Waco on the I-35 Corridor: The City Between
Near Waco, Texas
Interstate thirty-five runs through Waco on its way between Dallas to the north and San Antonio to the south, and for most of the twentieth century Waco's identity was shaped by being between those two larger cities. Not the destination, but the stop. The place people refueled and stretched before getting back on the highway.
That positioning was not an accident. Waco has been the crossroads of central Texas since before the interstate existed. The Chisholm Trail crossed the Brazos here.
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad came through here. The highways that preceded the interstate ran through here. The logic of the landscape keeps routing people through the same middle ground.
What changed in the twenty-first century is that the crossroads became a destination. Baylor University's athletic programs, nationally prominent in basketball, brought visitors. The Waco Mammoth National Monument, designated in twenty fifteen, brought a new category of tourist.
And Magnolia Market turned the corridor itself into a draw, pulling people off the highway for the same reason they used to stop for gas, except now they were stopping for a curated retail experience and spending a day. The metropolitan area reached three hundred and eight thousand residents by twenty twenty-five, growing faster than most Texas cities its size. It is still between Dallas and San Antonio.
But it is no longer just the place between them. Waco's century as the midpoint is giving way to something that looks, slowly, like a destination.
