At a fountain named La Pila, children frequently splashed and played while others took a drink or filled jars and buckets with water. La Pila, meaning “the basin,” was the centerpiece and social hub of the historic Calle Dos neighborhood from the 1920s to the 1960s. Fed by an artesian well close by, the fountain produced warm, drinkable water to a neighborhood in which few had access to running water in their homes.

The origin of La Pila is unknown, although Waco newspapers suggest that the city authorized the construction of an artesian well near the area in 1915, and it was reported in 1933 that a fountain in the area was fed by a nearby well with warm water. Children would play and bathe in its waters, and families would bring containers to fill from its four faucets, taking the water home to use for cooking, drinking, and cleaning. Often day laborers gathered at La Pila, waiting to be picked up for work. The fountain’s artesian waters even drew Waco residents who did not live in Calle Dos. Rudy Solano, who lived in Calle Dos as a child, recalled that “people would pull up in their fancy cars and load up their fancy glass containers.” While La Pila held a communal significance for the residents of Calle Dos, it served the broader Waco area as well. 

In 1950, the waters of La Pila dried up. Although its practical use had faded, it still served as a gathering place for the community until Urban Renewal destroyed both Calle Dos and La Pila in 1958. Urban Renewal was an effort to clear “slums” from the downtown area, and it happened in cities across the nation. Low-income neighborhoods and minority communities were those most impacted, displaced from homes and businesses. La Pila was buried, and its concrete edges were damaged even further with the later expansion of University Parks Drive. 

In 2016 Alice Rodriguez, founder of the Waco Hispanic Museum, and Louis Gayton-Garcia decided that unearthing La Pila would be an excellent way to commemorate an important aspect of Waco Hispanic heritage. Partnering with archaeologist Katherine Turner-Pearson, the work to excavate the historic fountain began the following year with a grant for the project from Baylor Philanthropy and Public Service. The money was quickly exhausted, and Turner-Pearson used donations from the community and an army of volunteers, including students from the nearby Indian Spring Middle School, to contribute to the project and to educate the community about the process of excavation. 

In 2020, Pearson-Turner and the Waco Hispanic Museum wanted to take the project in very different directions. The Waco Hispanic Museum had wanted to completely unearth La Pila and create a small park or monument out of it, perhaps with benches and art surrounding it. Pearson-Turner, however, believed it would be best to rebury La Pila because of the complications in getting volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic. She explained that it was a common archaeological practice to uncover an artifact enough to make a report about it and then backfill and rebury the item to protect it. With loss of funding and volunteers, the recommendation of the Texas Historical Commission to backfill, and the lack of a detailed plan with Waco ISD to turn the fountain into a monument on their property, La Pila became once again a buried memory. 

La Pila’s future is uncertain. It might be uncovered again and reconstructed, or it might remain as it is. Regardless of what happens, La Pila still stands in the memories of those who lived in Calle Dos as a symbol of their community, and the excavation project ensured that the legacy of La Pila was shared with a new generation of Wacoans. 

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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 927 Webster dates back to the company’s founding in 1892. Beer magnate Adolphus Busch, whose Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company also had a beer distribution center next door, owned the plant.

In a time when Waco advertised itself as the Geyser City, an artesian well located on the property supplied water for the ice plant. By the 1920s, the plant produced two hundred tons of ice per day which were kept in a multistory cold-storage facility insulated with cork. In order to reach greater numbers of customers, the company established ice stations throughout the city, including stations in East Waco, Clifton, and West.

The brick building with arched windows at the back of the lot is often viewed as the most interesting part of the site. The building, or something similar in size, is shown on an 1899 Sanborn Fire Insurance map, and it may date back to the 1892 founding of the Geyser Ice Company, making it one of Waco’s oldest commercial structures. Inside is what looks like a swimming pool with a horizontal boom over it. Through the 1970s, that boom was used to pull three-hundred-pound containers of block ice out of a pool of freezing liquid.

The company’s horse-drawn wagons, built by a local carriage shop, made for a popular sight around the city. Advertisements posted in the Waco Morning News called Wacoans to look for the big red wagon which served as the head of the fleet and reportedly could carry up to fifteen thousand pounds of ice. Other ads encouraged customers to use the scale located in the back of every wagon to ensure they received the proper amount of ice upon delivery.

The rapid adoption of electric refrigerators after World War II cooled demand for commercial ice. But the Waco ice plant survived, and in 1954 it came under the control of the Southland Corporation of Dallas, which greatly increased its production. Southland was best known as the parent company of 7-Eleven, and it also owned Reddy Ice until the late 1980s.

By the early 2000s, Reddy Ice used the multistory vault to store up to one million pounds of ice a day, but it had ceased manufacturing ice there. In 2001, the company tore down an older part of the ice plant, decreeing it no longer usable.

Today the plant sits vacant, with crumbling bricks, broken windows, and signs of squatters. But a local investment group hopes to reinvent the plant for a new century. Rydell Capital bought the 2.4-acre property in December of 2015 from Reddy Ice Company, which two years ago vacated its ice distribution business there in order to consolidate with a facility in Whitney. Rydell general counsel Dillon Meek said the company has no specific plans for the property but intends to renovate the buildings to suit a mix of commercial tenants. Such use could place the ice plant alongside other iconic Waco sites—such as the Praetorian building, the Hippodrome, and the Brazos Valley Cotton Oil Mill—in contributing to the reinvigoration of downtown through the preservation of the city’s history.

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Believed to have curative qualities, water from Waco’s artesian wells were popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Locals considered the discovery of the artesian water in 1889 one of the most important events in Waco up to that time. Local businessmen took advantage of this new industry and constructed natatoriums for Waco residents and visitors to immerse themselves in the fresh waters.

Robert B. Parrott built the Waco Natatorium, also known as the Natatorio-Sanitorium, or Natatorium Hotel, on the corner of Fourth Street and Mary Avenue in 1892. Parrott was a Confederate Army veteran and eager to develop a natatorium with his team of investors. He chose the location of Fourth and Mary because it was right in the center of the city and close to the Cotton Belt depot. Citizens and passengers could visit the natatorium and soak in a thermal bath while waiting on their train rides. It was also only one block from the Provident Building, post office, and Pacific Hotel.

The Waco Natatorium opened in the summer of 1892 but fire engulfed the structure on March 20, 1894. Construction for a new building by the Waco Natatorium Company began shortly thereafter. Developers constructed the new Waco Natatorium on a much larger scale, four stories and a rooftop garden. The building featured Spanish-style architecture that fit the style and climate conditions of the state of Texas. To tap into the thermal waters, builders drilled wells as deep as 1,850 feet.

The natatorium was equipped with departments for both ladies and gentlemen to have Turkish and Russian baths, individual baths, tubs, vapor rooms, sweat and resting rooms, furnished rooms, a café, offices, and parlors. The natatorium also had one of the largest indoor swimming pools in the South.

It was popularly believed that the waters heated deep underground contained minerals that had medicinal qualities producing positive results when people sick with illness or disease bathed in it. Treatment usually consisted of five to fifteen minutes in a tub bath and an additional vapor bath from three to five minutes. However, locals believed it was disastrous for people affected by heart disease or lung problems. One room of the building was known to have dozens of pairs of crutches left behind by people who came to the natatorium needing the walking aids when they came in, but no longer needed them after soaking in the baths. 

The Waco Natatorium hosted events such as Ladies Night every Monday when the swimming pool was opened exclusively to females. Women wore striped bathing suits that went down below their knees; anything else would have been immodest. In 1913, after the natatorium had been in business for a number of years, fifty new hotel rooms were added. Guests could rent rooms starting at one dollar a night. 

In August 1893, Parrott’s establishment suffered its first fatality when twelve-year-old Tyler resident Jacob Baruch drowned in the pool while playing with other children during a ladies’ session when Baruch’s mother was taking a Turkish bath. When doctors arrived on the scene, it was too late. Baruch’s father sued the Waco Natatorium for $10,000 alleging negligent supervision of bathers. However, the defense argument was that management was only following the wishes of its female customers in ushering out the men during Ladies Night, even going so far as to prohibit male spectators in the pool room. 

The Waco Natatorium served as a center of activity in Waco and a downtown attraction for almost forty years. In the 1920s, Waco’s artesian water supply began to run dry because of population growth and high demand for the water. As a result, the wells could no longer provide a constant supply of water for many businesses. The natatorium closed in December of 1926, and burned down on Saturday, January 1, 1927 after it sat empty. Only bare walls marked the spot where the building stood. The natatorium was never rebuilt a third time.

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Throughout its history, Waco has been affected by a constant cycle of drought and flooding due to its prime location near several major rivers. The construction of Lake Waco Dam was one of the most successful efforts to address these issues, providing the city with flood protection and a stable water supply.

Many Wacoans, including Mayor H. F. Connally, opposed the construction of the original dam in the 1920s, preferring to rely upon the city’s artesian wells as a water supply. Though some saw the dam as a foolhardy and risky luxury, the city put the issue up to a vote in 1926 after the wells began to run dry. Voters approved the construction of the dam by a slim margin of just over one hundred votes. In 1929, Callahan Construction Company completed work on the dam on the Bosque River.

The small dam, though beneficial to Waco, proved to be insufficient to protect the city from severe flooding. After a record flood in 1936 submerged East Waco and displaced two thousand people, Congressman Bob Poage received authorization for a US Army Corps Engineering flood control study of Lake Waco. The results of the study in 1938 recommended an enlarged Lake Waco with a bigger, more modern dam.

However, the onset of World War II put the Lake Waco project on hold for some time. The construction of dams on Lake Whitney and Belton Lake took precedence in 1946, though the need for a larger water supply was becoming more apparent each year. Several Wacoans appealed to the federal government for funding, and in 1954, Congress authorized the construction of a new dam in order to lessen the flood threat to the city of Waco and provide more efficient water storage.

As the US Army Corps of Engineers began to design the new dam, Central Texas conditions worsened. The most severe drought of the twentieth century struck Texas in the 1950s. The period saw all but ten of Texas’ counties declared federal disaster areas, and in Waco, despite efforts to ration and conserve water, taps ran dry and factories slowed production. Additionally, the water supply in Lake Waco was hampered by the buildup of silt from farming up river.

A second disastrous flood hit the city in April 1957, reenergizing efforts to complete the dam. The Brazos River Authority and the city offered to provide a loan to the federal government in order to begin construction on the dam quickly. After some negotiations, President Eisenhower included one million dollars in his proposed budget for the construction of the new dam.

In the weeks following the dam’s completion in the fall of 1961, engineers detected a problem with disastrous implications. Cracks appeared in the eastern face of the dam and slowly began to spread. Soon, a portion of the east side fell sixteen feet, sliding downstream. The US Corps of Army Engineers quickly discovered the problem was a layer of compressed shale in the ground which the weight of the dam had pushed out. They modified and stabilized the dam, completely finishing construction in the spring of 1965.

Army engineers and the city of Waco agreed to raise the level of the lake seven feet in 2003 in order to provide a more secure source of water for Waco and surrounding municipalities. Waco civic leader Jack Kultgen described the dam as the “single biggest factor in the progress of Waco” in the twentieth century because it gave Waco an advantage over many other Central Texas cities. The Lake Waco Dam provides the city with a constant source of water, ensuring the city’s ability to grow in spite of weather conditions. 

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Few major products are as closely identified with the people and environment where they began as Dr Pepper in Waco. Developing from a soft drink invented at a local drugstore to one of the largest and most popular industries in the world, Dr Pepper has remained attached to the city of Waco. This close identification with Waco is perhaps best exemplified in the former bottling plant building which now houses a museum on the corner of Fifth Street and Mary Avenue in downtown Waco.

In 1885, one year before the invention of Coca-Cola, a young pharmacist named Charles Alderton began experimenting by mixing different fruit flavors together at The Old Corner Drug Store on Fourth Street and Austin Avenue. The resulting concoction would become the formula for Dr Pepper. The drink became a favorite of fountain patrons, and soon people all across town ordered the drink originally known as a Waco. From around 1885 to 1891, the drink, could only be served at fountains or the drugstore, where the syrup was mixed with the carbonated water and served individually. The popularity of the beverage influenced the drugstore owner and manager, Wade Morrison and Robert S. Lazenby to form the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Co. in 1891 to bottle the drink.

In 1906, a three-story building was built at the corner of Fifth and Mary for the purpose of bottling and shipping the new drink. In 1922, the base of operations moved to Dallas after the formation of the formal Dr Pepper Company. Local bottling production continued until around 1965, when operations were moved to a more modern facility. The building was given to Baylor University and subsequently used as a storage warehouse for the next thirteen years.

On May 11, 1953, an F5 tornado struck downtown Waco, devastating the city. Although it did not sustain a direct hit, the bottling building was among the casualties of the tornado. The tornado damaged the Mary Street side of the building leaving a scar which is still visible today. The relatively sound construction of the bottling building, including 18-inch thick brick walls, massive timber underpinnings, and tile roof, is the reason for the fairly minor damage to the plant. The building was repaired with a lighter colored brick but not restored, and business was back to as usual until the move in 1965.

At Waco’s centennial celebration of the invention of Dr Pepper in 1985, ideas of creating a museum to tell the story of Dr Pepper production in Waco sprang up. On May 11, 1991, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the tornado, the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute opened. Since then, the museum has entertained and educated thousands of visitors, with a mission of being the best museum to tell the story of the soft drink industry and to use this very industry as a testament to the free enterprise system. Complete with exhibit areas, a gift shop, soda fountain, and restored building features, the Dr Pepper Museum helps tell the story of the growth of Dr Pepper and its special place in Waco.

For more information about the museum, visit www.drpeppermuseum.com.  

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