By Maria Petrolia
One of the most beautiful buildings on Baylor University’s campus is the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum. Sources such as Campus Grotto and Flavorwire have named the library to their lists of the…

By Maria Petrolia
One of the most popular places to visit on Baylor University’s campus is the Bill and Eva Williams Bear Habitat, home to Baylor’s live bear mascot. The first habitat was built in 1945, but through the…

By Anabel Burke
Elvis Presley is a name that hardly needs explanation. The king of rock-and roll stands as a cultural icon to this day, but few people know of his connection to Waco and Central Texas. In 1958, at the…

By Anabel Burke
Positioned on what used to be the only highway through town, Magnolia Table now draws in patrons from around the country and the globe. Though a new restaurant itself, the Table resides in a building…

By Anabel Burke
A decade ago no one dreamed that two abandonedcottonseed silos would become the icon of a burgeoning retail empire—yet that is exactly what happened. After the Brazos Valley Cotton Oil Mill closed in…

By Ashley Yeaman
Nestled behind several fast food chains at Fifteenth Street and Speight Avenue, Cupp’s Drive-Inn has been offering diner favorites to local residents and Baylor students and staff for seventy years…

By Ashley Yeaman
Often confused with the Davidians, the Branch Davidians are a splinter group organized in 1955 by Ben Roden following the death of Davidian founder Victor T. Houteff. Houteff had founded the…

By Skylar Ray
During the 1960s and 70s, the Vietnam War rocked American communities from coast to coast, leaving death and division in its wake. McLennan County was no exception. The Waco Vietnam Veterans Memorial…

By Skylar Ray
For over 100 years, Vitek's Grocery and, now, BBQ restaurant, has remained a cherished business in the Waco area, providing residents with quality meats and a community gathering place. The story…

By Sarah Miller
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…

By Sarah Miller
For eighty-eight years, the William Cameron House stood as a nineteenth-century architectural treasure near the intersection of Austin Avenue and Thirteenth Street. The fine embellishments on the…

By Sarah Miller
During the 1890s, the city of Waco was in a period of financial growth, and citizens were in need of a place to be entertained. Waco was home to several theaters and opera houses; however, local…

By Terri Jo Ryan
A proudly old-fashioned medicine in retro packaging that features a turn-of-the-twentieth-century tot is not only a vestige of Waco’s drug store past—it is a part of its present as well. The…

By Geoff Hunt
In the mid-twentieth century, Waco underwent major changes through the federally funded Urban Renewal Agency of Waco. Areas impacted included numerous city blocks between LaSalle Avenue and Waco…

By Amanda Sawyer
Joining the recently completed Amicable building, the Praetorian building towered over the city in 1915 as one of the first skyscrapers in Central Texas. The building’s unique architecture and…

By Amanda Sawyer
For over a century, Baylor University has served as one of the various educational institutions contributing to Waco’s reputation as the “Athens on the Brazos.” Constructed to house the university’s…

By Megan Danner
On January 22, 1927, tragedy struck Baylor University when a collision near Round Rock, Texas, ended the lives on ten students en route to an athletic event. Aboard the bus that day were twenty-two…

By Amanda Sawyer
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,…

By Amanda Sawyer
Near the turn of the twentieth century, a booming cotton industry was quickly establishing Waco as one of the major urban centers of the South, encouraging many residents to more readily invest and…

By Prisca Bird
At the corner of Clifton Street and Elm Avenue is Jasper’s Bar-B-Que, Waco’s oldest-operating barbecue restaurant. Although East Waco has undergone many changes, Jasper’s has never changed locations…

By A. Elise Embry
Waco enjoyed an unprecedented level of economic prosperity when cotton was king in the early twentieth century. During this period, Waco’s prominent families commissioned residences that would speak…

By Historic Waco Foundation & Prisca Bird
The history of Fort House is as much a narrative about a nineteenth-century family home as it is local twentieth century efforts to preserve the landmarks of Waco’s prosperous past. The man behind…