Ten weeks after the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, Waco was chosen as the site for a military training camp. The United States initially lacked the military manpower needed to fight in the war and needed to rapidly increase the number enrolled in the armed forces. Cooperation between Waco businessmen and the federal government allowed construction to begin on a troop training complex on July 20, 1917. Spread out on 10,700 acres of cotton fields and blackland farms, the militar...| Waco History
Calle Dos emerged in the early twentieth century as a haven for Mexican immigrants fleeing border violence and rapidly developed into a center of culture and community for Waco’s Hispanic population. Prior to the establishment of Calle Dos, Mexican immigrants settled on the banks of the Brazos River in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in an area called Little Mexico, or Mexican Sandtown. The dawn of the Great War and arrival of a military base in Waco in 1917 led to the cit...| Waco History