San Antonio in 1886

The railroads were slow to build to San Antonio. In 1877, Galusha Aaron Grow, president of the International-Great Northern Railway, suggested that San Antonio was “perhaps the largest city on the continent today that had remained so long without railroad connection”—and when railroads did arrive on the evening of February 19, 1877, they transformed the “old dry bones of the Alamo City.”

San Antonians had tried to lure a railroad… [More]

Waco in 1886

Considerable growth had taken place in Waco from the time Herman Brosius produced his view in 1873 to 1886, when Henry Wellge provided a careful update in his view. Two more railroads—the Houston and Texas Central and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas—had built lines through the city, including two new railroad bridges over the Brazos River. Waco was in the process of becoming a transportation and commercial hub for… [More]