Where Every Rocket Engine Gets Its Tryout RoadyGoat

On a sprawling stretch of land outside McGregor, SpaceX fires its rocket engines, and the ground itself seems to shake with it. Essentially every engine the company builds is test-fired right here before it's ever cleared to fly, and the roar of a firing can be heard for miles across the countryside. This patch of Texas has a fittingly explosive past. During World War Two it was the Bluebonnet Ordnance Plant, where workers turned out millions of bombs for the war effort. Decades later, in the late 1990s, a rocket company called Beal Aerospace moved in and poured the first big test stands into this ground, before SpaceX took over the site in the early 2000s and made it the place where its engines earn their wings. Long before a rocket ever lights up over a beach in South Texas, its engines were proven, one fiery test at a time, out here on the prairie.

16.6 mi away

How a Rocket Engine Doesn't Melt Itself RoadyGoat

Here's a puzzle that sounds impossible. A rocket engine burns its fuel at a temperature hotter than the melting point of the very metal the engine is made from. So why doesn't the whole thing just melt into a puddle the instant it lights? The answer is a beautiful trick called regenerative cooling. Before the fuel ever reaches the fire, it's pumped through a maze of tiny channels running all through the walls of the engine. As that cold fuel races by, it soaks up the heat from the metal, carrying it away and keeping the walls below their melting point. Then the now-warmed fuel flows on into the chamber and gets burned. So the fuel does double duty. It cools the engine on its way in, and then it powers it. The very thing that's about to be set on fire is the same thing keeping the chamber from destroying itself. Engineers test exactly this, out at McGregor.

16.6 mi away

Firing a Rocket That Isn't Going Anywhere RoadyGoat

What exactly is a "static fire"? It's running a rocket engine at full power while it stays bolted firmly to the ground, going absolutely nowhere. That might sound pointless, but it's one of the smartest things in all of rocketry. The whole purpose is to prove the engine works perfectly before anyone trusts it to launch a real flight. A rocket engine is one of the most violent machines human beings have ever built, and the cheapest, safest possible place to discover a hidden flaw is right here on a test stand on solid ground. The alternative is finding that flaw 100,000 feet up, with a whole vehicle and maybe a crew riding on top of it, and that is a catastrophe nobody wants. So out at McGregor, engines run their full firing while held down tight, over and over, until the data says they can finally be trusted to fly.

16.6 mi away

Gatesville State School For Boys

1887

Gatesville State School for Boys, three miles northeast of Gatesville in Coryell County, was the first juvenile training and rehabilitation institution in the southern United States. It was established by the Texas legislature in 1887 and opened in January 1889 as the House of Correction and Reformatory, a division of the Texas penal system ( see PRISON SYSTEM ). Ben E. McCulloch served as the first superintendent of the facility, which housed sixty-eight boys who had formerly been incarcerated with adult felons. The legislature changed the school's name to State Institution for the Training of Juveniles in 1909 and established a five-member board of trustees to administer the institution. A 1913 law changed the school's name to State Juvenile Training School, and in 1919 a newly established state Board of Control assumed management of the school. The legislature renamed the facility Gatesville State School for Boys in 1939. By 1940 the school housed 767 males who were under the age of seventeen at the time a court committed them to the institution. The residents attended academic and vocational classes and engaged in a variety of farming activities on a 900-acre tract of state land and 2,700 acres of leased land. A parole system that rewarded good behavior permitted the release of certain inmates to private sponsors. The State Youth Development Council began administration of Gatesville State School for Boys in 1949, and the facility enrolled 406 boys in 1950. In 1957 the new Texas Youth Council (later the Texas Youth Commission ) replaced the Youth Development Council. By 1970, 1,830 young male offenders housed on five separate units that included the Hilltop, Riverside, Valley, Hackberry, and Terrace schools resided at the institution. The Texas Youth Council operated a separate facility, the Mountain View School for Boys , also near Gatesville, as a maximum security unit for juvenile offenders. A class-action lawsuit, filed against the Texas Youth Council on behalf of juvenile offenders in 1971, marked the beginning of sweeping changes in the Texas juvenile justice system. The school enrolled approximately 1,500 boys and employed over 250 staff members in 1974, when federal judge William Wayne Justice issued a ruling in Morales v. Turman . The judge ruled that a number of practices at Texas Youth Council facilities constituted cruel and unusual punishment that violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Staff members routinely dispensed arbitrary and unnecessary punishments that included beating, solitary confinement, the use of chemical crowd-control devices, and the utilization of drugs instead of psychotherapy as a means for controlling behavior. Justice also concluded that the school's staff failed to protect the inmates from violence and personal injury and that most employees lacked proper qualifications and training for supervising troubled youths. Judge Justice ordered the state to close the Gatesville and Mountain View schools and to develop community alternatives to large juvenile penal institutions. During 1979 the Gatesville State School for Boys closed, and the Texas Youth Council placed juvenile offenders in smaller schools at Brownwood, Crockett, Gainesville, Giddings, and Pyote, as well as at a number of foster and group homes, halfway houses, and residential treatment centers. The Riverside, Valley, and Terrace schools became the Gatesville Unit for female inmates of the Texas Department of Corrections in 1980. The Hilltop and Hackberry schools composed the Hilltop Unit for male felons of the Texas Department of Corrections beginning in 1981.

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Mother Neff State Park

1916

Mother Neff State Park, the first state park in Texas, is on State Highway 236 and the Leon River sixteen miles southeast of Gatesville in eastern Coryell County. It was named for Isabella Eleanor Neff, mother of Governor Pat M. Neff , who willed the first six acres of the park to the state in 1916. Governor Neff deeded the rest of the 259-acre park to the state in 1934. The park was developed during the mid-1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps . It was under the administration of the Texas State Parks Board until 1963, when it became part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department . In the 1980s Mother Neff State Park averaged 130,000 visitors per year. Among the facilities available at the park were campsites, picnic areas, restrooms, and showers. Recreational activities included fishing in the Leon River, but swimming was difficult because the steep riverbanks limited accessibility. The hiking trail provided many opportunities to study birds, wildlife, and plants, and playground equipment was available for children. The park's open-air pavilion was a popular site for family reunions and outdoor weddings. Other nearby points of interest included Lake Belton, twelve miles to the south, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, and the American Railroad Museum in Temple.

Tsha Handbook → · 4.4 mi away

Brown, Ina Corinne

1929

Ina Corinne Brown, teacher, was born in Gatesville, Texas, on May 27, 1896, the daughter of John Dayton and Corinne (Wells) Brown. She was a descendant of Orceneth Fisher , prominent pioneer Methodist preacher in Texas. Her great-grandfather Fisher's second wife was Rebecca Jane Fisher . Ina attended Southern Methodist University from 1919 to 1921. She then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where she served on the educational staff of the Methodist Church until 1934. The University of Chicago granted her a B.A. degree in 1936 and a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1942. She also studied at the London School of Economics and, in 1937–38, at the British Museum on a Rosenwald Fellowship. From 1939 to 1941 she worked for the federal government's National Survey of Higher Education for Negroes. Her duties there included assisting black colleges throughout the United States to develop their curricula. She also traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and Africa to study racial problems. She was professor of social anthropology at Scarritt College, Nashville, from 1942 to 1966; after her retirement she was professor emeritus there. She was a special lecturer at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, and Fisk University, all in Nashville. She was the author of three books on race relations: The Story of the American Negro (1936), Race Relations in a Democracy (1949), and Understanding Other Cultures (1963). Understanding Other Cultures was once required freshman English reading at the University of Texas and has been used in Japanese colleges for students learning English. Brown contributed to the Encyclopedia of Black America (1981), and she was a consultant in behavioral sciences to World Book Encyclopedia from 1963 to 1966. Ina Brown was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, the International Federation of University Women, and the American Association of University Women . She was a fellow of the American Anthropological Association, the American Geographical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and the Society for Applied Anthropology. She served as a consultant to city public school systems involved in desegregation in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida, a service sponsored by Peabody College. In 1929–30 she and a woman companion crossed Central Africa from the mouth of the Congo on the west coast to Mombasa in British East Africa (now Kenya) on the east coast, a distance of 1,700 miles. It was a journey that probably no woman had made before that time. The two traveled by boat and train, were carried in hammocks, and walked. On her trip to Asia Brown interviewed Mahatma Gandhi and Toyohiko Kagawa. In her later years her health was poor, but she continued her reading and writing–especially letters to the Nashville daily papers. She was chosen in 1984 as a distinguished alumna of Southern Methodist University. Ina Brown died in Hermitage, Tennessee, near Nashville, on May 12, 1984.

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Leon River Bridge

1854

The route once known as the Old Georgetown Road was in existence by 1854 and crossed the Leon River here. A ferry operated at this crossing as early as 1854 and was owned by R. G. Grant, a local entrepreneur and land developer. The Bowstring Truss Bridge erected near here in 1882 was the first metal truss bridge in Coryell County. It was damaged by two major floods in 1899 and 1900, and the County Commissioners Court authorized the building of another bridge. The George E. King Bridge Company of Des Moines, Iowa built this structure in 1904. Features include steel construction, wood decking, original lattice railings, pin-connected members, and elaborate stone abutments. The overall length of 141 feet from end to end allows for the 4-foot depth of masonry piers supporting the bridge. It is a 137-foot Pratt through truss span with a 5-foot timber approach span, and is one of few such bridges surviving in Texas. The 1904 bridge served as a major east-west artery for Central Texas. The road became part of State Highway 7 in 1917, and was renamed U.S. Highway 84 in the 1930s. The historic bridge was restored and rededicated in 1994. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1996

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Gatesville

1849

County seat of Coryell County, Gatesville began in 1854 after the county was created. Richared Grant, an Indian trader and local landowner, donated the townsite. It was named for Old Fort Gates (1849-1852), which had been established 5 miles east for Indian protection. The Fort, named for U.S. Army major G. R. Gates, was the first settlement in the county. For a few months Fort Gates served as county seat, but then Gatesville was chosen. The County's first mail line--from Gatesville to Belton--was set up in 1855. The town grew slowly at first, suffering from intermittent Indian raids, but the period from 1870 to 1882 saw great progress. In 1870 the town was incorporated and in 1872 a courthouse was built. When St. Louis & Southwestern railroad ran a spur line to Gatesville in 1882, the citizens held a gala welcoming celebration. With the railroad came prosperity and many new homes and businesses. A fine opera house, frontier symbol of culture, was erected and numerous civic improvements were initiated. Today the town is the home of the Gatesville and Mountain View State schools for boys. The economy of the area is based on ranching and agriculture.

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Coryell County Courthouse

1897

An outstanding example of Second Empire Victorian style, often seen in Texas Courthouse design. Erected in 1897 on land donated by early settler R. G. Grant. Architect for this third Coryell Courthouse was W. C. Dodson; builder,Tom Lovell. Limestone and red sandstone blocks were precut to the exact size at quarry, then hauled here by horse-drawn wagons. At each entrance are columns in Roman Corinthian style; and over the east entrance are columns in Roman Corinthian style; and over the east entrance is builder's mark of an owl. Statues on the roof represent "Justice." Noted trials have been held in this building.

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Gatesville, Texas

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Where Every Rocket Engine Gets Its Tryout RoadyGoat

How a Rocket Engine Doesn't Melt Itself RoadyGoat

Firing a Rocket That Isn't Going Anywhere RoadyGoat

Gatesville State School For Boys

Mother Neff State Park

Brown, Ina Corinne

Leon River Bridge

Gatesville

Coryell County Courthouse

Everything Near Gatesville