Thirteen Hundred to One Hundred Fifty-Three Thousand: The Military Boomtown

Cities tied to single industries look a certain way. They expand when the industry expands, contract when it contracts, and hold their breath during every budget cycle in Washington. Killeen has lived this pattern for eight decades.

In nineteen forty-nine the population was thirteen hundred. In nineteen fifty it was seven thousand forty-five. In nineteen seventy it had climbed to thirty-five thousand five hundred seven.

Twenty years later, sixty-three thousand five hundred thirty-five. Then eighty-six thousand nine hundred eleven by two thousand, one hundred twenty-seven thousand nine hundred twenty-one by twenty ten, and one hundred fifty-three thousand ninety-five by twenty twenty. This is not organic city growth.

This is a community that expands precisely as its federal landlord expands, following decisions made in the Pentagon and the House Armed Services Committee rather than in any local chamber of commerce. The strip along United States One Ninety going west from downtown toward the main gate tells the story without any words. Car dealerships, used car lots, payday lenders, tattoo parlors, pawnshops, chain restaurants, cellular stores, and fast food restaurants repeat in an unbroken chain for several miles.

This is the economic architecture of a military town: businesses calibrated to soldiers who receive a deployment advance, soldiers who need transportation, soldiers who are twenty-two years old and far from home and have a reliable paycheck for the moment. The businesses that opened between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty-one, the hundred new commercial structures that went up in a single year, were the first iteration of exactly this pattern. The town grew faster than any planning process could follow.

In some respects, it is still catching up with itself.