Moving - Waco, Texas

Are you planning a move into or out of Waco, TX, any time soon?  Continental Relocation, a local moving company, can help.  We can plan every step of your move for you and help make it an easy event.  Call Continental Relocation or just click here to begin your moving process.

Have you read the history of Waco, TX?  Well, here is a brief summary for your pleasure.

A Brief History of Waco, Texas

Millions of years ago, the earth was fractured by the Balcones Fault. Running through what is now central Texas, the escarpment was cut by the Brazos River causing a lowering of the landscape and a natural place for habitation. Mastodons from the east and mammoths from the west traveled to the area. Skeletons of 28,000-year-old mammoths have been excavated as well as skeletal remains of a 10,000-year-old man and child.

Waco is named after the Huaco Indians, the first inhabitants of this area. The Huacos were a branch of the Wichitas and were closely related to the Tawakonis. The tribe lived in beehive shaped huts, 20- to 25- feet high, made of poles, buffalo hides and rushes. The Huacos had approximately 400 acres of land under cultivation, planted in corn, beans, pumpkins, melons and peach trees.

In 1837, the Texas Rangers arrived intending to build a fort at Waco Village. Texas Secretary of War William S. Fisher ordered them here to protect the white frontier after a Comanche raid at Ft. Parker near Groesbeck. The Rangers spent three weeks cutting a road through the woods and building a bridge over Cow Bayou. However, it was decided the outpost was too far from any white settlement to offer any protection.

An Indian trading post was established around 1844 on a bluff eight miles south of Waco village on the east side of the Brazos River. A year later another settlement was established further north by a rugged Scot named Neil McLennan.

In 1848, two years after Texas statehood, General Thomas J. Chambers sold his Mexican grant of land, which surrounded the old Waco Village site, to a group of businessmen from Galveston. In early 1849, surveyor George B. Erath laid out the first streets of Waco. Lots were sold for $5 each, with "farming lots" selling for $2 to $3 each. Among the first buyers was a Texas Ranger, Shapley P. Ross. Captain Ross opened a ferry across the river in 1849 and built the first house in Waco with help from Armstead Ross, who by all accounts, was the first African-American to arrive in Waco. The City of Waco was incorporated on August 29, 1856.