Waco History Podcast

As the twentieth century began, Waco grew rapidly as a cotton hub and transportation center, modernizing with schools, streetcars, and expanding industry. Cultural life thrived, anchored by Baylor University. Yet this period also came with deep societal divisions and vulnerabilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the twentieth century began, Waco grew rapidly as a cotton hub and transportation center, modernizing with schools, streetcars, and expanding industry. Cultural life thrived, anchored by Baylor University. Yet this period also came with deep societal divisions and vulnerabilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the twentieth century began, Waco grew rapidly as a cotton hub and transportation center, modernizing with schools, streetcars, and expanding industry. Cultural life thrived, anchored by Baylor University. Yet this period also came with deep societal divisions and vulnerabilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the twentieth century began, Waco grew rapidly as a cotton hub and transportation center, modernizing with schools, streetcars, and expanding industry. Cultural life thrived, anchored by Baylor University. Yet this period also came with deep societal divisions and vulnerabilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1875 and 1900, Waco experienced significant growth and transformation as it evolved from a frontier settlement into a key regional hub of commerce, education, and culture. The city grew from around 3,000 to over 20,000 as the town transformed into a vital Texas city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco’s first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco’s first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco’s first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco’s first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their journey through Waco’s first 175 years, hosts Stephen Sloan and Rick Tullis tackle the founding era of Waco 1850 to 1875. Here, they start their countdown of the top five events, issues, or topics from the first 25 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Stephen Sloan and guest host Rick Tullis launch a new season exploring the top events, issues, and individuals from each generation of Waco’s History. They also debut the new song, Wacotown by Wes Cunningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest host Rick Tullis sits down with Dr, Stephen Sloan as they explore the long history of banks in town with fourth-generation Waco banker David Lacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During WWI in Waco, the puttering, sputtering sounds of biplanes filled the skies. The area around today's Extraco Events Center had been converted into an airfield to serve as a military training facility, and by the time the war ended, Rich Field had graduated some 400 flyers, many of whom served in France. Lee Lockwood, the son of a Waco banker, remembers how the financial community, knowing the training center would be good for Waco, offered its support: "The field could not be obtained without having railroad facilities. It was a long distance from the main line—railroad line. But arrangements were shortly made to buy the necessary property. And a spur track was run from the Cotton Belt railroad through what is now known as New Road and went on forward through to Camp MacArthur. After the war the railroad was abolished and New Road was opened which we used quite often in the city." Lockwood explains that the field provided ample free entertainment: "Aviation at that particular period of time was rather n

Numerous expressions exist about how much the devil loves to take advantage of the idle hands and minds of mortals. But while some people find trouble in their free time, or simply waste it, others use it in positive ways. Frank Curre of Waco ended up with some downtime in June of 1945, when the escort carrier he was serving on was sent to the docks at San Francisco because of engine trouble. While the carrier was being overhauled, Curre took a step that would last forty-nine years: "And I was standing on the fantail one day, and the skipper come down. We got to talking, and while we was talking, I said, ‘Man, I wish I could go do something I'd like to do.' He said, ‘What is it you'd like to do?' I said, ‘Well, I wouldn't do it earlier, but,' I said, ‘I'd like to go home and get married.' He said, ‘How you know she'll marry you?' I said, ‘Well, about three months ago I mailed her a letter and told her I didn't know when I'd get home, and it's a possibility I may not make it home. But if I get home again, we'r

As the war in Europe was winding down in the spring of 1945, exhausted troops probably thought they were immune to being shocked. But knowledge of the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps was on the horizon. Nothing could have prepared them for that. Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi served in Intelligence & Reconnaissance during the war and recalls checking out reports of a concentration camp near the town of Dachau in late April of '45: "We got there, and the first thing we saw was a sign over the entrance which says, Work Will Make You Free, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei.' We went through the gate, and we shot a few Germans. They were escaping. I looked at the—at the prisoners in their striped garb, so filthy and decimated. One of them moved. And I went over to him, and he said, ‘Bist a Yid?' Are you Jewish? I said, ‘Ich bin a Yid.' I am Jewish. And then I told him, ‘Alles geet. Alles geet.' I speak a little Yiddish. ‘Alles geet. Alles geet.' All is good. All is good. And I opened my C ration and fed him a l