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 years the desire to increase the quality of life for the bears drove the university to rebuild the habitat again and again, until it became the haven it is today.

Baylor has had a live bear mascot since 1917. The first live bear mascot, Ted, often called “Bruin,” belonged to a nearby Camp MacArthur soldier, who let students parade the bear across the football field during a game and then left the bear to the students when he was deployed overseas. Ted served as Baylor’s mascot until the early 1920s. As there was no habitat at this time, Ted was kept at the Texas Cotton Palace’s small zoo. The bears following Ted would sometimes live off campus but were for the most part kept on university grounds, usually in a pen along Waco Creek. In 1932, Baylor student Bill Boyd acquired a bear named Joe College from the Cotton Palace, which was closing. Joe had been a show bear, and his friendliness and personality quickly made him a favorite of Baylor students. Boyd kept the bear in his backyard until Joe grew to weigh 500 pounds and could no longer be safely housed at his residence. At this point, the Baylor University Chamber of Commerce volunteered to build him a home on campus. Joe College was retired in 1940, and Chamber officially assumed care of his successor, Little Joe.

In 1945, Chamber raised the funds and built Baylor’s first real bear habitat. Located (as it is today) on the banks of Waco Creek, the habitat was known as the “Bear Pit.” It featured a swimming pool and space for the bears to climb or walk around, surrounded by a barrier originally made of iron bed headboards. The Bear Pit underwent renovations in 1949, 1953, and 1969. Chamber also added a trailer in 1953 which transported the bears to and from football games, when previously the bears had been transported in a car or train. The bears frequently tested the strength and security of the Bear Pit with their repeated and often successful escape attempts. The Pit was the home of Baylor’s bears until 1977. At this point, the university decided to demolish it and build the Steve Hudson Memorial Bear Plaza in its place. The Steve Hudson Memorial Bear Plaza was built into the sloping bank of Waco Creek, with an open area where the bears could exercise at creek level and pens and viewing decks at ground level. It was three times the size of its predecessor and included a waterfall and AstroTurf. The Plaza held a Class-C zoo license from the United States Department of Agriculture and was approved by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to hold up to three bears.

In 1999, Chamber began pushing the university to update the habitat again, and in 2003 the university finally began the process. Chamber members worked with administrators from Cameron Park Zoo to develop the plans for the bears’ new home. The new habitat opened in 2005, and university administration named it the Bill and Eva Williams Bear Habitat Complex after the project’s lead donors. This complex, which still houses the university mascots, is Baylor’s most sophisticated habitat yet. The environment resembles the bears’ natural environment and includes many new features designed for the enrichment and care of the bears. Another major change to the enclosure was the elevation, as the whole complex was raised to ground level. Viewing areas encircle about half of the outside border, allowing visitors to easily observe the bears’ behavior, and placards provide information about both the history of Baylor’s bears and about black bears in general.

The Bill and Eva Williams Bear Habitat is the safest place on campus and could withstand winds from a category five hurricane, according to the Robert Reid Director of the Baylor Chamber of Commerce, Dakota Farquhar-Caddell. The habitat received accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) in 2021. It is the only university mascot facility to achieve this designation and one of only two AZA accredited zoos on a college campus. Finally, the university added a Community Education Pavilion to the complex in 2022, promoting community engagement and education about the bears.

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The area which once comprised Edgefield Neighborhood has undergone significant changes over the last century. Located on the south side of the city, it encompassed the area between what is today Waco Creek to the north, Brazos River to the east, La Salle Avenue to the south, and Third Street to the west. The land originally was comprised of cotton fields, and its first prominent building was the Miller Cotton Mill, constructed in 1919. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cotton dominated Waco’s economy and Edgefield drew in workers from surrounding farms to the mill.

This influx of people to Edgefield developed the area into a full-fledged neighborhood. What had once been large expanses of fields was divided up in the 1910s and 1920s into individual parcels of land, large enough that many residents kept cows and chickens and cultivated their own gardens. The area also attracted more mills and factories—among them twine mills, a handle factory, and a pickle factory. These establishments owned properties in what was known as “mill block,” a four- to five-block stretch of First Street adjacent to the cotton mill, which employers rented out to their workers. Because they were company owned, these houses tended to be better equipped than others in Edgefield.

Edgefield was a low-income, working-class neighborhood. Most residents lived in inexpensive wooden shotgun houses, many of which were built with lumber from the deconstruction of Camp MacArthur. Residents often built these structures themselves, leaving many of them structurally unsound. Residents typically rented rather than owned the land which their homes sat upon, and in order to pay the rent, both parents and children usually held jobs. When finances were particularly tight, multiple families lived together to make ends meet.

Despite financial challenges, Edgefield residents formed a tight-knit community. A strong religious undercurrent served as one of Edgefield’s most binding elements. The area was home to a variety of denominations, from Baptist to Episcopal to Pentecostal. These churches ran outreach ministries to serve and strengthen the community. In 1890, First Baptist Church of Waco began mission efforts in the Edgefield area to serve the mill block community living and working there. This community organized under their own identity as Edgefield Baptist Church in 1917. In addition to Christian families, Jewish families also resided in Edgefield, although the area did not have a synagogue. Because of the residents’ strong religious ties, many saw Edgefield as a safe and pleasant neighborhood. As Woodrow Calvin Carlile put it, “the community was not only safe, but everybody seemed to expect a high standard of morality even if sometimes they didn’t reach it.”

The midcentury brought sweeping changes to Waco and Edgefield. The declining cotton industry led to the closure of the Miller Cotton Mill in the 1950s, and the structurally unsound residences in Edgefield had reached a point of major dilapidation. Sadly, the downturn in the Edgefield area was not an anomaly. The 1953 tornado and white flight had left most of the older areas of the city in disrepair.

Baylor University, which bordered Edgefield as well as other declining neighborhoods, was pushing to expand and the City of Waco found a solution to both issues in a series of urban renewal projects. Between 1958 and 1978, the City of Waco completed a series of nine urban renewal projects aimed at revitalizing these areas. The last of these was the Edgefield project, with approximately $2.2 million going toward rehabilitating twenty-four residences and the razing of just over 197 acres of land, which were then purchased by Baylor University. The university has since developed the area to include buildings such as its riverside sports complex and the Baylor Science Building.

Urban renewal is undoubtedly the most controversial piece of Edgefield’s history. Intended to improve Waco’s aesthetic appeal, living conditions, and economy, the program displaced hundreds of poor families and broke up tight-knit communities. While some argued that the Edgefield project succeeded in improving conditions, others were quick to point out that Baylor University served as the primary beneficiary of the program rather than the general public.

Today, the part of the old Edgefield neighborhood that was not sold to the university is the site of new housing and apartment complexes that cater to university faculty and students. The old cotton mill building—which later became L. L. Sams and Sons and has now been converted into high-end loft apartments—stands as a physical reminder of what used to be Edgefield Neighborhood. 

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