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The River Street

In 1985 these structures were given to Baylor University by Baylor alumnus Governor Bill Daniel, his late wife Vara, and their four children. Daniel, a Texas attorney, served as governor of Guam during the Kennedy administration. Along with the buildings, approximately six thousand artifacts and a $300,000 endowment for the curator position were included in the gift.

In October 1986 the Texas Association of Structural Movers, with financial assistance from the Cooper Foundation of Waco, moved the buildings from Plantation Ranch, about forty-five miles northeast of Houston. The years since have been spent repairing and rebuilding these structures as one of the outdoor components of the Strecker Museum Complex.

Most settlements had to be build near a dependable water source, which could be a river, but a river town, in this usage, would have a commercial tie to the river. This village depicts a representative Texas river town of the 1890s, a time twenty-five years after the Civil War.

After 1875 over seven thousand miles of new railroad track, including parts of transcontinental lines, had been constructed in Texas. By the 1890s most professional and benevolent institutions, such as the Texas State Bar Association and the Texas School for the Blind, were in place.

Many large cities had electric power plants, water works, and well-equipped schools, but in the countryside little was changed from earlier times. This village had no electric lights, the railroad had built elsewhere, water was pumped by hand, and a small, one-room school served the children. Also, the village had no indoor plumbing, stoves and fireplaces were the only sources of heat, and transportation was by horses, wagons, or by foot.

This village does not represent old Plantation Ranch or early Waco. It is a farming community, not a wild west town. It could be any farming community on the regularly navigable portion of a large Texas river.

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Please send comments to Historic_Village@baylor.edu. Updated Aug. 23, 2001.