Name: Mcgregor, Texas
Address: Mcgregor, TX

Mcgregor, TX RoadyGoat

McGregor’s story is tied to both earth and sky, a real Texas mix. It started back when the railroad came through in the 1880s, named for some official, Gregor Mcgregor. But it's not the trains that define us now. It's what we *make* here. You see, McGregor sits on relatively high ground, a bit of a rise above the surrounding plains, and that location has proved useful. Over time, manufacturing took hold, first with things like fertilizer, essential for the Blackland Prairie soil all around. Then came the rockets. Seems like an unlikely match, small town and cutting-edge aerospace, but it fits. That slightly higher elevation, plus the open space, makes it ideal for test facilities. SpaceX has a big presence here now, testing engines for Starship. You get used to the sonic booms, a constant reminder that something big is happening, something that reaches for the stars. That's McGregor.

Mcgregor, TX RoadyGoat

McGregor, Texas, sits a little higher than you might expect, a subtle rise above the surrounding land near the Middle Bosque River. It’s a town forged by the railroad, named after an official named Gregor McGregor, and though it's seen its share of hard times – the devastating tornado of 1953 comes to mind immediately – it's never lost its character. You can still feel that small-town charm, but there's a forward-looking spirit here too, driven by the manufacturing that keeps the place humming.

Mcgregor, TX RoadyGoat

McGregor sits a little higher than you might expect, just above the surrounding plains. That elevation, though, didn't offer much protection back in '53 when that tornado ripped through. Folks still talk about it, how the town rebuilt, stronger. But these days, the rumbling that gets people talking comes from something else entirely – the SpaceX facility. It's funny, isn't it? A town named for a railroad man now known for rockets. That boom you hear? That's history being made, right here. It's a jolt, a reminder that McGregor isn't just about small-town charm and Friday night football, but cutting-edge technology. It's brought new jobs, new faces, and a whole different kind of energy. Some folks worry about the changes, the rapid growth. But then you remember that McGregor's always been a place of progress, of looking forward, even when remembering the past.

Kane, John Riley

1943

World War II Medal of Honor recipient John Riley "Killer" Kane was born on January 5, 1907, in McGregor, Texas, the son of John Franklin Kane, a Baptist minister. As a youth Kane lived in Texas, Louisiana, and Missouri as his father traveled to different church assignments. Kane graduated from high school in DeSoto, Missouri. With a brash and outspoken personality, he expressed no interest in following in his father's footsteps. In 1924 Kane enrolled at Baylor University with intent on becoming a medical doctor majoring in zoology and German. At Baylor he played on both the football and basketball teams, and in 1926 he took part in a halftime fight at a Baylor-Texas A&M football game in which an Aggie player was fatally injured. As a member of the Baylor basketball team on January 22, 1927, Kane was a passenger on the school's charter bus that was rammed in the side at a railroad crossing in Round Rock on a road trip to Austin. Although Kane was not injured, ten members of the group of twenty-two players, coaches, and fans were killed in the Baylor Bus Crash of 1927 . After graduating with his A.B. degree from Baylor in 1928, Kane attended medical school at Washington University in St. Louis for two years. He left medical school after determining, "I couldn't stand all that medical smell, chloroform and ether and all. It actually made me sick." After leaving medical school, Kane went to Eagle Springs, Texas, where he worked on his grandfather's farm for a year and decided to become a pilot. At first, he tried to join the Marine Corps but was told by a recruiter: "Listen, Buddy, you don't want to learn to fly. It ain't no different from driving a truck." In 1932 he joined the United States Army Air Corps at San Antonio and attended flight school at Kelly and Randolph Field , earned his wings, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Officer's Reserve Corps. In 1933 he served in a variety of positions at Rockwell Field and March Field in California, and at Barksdale Field in Shreveport, Louisiana, until being discharged from active duty. For a time, Kane found employment selling houses and digging ditches for an oil company. He was recalled to active duty and spent several years at Barksdale training pilots for the growing Army Air Corps. In February 1942 Captain Kane was transferred to Lackland Air Force Base as a squadron commander. In July 1942 he was assigned to the Middle East Theater of Operations as a squadron commander of the Ninety-eighth Bombardment Group and attained the rank of major that year. He was promoted to colonel and became commander of the Ninety-eighth in 1943. Colonel Kane accumulated a total of 250 combat hours in forty-three combat missions and received a Silver Star for his performance in outmaneuvering a Messerschmitt 110 during his time in the European-African-Middle Eastern Theater of Operations. John Kane possessed an aggressive personality and a tough domineering manner that inspired both respect and hatred from those that had to deal with him. He could be outspoken and direct in his views, even with his superiors. With members of his own crew, he often was blunt in an effort to maintain a distance; "I was there to try to keep them alive, not to mother them." Kane was given the nickname "Killer" by fellow pilots who got the name from the character named "Killer Kane" in the Buck Rogers comic strip. The nickname "Killer" fitted Kane's unique personality and it stuck. With Kane as their commander, the Ninety-eighth (nicknamed the "Pyramiders") played a key role in Operation Tidal Wave on August 1, 1943. This operation constituted one of the most daring bombing raids by the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) in World War II. This mission involved some 179 B-24 Liberators, divided into five groups, in a low level bombing attack on the Nazi-held oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania, which was believed to be providing Nazi Germany with 60 percent of their crude oil. Starting from airfields around

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Deyerle-Fall House

1892

William W. Deyerle (1853-1920), banker, rancher, and miller, came to central Texas from Virginia. With his wife Willie (Christie), he hired master stonemason Henry Wissman to build this house. Wissman cut and hauled the limestone himself, placing each stone according to his own plan. Striking architectural features of the house include a hipped roof, arched windows, a central porch with turned columns, and a bracketed cornice. The home was completed in 1892. William Deyerle died in 1920, and after Willie Deyerle and her new husband Camden Sanborn were killed in 1926, the house was inherited by her sister, Mary Fall. The home remained in the Fall family until 1975. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1998

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Folsom, Alfred Iverson

1908

Alfred I. Folsom, pioneer urologist, son of Dr. Alfred Iverson and Mary Frances (Powell) Folsom, was born on May 9, 1883, in McGregor, Texas. After his preliminary education in McGregor and Waxahachie, he obtained a bachelor of arts degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown, followed by a degree in medicine from Southwestern Medical College (now the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas) in 1908. The first two years after medical school, he practiced general medicine in Alba, Texas. Subsequently, he acquired specialty training at the Mayo Clinic in New York in what was then the new surgical specialty of urology under the guidance of the eminent surgeon William F. Braasch. In 1913 Folsom began a practice in urology that became busy enough to require the services of numerous assistants. After training with Dr. Folsom, many of these assistants became distinguished urologists throughout the Southwest. Folsom held numerous clinical appointments, including professor of urology at Baylor University College of Medicine in Dallas. He was also chief of the Department of Urology at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where he was on the staff for thirty years. In 1916 Folsom was listed in the membership of the Texas Surgical Society as the state's only urologist. He founded the Dallas Southern Clinical Society in 1919 and is credited with starting the first urology training program in Texas, at Southwestern Medical College. He was also one of the nine organizers of the American Board of Urology, which oversees the board certification of all urologists in the United States. As a result of his dynamic and exciting lectures, Folsom was frequently sought as a guest speaker. His role was pivotal in altering urology from the undeveloped genitourinary surgery of the early twentieth century into an independent surgical specialty. On October 3, 1946, after becoming the only Texan to hold the office of president of the American Urological Association, Folsom was killed in an automobile accident outside Dallas. He was survived by his wife, Erma, and three children. Folsom was a Methodist.

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Bluebonnet Ordnance Plant

1942

In February 1942 the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps acquired 18,000 acres of land just southwest of McGregor, Texas, southwest of Waco and designated the tract as a site to manufacture munitions in support of the war effort. The National Gypsum Company was contracted to build, operate, and staff the plant. Officials broke ground for the facility, which was named after the Texas state flower, on April 18, 1942, and in October 1942 bombs began coming off the first production line. One of four ordnance facilities set up by the government, the Bluebonnet Ordnance Plant was the first to produce bombs used on the battlefield. Different production lines became active throughout 1942. Ultimately the facility produced three kinds of bombs-general purpose, semi-armor piercing, and fragmentation bombs-as well as other ordnance products and ammonium nitrate. Just as the United States ramped up production for World War II , the draft pulled millions of men into the armed forces and left a gap in the industrial workforce. Many women soon entered manufacturing jobs previously held almost exclusively by men. The Bluebonnet Ordnance Plant recruitment advertisements called for men and women of all races. However, African American men and women were compelled to use segregated facilities rather than working alongside White women or men. The result of such recruiting efforts was a workforce that reached a maximum size of approximately 5,000 at the height of the war. This influx of workers more than tripled the population of McGregor from 2,000 to 6,000 people and led to severe housing shortages in Waco and the surrounding area. The Bluebonnet plant had its own housing, hospital, newspaper, stores, and transit system as well as police and fire departments for its workers. Women fulfilled a range of jobs throughout the plant, including operating forklifts and other heavy machinery to prepare the bombs for shipment. Though sometimes facing the challenges of harassment and stereotyping, women workers played an integral role in the production effort, and integrated work places such as Bluebonnet ultimately helped change social attitudes and led male managers and coworkers to appreciate women's skills and capabilities. The women working at Bluebonnet and other industrial jobs proved themselves able to adapt to these physically demanding and dangerous jobs. Bluebonnet Ordnance Plant was awarded the Army-Navy "E" Award for "outstanding performance in war production" on October 27, 1944. Near the end of the war much of the site was leased out for farming and ranching even as the ordnance plant itself remained a functional military installation. The surrender of Germany and Japan signaled the end of World War II and spurred rapid demobilization within the U.S. armed forces and wartime economy. When the plant ceased production on August 14, 1945, more than four million bombs had been produced along with almost nine million other ordnance items. Soon after the war ended the ordnance plant was closed. In April 1946 the facility was transferred from the War Department to the War Assets Administration. A majority of the acreage went to the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) for Bluebonnet Farm, an experimental agricultural research center. Some sections of the facility were converted to peacetime production of stoves and furniture. In 1952 the U.S. Air Force acquired more than 11,000 acres of the site and contracted with Phillips Petroleum Company for rocket fuel research and manufacturing. Aerospace research developed into a long-term use of the site, and various firms leased land on the site for rocketry testing and fuel production for decades after the ordnance assembly lines stopped rolling. The U.S. Air Force transferred ownership to the U.S. Navy in 1964. The site was designated the Naval Weapons Industrial Reserve Plant in 1973, but operations were turned over to Hercules, Inc., in 1978, and production continued until the p

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McGregor

1882

On September 7, 1882, lots in the town of McGregor Springs were sold at public auction. The event had been advertised statewide by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad and the Texas and St. Louis Railway. The community was named for Dr. Gregor Carmichael McGregor (1824-1902), a pioneer Texas physician who later became a prominent Waco businessman. As the settlement grew away from the springs on Harris Creek, it became known as McGregor. Residents of such nearby pioneer settlements as Banks and Eagle Springs were among the first to move their families and businesses here. The post office was even listed as Banks for a short time in 1882. The first school,the McGregor Academy, was opened by J.S. Greenlee in 1883, four years before the McGregor Independent School District was created. The town ws incorporated in 1886 and A. H. Crain was elected to serve as the first mayor. Because of its location on major railroad lines, McGregor first developed as an agricultural shipping center. During World War II it experienced a period of intense growth due to the opening of an ordnance plant. Continued development has resulted from the town's diversified economy and rich heritage.

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Crawford

1850

Crawford Located in an area of McLennan County once inhabited by Tonkawa Indians, the community of Crawford grew slowly from an 1850S settlement centered around Tonk Crossing (two miles northeast). The first townsite was at the crossroads of the Waco to Gatesville and Belton to Fort Graham trade routes. The exact source for the town's name is unknown, but possibilities include Coryell City resident William Nelson Crawford, who graded the Tonk Creek Crossing, A.C. Crawford of Galveston, a director of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad, or Texas Ranger George Crawford, who was stationed here. Development increased following the Civil War, and the post office opened in 1871. By the latter part of that decade, the town included several stores, a tavern, a blacksmith shop and a school with an enrollment of about 100. In 1881, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad, building north from Temple to Fort Worth, bypassed the original townsite, and residents began moving here along the new line. Crawford experienced economic growth as a result, and there were soon four churches, a cotton gin and a grain mill. Incorporated in 1897, the town remained an important agricultural center throughout the twentieth century, at times boasting more than 700 residents, two banks and dozens of local businesses. In July 1999, Texas Governor George W. Bush and his family bought the former Englebrecht Ranch (Prairie Chapel Ranch) west of town. His election as President of the United States in 2000 turned the ranch into the "Western White House," the site of gatherings for U.S. officials and foreign heads of state. Crawford gained international media attention and served as the official voting place for President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. 											(2004)

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Mcgregor, TX RoadyGoat

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