Ross: Named for a Texas Ranger and Governor
Near Waco, Texas
Ross, Texas is a small McLennan County community that grew out of the Houston and Texas Central Railway's northward expansion from Waco in the early eighteen seventies. When the railroad arrived in the early eighteen seventies, a stop took shape along the new tracks. A post office named Ross was established in eighteen eighty, honoring Lawrence Sullivan Ross, a man who had packed several careers into one life: Texas Ranger, Confederate general, McLennan County sheriff, and later Governor of Texas and president of what became Texas A and M University.
By eighteen eighty-four the town had a cotton gin, a steam gristmill, a general store, and two churches. Ross remained small, but the arrival of Interstate Thirty-Five in the nineteen sixties, running right through its backyard, brought a modest revival. Today it counts fewer than three hundred residents, a named honor for one of the more storied figures in nineteenth-century Texas.
