Welcome to Waco, Texas History in Pictures!
We are glad you are here! Please visit our Galleries, photo albums that record the rich history of Waco. Click the main photo to see the contents of each gallery, then click the individual photo to enlarge and read the photo credit. And feel free to SHARE via your social media. Each gallery will grow, and new galleries will be added regularly, so check back often. To stay up-to-date, please follow our Waco Blog.
Our cover photo showing the historic Waco Suspension Bridge and our hometown is by Waco photographer Mark Randolph, and appears courtesy of Mark Randolph/City of Waco.
We exist to preserve the history and memories of Waco, Texas. There are many photos on this site, and we have made every effort to identify the original photographer and source of each photo. We do not own the copyright on any of these photos, and they are used here for non-commercial, educational, fair use. Please contact the photographer or contributor for their terms of use before sharing or making prints.
If you feel that YOUR copyright has been violated, or if you were not properly credited for a photo shown on this page, please contact us at wacotexashistoryinpictures@gmail.com. Copyright claims are taken seriously. If you hold the copyright to content posted here and notify us, the content will be removed immediately.
We welcome you to join our family of Facebook Groups: “Waco, Texas History in Pictures”; “The Old Lake Waco and Dam”; “Historical Bosqueville, Texas”; “The 1953 Waco Tornado Memorial” and our Facebook Pages: “Waco, Texas: That’s My Hometown”; “Waco, Texas Centennial:1849-1949”; “Waco, Texas:African American Heritage”; and “Bosqueville-China Spring, Texas: Now and Then”.
We are thankful for our friends at The Texas Collection, Historic Waco Foundation, Waco McLennan County Library, Waco History , Waco Masonic Lodge No. 92, and the Texas State Historical Association who have been preserving Waco history for a long time, and have been so helpful to us. Visit their websites for more information about our great city!
We are not affiliated with the City of Waco.
Waco, Texas History in Pictures 
My name is Rollin Khoury, a life long resident of this city. In the fairly recent past my wife and I attended a historical presentation at the Scottish Rite (Lockwood) museum, which included stories regarding the tornado of 1953. I sat through the storm in a pickup truck in front of my father’s shop, Khoury and Sons, at 12th. street and Webster Ave. A lovely young lady who sat in frint of me in homeroom time at the old Waco High on Columbus Ave., as killed in the storm. Her name was not mentioned in the aforementioned presentation. Should you focus on the tornado in future issues I would like the story of tis young lady and the friend she went to downtown with, whose father was also killed in the collapse of the building where the friend’s father was employed. Rollin Khoury
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Thank you so much for your comment! You’re talking about the tragic story of Gloria Mae Dobrovolny, whose father W. J. and best friend Barbara Johnson were killed when The Texas Seed Company building on Franklin collapsed. We will certainly keep her story in mind for future post here, but her father and friend and all of the 114 who perished are honored in our Facebook group “1953 Waco Tornado Memorial”. There is a link to that group in the post above. Thank you again for commenting and being a part.
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My family were members of the Fish Pond Country Club in the 1950’s and ’60’s and I have many happy memories of swimming there with friends, cousins, or just by myself, floating around in the inner tubes they provided, and afterwards having one of their hamburgers for dinner, as I was always very hungry by then. They also had the best swings, because they were larger than most swings, and of course they were made. With a board instead of flexible material like swings today. 4th of July celebrations were always very special, with the variety of swimming contests, little Miss Fishpond, and a great fireworks display in the evening. Just being around so many people celebrating with their families was uplifting. I thought of us as being an everybody’s country club as opposed to our neighbor, Ridgewood, with their golf course which catered to the upper crust, and which was.obviously more.expensive to be a member. Well as you know Ridgewood bought us out some time in the 1970’s then sold the property to a developer, and that was the end of the Fish Pond. I’ve always suspected Ridgewood didn’t want the competition from an older, established country club next door, so they sold it to the highest bidder.Now, except for the plaque at the entrance of the gated community, there are only two entries on the subject too be found on the internet.One was an article on the FishPond.in the local Trib written by a friend of mine who isn’t from Waco, which failed to mention the swimming pool at all. No one had told her that there was ever a swimming pool there.. The other was written by Mark Firman, Baylor professor and author of a book on Cameron Park, but his only mention of the pool was that he apparently thought it was originally installed in the 1970’s when my family was no longer members there. Yes it was updated then, but he just negated in his article, my fond memories of going there as a child in the 50’s and 60’s. I can’t help but suspect that either Ridgewood or the developer are covering something up Mark Firman told me when I called him that the book deal he was planning on writing on the history of the FishPond country club fell through, and he wouldn’t be writing it after all, and wouldn’t tell me any more abut it. It smells fishy to me, and I can’t help but suspect that something underhanded is being hidden from the public in hopes of sweeping it under the rug. -Bob Harvey-
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