco was an important step in rediscovering the tribe’s roots. 

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Organized in 1866, New Hope Baptist Church is one of the oldest African American churches in Waco. Noted throughout its history for its excellent church music programs, New Hope is still a vibrant center of worship for Waco’s black community.

The end of the Civil War brought new freedoms to African Americans residing in Waco. Though blacks had previously been allowed limited worship opportunities at First Baptist Church of Waco, several African American congregants desired to use their increased postwar liberty to found a church of their own. Assisted by Baylor University President Rufus Burleson and First Baptist Pastor S. G. O’Bryan, eighteen black members of First Baptist formed a Missionary Baptist church on June 10, 1866. They named the church New Hope, a title befitting the spirit of optimism that fueled its establishment.

From humble beginnings, New Hope Baptist grew to become one of the more well-known African American congregations in Waco. The church first met in an old foundry building on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Sixth Street, a dilapidated space the church rented for $2.00 a month. However, this space soon proved insufficient as New Hope’s numbers increased. In 1867, New Hope built its first church building, a humble box-shaped structure measuring thirty by forty feet, in partnership with a local Methodist church. Both groups shared the facility, holding services on alternating Sundays. That building did not last very long before it was torn down to make way for a school for African American youth from McLennan County. New Hope rented the school on Sunday mornings for services until 1873, when they were able to construct a modest wooden church structure at another location. In 1884, under the leadership of the church’s seventh pastor, a large two-story brick church was constructed for the still-growing church. This building served New Hope until the current church was built in 1923 at the corner of Sixth Street and Marlborough Avenue (now 915 North Sixth Street).

Over the years, New Hope Baptist benefited from the leadership of a dynamic pastorate. The church’s original pastor, Stephen Cobb, willingly served the church for eight years without a stipulated salary. Dr. J. Newton Jenkins, the pastor of New Hope from 1907 until 1950, is recognized as being the force that brought together a scattered and discouraged membership. In his first ninety days on the job, Jenkins was able to lead a fundraising effort that saw enough money raised to pay off all of the church’s debts. Jenkins’ successor, Dr. Marvin C. Griffin, was also a prolific pastor. Griffin pioneered a radio ministry and a citywide transportation system to the church on Sunday. He also strengthened the church’s ties with national, state, and local Baptist congregations.

New Hope Baptist was perhaps most well-known for its music programs. While the church had an informal choir as early as 1886, it wasn’t until 1895 that a structured music ministry was established under Dr. G.S. Conner and his wife Mattie. Thanks to the oversight of the Conners, by 1905 New Hope Baptist had a talented choir of forty trained voices to sing each Sunday. Soon thereafter in conjunction with students from Paul Quinn College, New Hope extended its music program to include a children’s choir and an orchestra. Dr. Conner presented at least one full-length operetta each year and cantatas at Christmas and Easter. Notable members of New Hope’s music ministry through the years include Jules Bledsoe, the grandson of Stephen Cobb and later an international opera star, and Vivienne Malone-Mayes, one of the first African Americans to receive an advanced degree in mathematics and the first African American professor at Baylor University.

From providing freed slaves with a sacred space of their own to empowering congregants through music, New Hope Baptist Church has worked for more than a century to lift black voices up in worship.

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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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Fort Fisher is an excellent example of how a historical site can be reimagined to fit contemporary needs. Comprised of a few shanties in the mid nineteenth century, more than 130 years later the Waco Chamber of Commerce breathed new life into the fading historical memory of Fort Fisher by transforming the site into an attractive tourist destination on Interstate 35.

In 1837, Colonel William S. Fisher, secretary of war for the Republic of Texas, ordered a company of thirty-eight Texas Rangers to build a small fort near the site of a deserted Waco Indian Village. Hastily constructed, the encampment did not resemble a fort so much as a humble grouping of temporary shelters. After a few weeks, Colonel Fisher deemed the site to be too remote for sustained use and commanded the Rangers to abandon it. In perhaps mock tribute to the man behind the short-lived endeavor, the Rangers christened the vacated post Fort Fisher. It remained a mere footnote in Waco’s history for more than a century.

  The arrival of Interstate 35 in the early 1960s led to the repurposing of the memory of Fort Fisher to help develop tourism as well as a functioning center of law and order. Hoping to entice passing motorists to stop in Waco, the Waco Chamber of Commerce’s Publicity Committee considered a myriad of proposals for a roadside attraction. In 1963, Waco businessman and gifted salesman James R. LeBlond put forward the idea of a revived Fort Fisher. Located roughly within the vicinity of the original camp at the west end of the Interstate 35 bridge across the Brazos, the “new” Fort Fisher would be a multipurpose facility with space allotted for a tourist information center, the headquarters of Texas Rangers Company F, and a small museum to display Ranger memorabilia. Intrigued by LeBlond’s pitch, the Waco Chamber of Commerce approved the formation of a special Fort Fisher Committee. Along with LeBlond, notable members of the committee included Texas Ranger Captain Clint Peoples, historian and former mayor of Waco Roger N. Conger, and publisher Robert E. Davis. The committee faced a distinct challenge in that it had to obtain not only municipal approval for the project but permission from Colonel Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, to relocate Texas Rangers Company F to the site. Fortunately for the committee, Colonel Garrison consented to the project. In 1967 the Waco City Council approved the construction of the 1 ½ acre Fort Fisher complex on a budget of $125,000. It would be situated within a larger thirty-five acre Fort Fisher Park managed by Waco’s Parks and Recreation Department.

Fort Fisher’s October 25, 1968 dedication ceremony drew not only interested locals but numerous active duty and retired Texas Rangers. Dignitaries such as Chief United States Marshal James McShane and the director of the Department of Public Safety, W. E. (Pat) Speir, were in attendance. Perhaps most exciting to the crowd was the presence of popular Gunsmoke actor James Arness who lent a little Hollywood star power to the occasion.

While the revived Fort Fisher bore its predecessor’s name, it was a far cry from the hurriedly assembled quarters of the original inhabitants. Architect David Carnahan designed Fort Fisher’s buildings to resemble authentic log cabins from the early 1880s. Some of the period detail on Fort Fisher’s two buildings included large stone fireplaces, covered front porches, and wooden shutters with bars or straps covering the windows. The Homer Garrison Jr. museum gallery helped reinforce this period feel as it exhibited an extensive collection of early Ranger armaments and uniforms. The buildings of Fort Fisher still stand but the site is now known as the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum.

With Fort Fisher's revival and repurposing as a tourist destination and law enforcement center, Waco made a civic statement to visitors and denizens alike, that the city was not only an appealing stop alongside the interstate but an urban center in which law and order were respected in the tumultuous late 1960s.

Though designed to appeal to visitors, the construction of Fort Fisher also caused a local impact that extended beyond tourism and statements about law and order. When Waco decided to erect Fort Fisher, it did so on land associated with First Street Cemetery. The cemetery—the oldest in the city—suffered from poor record keeping and constant neglect; making it ideal for development. Building Fort Fisher meant relocating some of the cemetery’s headstones and remains. However, expansion of Fort Fisher in 2007 unearthed remains and showed only the transfer of headstones occurred in the 1960s. The revelation sparked scholarly and community endeavors over the next decade. Fort Fisher’s connection to the land on which it was developed may prove as instructive to tourists and Wacoans as what they find in its museum.

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