The terminal stop in the Dean Highland neighborhood fits unassumingly today in an old, distinguished neighborhood of Waco. There are charming benches, old, tall trees, and – in the air - the sounds of birds chirping, a college town humming, and children playing or dogs barking in the distance. There are remnants of that old terminal stop, located about 20 yards away, in the form of railroad bars that were used by an electric rail company in the early 20th century as a form of public transportation. Today in America, the only place we really see electric railways are in San Francisco, but in the early part of the 1900s, Texas and its citizens played an active and entrepreneurial role in establishing and maintaining this new form of transportation throughout the Lone Star State.

In North Texas, the eventual standard-bearer for electric railways was the Texas Electric Railway, colloquially known as “Interurban.” Its first foray into regional transit began in 1905 as a line between Dallas and Waco. This line took passengers via electric railroads from and to Dallas and Waco several times per day, and according to one estimate, a one-way trip took roughly 2 hours to complete. Less than 10 years later, in 1913, Waco was connected to not only Dallas but Waxahachtie, West, Forreston, Plano, McKinney, Italy, Howe, Corsicana, and Hillsboro, among others, and Waco was the regional counterweight to Dallas as terminal cities for what was to become a state-wide system of electric railways serving passengers and freightliners. At least, that’s what the Texas Electric Railway envisioned.

However, before these electric railways could build outward and conquer the Lone Star State’s market, they had to compete with rival rail lines within their cities. It was not uncommon for a city in Texas the size of Waco to have four or five different electric railway companies operating four or five different electric rail lines. Urban planning, as we know it, was still a thing of the future and public transit was provided by private actors. In cities, electric railways were competing for space on the roads with horses and horse-drawn carriages.

During the Aughts and into the 1920s, business boomed for these electric railways and especially for the Texas Electric Railway. There were plans to expand the 250 miles of regional railroad track that was already in operation to Houston, Austin, and San Antonio, but the automobile as a mass-produced consumer good appeared on the scene and the Great Depression added to the interurban industry’s woes. Between the drying up of capital and the competition from a market good that could appeal to the aesthetic senses of the times (the classic twin paradoxes of modern America: rugged individualism and mass consumerism), interurban lines scaled back their plans for statewide dominance and focused more on providing service in cities.

The Texas Electric Railway placed a heavy focus on the city of Waco. The Company invested brand new railcars in its Waco lines, and it painted these cars bright blue so as to distinguish itself from the competition. The paint jobs were so popular that the railcars were christened “Blue Bonnets” by Wacoans. The Blue Bonnets operated out of the interurban terminal that connected Waco to Dallas. These Blue Bonnet lines snaked throughout Waco and served all of the areas considered essential: hospitals, schools, factories, and government. One of these lines snaked right through the Dean Highland neighborhood and stopped at the terminal that stands there today. Our little piece of neighborhood history connects us to not only the urban history of Waco and the regional history of North Texas, but also to the general history of American economic and cultural development.

As we know, the Blue Bonnets were not enough to stave off competition from the automobile, and the interurban line continued to diminish throughout the 1930s and 1940s, although it did so slowly and via bankruptcies and receiverships. The trolley stop in our neighborhood can illustrate to the world how and when we, as Texans and Wacoans, decided to pursue a culture of individualism via the automobile, rather than a culture of shared mass transit. This is not a condemnation nor a condonement of our ancestors, it’s only an illustration of choices made by past Wacoans. In many ways, the choice of automobile was a much more familiar one than the railway, as horses and horse-drawn vehicles, the main form of transportation prior to the industrial revolution, are also symbols of American individualism.

The Texas Electric Railway’s passenger lines (but not its freight lines) stopped operating in the 1930s, with Waco and her Blue Bonnets being the last to fold, and by 1948 the long interurban freight lines of the Railway had ceased to operate as well. While electric streetcars and the interurban railway system phased out of existence, the neighborhood of Dean Highland continues to exist, and its story is every bit as invigorating and that of the railways that connected our neighborhood to the world at-large. Dean Highland was, at the time of the arrival of electric streetcars, an unassuming mish-mash of farms and suburban homes. This all changed dramatically beginning in May of 1920 when a hospital, Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, was completed in the neighborhood. The Baptists who built it sought to make Hillcrest the most prominent regional hospital in central Texas, and while their goals may or may not have been achieved as they envisioned, the history and manner in which Hillcrest was built in Dean Highland illustrates the ways in which our ancestors made choices and reflections that shaped who we are today.

The location for a new Baptist-sponsored hospital was not predetermined when the idea began to be floated around in the early 1900s. Several different locations throughout central Texas were considered, and neighborhoods in Waco began to jockey with each other over the site of the Baptists’ proposal.

In 1916, however, the Dean family, headed by Dr. Jesse Judge Dean and Mrs. Jessie (nee Trice) Dean, donated a significant chunk of land on 30th and Herring for the purpose of building a hospital. This settled the debate on where the Baptist hospital would be built, and contributed to the shape of what would eventually become the Dean Highland neighborhood (Dean Highland was once split into two neighborhoods: Dean’s Addition and Highland Place Addition, although the story of how these two neighborhoods merged to form Dean Highland has yet to be told). The land that the Deans donated had once been a farm in the prominent Trice family, and in 1917 ground was broken on the site after nearly a decade of urging, planning, jockeying, debating, and bargaining amongst and between various factions in Waco. In 1919, the Deans donated an additional plot of their land to the Baptists, thereby enlarging the site of the future hospital in our neighborhood.

In May of 1920, the Central Texas Baptist Sanitarium – the first name of Hillcrest Baptist Hospital - opened, and the neighborhood, which was at the time referred to as MacArthur Hill and was part of Camp MacArthur, a massive World War I military installation that covered much of what is now northwest Waco, and exploded in prominence. It is here that our  trolley stop makes its appearance on the scene as part of the democratic conversation going on in Waco at the time. Citizens were complaining via all sorts of avenues (town hall meetings, church hall meetings, newspapers, etc.) that the stop was located too far away from the new hospital and was thus inconvenient.

The Dean family, too, became more of a household name in the city, and Dr. Dean (he was a medical doctor) grew wealthy enough from his wife’s family’s land that he was able to retire from medical practice in order to focus full time on real estate negotiations. The Trice family, of course, has not completely faded from memory, as Trice Avenue – the location on which our trolley stop rests - is still very much a part of our city’s infrastructure. The Deans, for their part, avoided the public spotlight and focused instead on urban development and charity. By April of 1920, the Deans had donated 7.75 acres of land to the Baptists and sold an additional 3.41 acres to them, presumably at a discount rate. These donations and sales were made following Dr. Dean’s successful commercialization of a significant portion of Waco (the aforementioned Dean’s Addition), which helped spur economic and cultural development in the city. The prominence and bustle that the hospital brought to our neighborhood was enhanced by the founding of one of Waco’s great churches, Highland Baptist Church, in 1923. Established as Highland Church by an antiracist pastor, Robert Edwin (R.E.) Smith, Highland Baptist Church’s mission and culture brought the Dean Highland neighborhood to entirely new heights in regards to its affluence and influence throughout Waco. An antiracist church in Texas in the early 1920s was no easy feat to achieve, and in its early years the mission of the church attracted a certain type of parishioner, one that had to be courageous enough to work for the betterment of Waco, of Texas, of the South, of the United States, and of the world in an institutional environment that actively worked against the political equality of American citizens, and one that had to be well-off enough to be able to buck societal trends and bear the costs of doing so.

Highland Baptist Church was susceptible to the same economic forces as other institutions in Waco (in the first years of its life Highland Church conducted its meetings at Dean Highland school), and while its financial health boomed in the roaring 20s, the Great Depression brought the church nearly to financial ruin. However, the church eventually recovered – there is an undated flier in the archives of Baylor’s Carroll Library Texas Collection inviting all to a Highland-sponsored neighborhood revival at the home of certain James Dean, grandson of Dr. and Mrs. Jesse Dean - and today it continues its mission in a wide variety of services to the Dean Highland neighborhood, the City of Waco, the State of Texas, and the world at large. Our trolley stop on 29th and Trice can be viewed from the front steps of this esteemed institution (its front steps take parishioners out onto 30th Avenue), and one can only imagine being able to take an electric streetcar from their homes to church in the 1930s in Waco, Texas.

Today, Dean Highland is one of Waco’s older neighborhoods. Some sections have fallen into disrepair, while others have been revived. During the age of the electric streetcar, however, the Dean Highland neighborhood represented the cream of Waco’s crop. A survey from a city directory in 1932-33, for example, shows that nearly all of the homes surrounding the trolley stop on 29th and Trice were owned by the people who lived in them, a sign of prominence and upper middle class respectability in the early 20th century.

The trolley stop in our neighborhood represents a past that was every bit as dynamic, exciting, and chaotic as our present. A Texas Historical Marker would help to show neighbors and visitors alike that our choices and our values carry more weight than we can possibly imagine, and that our decisions shape the future just as much as they shape the present. Our ancestors in Waco and Texas chose the automobile over the railway, and today we have a beautiful society, a wonderful city, and a plethora of choices in front of us thanks to our economy’s dynamism.

Works Cited

Books

T 21.33 B 189E “History of General...”

History of Interurban Rail in Waco

“Clippings”

The Texas Collection – Vertical File. Waco, Texas: Churches: Highland Baptist (3 1263 01281

6507)

“Brochures”

The Texas Collection – Vertical File. Waco, Texas: Churches: Highland Baptist (3 1263 01281

6499)

Texas Electric Album – Interurban Special #62 by Rod Varney

Dissertations/Term Papers

Cathey, Beth. 1987. “Dean’s Addition to the City of Waco.” The Texas Collection – Vertical File.

Waco, Texas: Dean’s Addition: Term Papers (3 1263 01273 9030)

Miller, Margaret L.S. 1981. “Hillcrest Baptist Hospital: Inception and Founding, 1908-1920.”

M.A. dissertation. (E 53 838 1987 M54)

Newton, Maude S. 1989. “The ‘Cedar Breaks’ Move to Waco.” The Texas Collection – Vertical

File. Waco, Texas: Neighborhoods: Term Papers (3 1263 03024 3742).

Wells, Kathryn. 1987. “The History of the Highland Place Addition.” The Texas Collection –

Vertical File. Waco, Texas: Highland Place Addition: Term Papers (3 1263 01274 1853).

Seth E. Johnston 1977. “An Economic Study of the North Texas Interurban System.”

Ballard (1948). “Electric Railways of North Texas.”