After Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the United States into World War II, production increased dramatically at home to aid the war effort overseas. In short order, munitions factories popped up throughout the nation. The town of McGregor was…

The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company began its corporate existence in the days following the Civil War and was intended to funnel business from Kansas City and points north and east to a new rail route being cut across Indian Territory and…

The Geyser Ice Company complex has long outlived its heyday when it supplied ice for trains loaded with meat and vegetables, and when icemen drove their red horse-drawn wagons through Waco’s dusty streets. The collection of industrial buildings at…

General Tire & Rubber Company came to Waco in late 1944, the company’s second plant after its Akron, Ohio, headquarters. The company originally constructed the plant in order to supply equipment for the US Armed Forces during World War II. By…

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…

Though L. L. Sams and Sons became one of the nation’s largest and most popular church furniture suppliers in the twentieth century, it developed from humble beginnings. Rev. L. L. Sams, a traveling Baptist preacher, desired to build a church for his…