Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

Cameron Park has long been Waco’s great green escape. For some residents, it’s the smell of sizzling burgers under the pecan trees, the clatter of plastic discs into metal baskets or the swish of a mountain bike down a slope of bamboo.

For others, it’s a place to sit on a bucket and fish with soul or country music on the car stereo, or where to go to get lost on a Sunday afternoon, wandering from wooded ravines up to the cedar-topped limestone cliffs overlooking the Brazos valley.

Starting with today’s centennial celebration, Waco will commemorate all that William Cameron Park has meant during the past 100 years. The city’s Cameron Park Centennial Committee offers a parade, a symphony pops concert and fireworks display for an anticipated crowd of 5,000.

The group plans a rededication of the 412-acre facility May 27 — the anniversary of the first dedication. Invited are the heirs of the William Cameron family, which donated the original parkland.

More events are planned with the aim of getting every McLennan County resident into the park sometime this year.

Committee co-chairwoman Kay Olson said the park is in the midst of a renaissance, with new improvements and rebounding popularity.

“I can’t imagine having this anniversary at a better time,” she said. “The city has got money to finish making improvements. ... I feel the park is very occupied. There are hundreds of people in the park even on weekdays, from dusk until dawn.

“There’s as much excitement and enthusiasm as there was in 1910, though in a different way. And the support is going to continue to grow.”

Rocky history

Cameron Park’s history has as many ups and downs as its terrain.

It began with civic leaders determined to protect Proctor Springs from development and grew over the decades with the financial commitment of the Cameron family and the city.

Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

It was such a source of civic pride in the 1920s that the local chamber of commerce promoted Waco as a city “built in a park.”

The park weathered budget droughts and real droughts, became the subject of legal battles, served as a theater for racial tensions and suffered a steep decline as it fell into lawlessness in the 1970s.

But the 25 years have seen Cameron Park’s resurgence as the pride of Waco, with additions such as a natural habitat zoo, a spray park and about $5.5 million in new bond-funded improvements.

Vote of confidence

Waco may have turned its back on the park a generation ago, but the recent investment is a vote of confidence in the park’s future, said Michael Parrish, a Baylor University history professor.

“It is the heart of Waco,” he said. “It was a beating heart that was in trouble for many years, but is now beating strong once again.

“It’s a natural resource, a cultural resource that’s beyond compare. We need parks and natural beauty, especially in an urban setting, to revive us.”

One of Parrish’s graduate students, Waco native Mark Firmin, is the author of the soon-to-be-released “William Cameron Park: A Centennial History,” which is sponsored by the Centennial Committee.

The 212-page book traces the development, decline and rebirth of the park and how it reflected a changing Texas town.

Firmin’s research shows Waco civic leaders were agitating for more parks several years before the Cameron family’s 1910 gift of Proctor Springs to the city. Waco had only 45 acres of parks in 1900.

Backed by local women’s clubs, parks advocate Kate Friend argued that parks would bring social and moral uplift to Waco’s working people.

“Put parks in every ward of Waco and you will at once see the improvement of city yards and streets,” she wrote.

Firmin ties the push for more parks as part of the Progressive-era “City Beautiful” movement, which sought social improvement through beautification.

In early 1910, citizens approved a $35,000 bond election for small parks in each city ward. At the same time, an effort to get the Waco Cotton Palace relocated to Proctor Springs narrowly failed.

Park fans were concerned for the Proctor Springs area, with its huge trees, picturesque terrain and flowing water. The area had been used for years as a spot for Civil War veterans reunions and Juneteenth celebrations.

Economic depression

In the late 19th century, developers subdivided it and tried to sell off lots, but were hampered by a long economic depression. The nearby bluff area, now known as Anniversary Park, was developed as a country club in 1902.

Unable to develop Proctor Springs, the owners at one point allowed Victoria Worsham to operate it as a paid park, complete with a fence and turnstile that children did their best to circumvent.

A leading advocate for a park at Proctor Springs was W.L. Lawson, the young president of the Waco Cotton Exchange. He quietly purchased the 85-acre site on May 21, 1910.

In the next few days, it became clear who was behind the purchase — the family of the late lumber baron William Cameron.

Cameron, a Scottish immigrant, had created a lumber empire in the Southwest and owned millworks and other factories in Waco before his death in 1899. His widow, Flora B. Cameron, and children, including W.W. Cameron, the heir to the family business, provided the land.

They would continue to add to the park with a series and land and financial gifts through the 1940s.

The dedication of Cameron Park on May 27, 1910, attracted an estimated crowd of 15,000 and featured parades and band concerts.

Baylor president Pat Neff compared the facility to the pyramids of Egypt, which were built out of “misguided ambition” instead of the good of humanity.

Dave Johnston (left), Sally Hague (right) and Brandi Cox enjoy of a view of kayaks paddling up the Brazos River as they have lunch atop Circle Point in Cameron Park.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

Streetcar line

The park, located at the end of a streetcar line, became popular and echoed with regular concerts by Professor Alessandro’s Band. Rochester, N.Y.-based architect A.L. Brown was hired to reshape Proctor Springs with stairways, overlooks, wading pools and a gazebo.

The Rotan family spearheaded an effort to build a riverside drive to Cameron Park, and it opened in 1914.

As World War I raged in 1917, the U.S. Army established Camp MacArthur in Waco, and the Cameron family and city set aside another 80 acres around Lovers Leap for the recreation of soldiers.

In 1920, the family donated another 191 acres, including more cliffs and the clubhouse area. The city passed a $65,000 bond election for the park, the equivalent of about $743,000 in today’s dollars.

Officials that year counted 8,000 visitors to Cameron Park on a single spring day.

The Depression didn’t stop the park’s development. Job programs from the New Deal created walls and gazebos in the cliff areas. Community groups helped create the Kendall Rose Garden near present-day Cameron Park Zoo. The park, which lasted until the 1960s, sported 1,400 bushes, watered by an artesian well.

Nearby, visitors were entertained by a small zoo with monkeys, peacocks and an infamous talking crow that spat out cuss words.

“The park probably hit its peak in the ’20s and ’30s,” Firmin said. “It was purely the fact that people didn’t have air conditioning and if they were out of a job, it was a free place to go.”

The park expanded in 1942 with another Cameron family gift of 64.5 acres. It remained a social hub of Waco.

But in time, the facilities began to decline with age and little money was available for maintenance, said Alva Stem, who went to work for the parks department in 1950. Stem later became park superintendent, retiring in the 1980s.

“The challenge you had was there was never enough money to do anything with,” he said.

Stem and his crews got creative, building structures such as the old Redwood Shelter and Rock Shelter out of salvaged materials.

They built concrete benches and tables by hand and replaced the rotten wooden steps at Jacob’s Ladder with concrete, poured freehand.

“One winter, we decided to make it our main project,” he said. “We hauled up concrete by buckets and just followed nature. We worked all winter long with picks and shovels.”

A drought in the 1950s decimated Cameron Park’s vegetation, including thousands of trees, according to Firmin’s book.

Still, the park remained so popular that there was fierce competition for picnic tables on weekends.

“I’ve seen people stay all night in Cameron Park to reserve tables,” Stem said.

Stafford Elementary School first-grader Timothy Fleming cools off with other members of his class at the Pecan Bottoms spray park, which the city of Waco built near the Herring Avenue bridge in 2000.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald, file

Segregation policy

One significant segment of the population excluded from the fun — Black Wacoans. Though they had their own park, Bledsoe-Miller in East Waco, black leaders were increasingly dissatisfied with the “separate but equal” policy of segregation.

In 1954, two black civic groups appeared before the city park board and demanded full access to public facilities. Speakers said they had been told by police to leave the park because of their color.

The response from the police chief, according to minutes Firmin found, was that the park was for whites only.

Blacks gradually started using the facility more and in the early 1960s, one local black minister decided to test the color line.

“I can recall that Cameron Park was a very attractive place, a place in which the city took a great deal of pride,” said the Rev. Marvin C. Griffin, who was pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in the 1950s and 1960s. “Citizens of color also enjoyed the scenery, but were not permitted to use it as other citizens were.”

Church picnic

With the quiet backing of some progressive white Waco leaders, Griffin began an annual church picnic in 1963.

“We were testing the tradition,” he said. “There were some members who wondered whether we should do it. But the only way we could know if we’re free is to be able to use all the city’s facilities.”

Griffin, now senior pastor at Austin’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, said the picnic passed without incident.

“It went well. No one interrupted us at all,” he said. “We went there and sat underneath the trees and had a good time. ... Waco was a very good town when it came to accepting (integration).

“There were practices regarding segregation, but when they were tested, it turned out they were not really there.”

Black residents made themselves at home at Emmons Cliff, then migrated to Pecan Bottoms.

When Cameron Park’s biggest controversy came in the late 1960s, it was mostly a fight among white Waco leaders, though it carried racial overtones.

In 1967, using money from a bond election that year, the city moved forward with plans to run Herring Avenue through Cameron Park and connect it to East Waco by a bridge over the Brazos River.

The plan drew passionate opposition from community leaders such as Nell Pape and Dr. Maurice Barnes, who created the Committee to Save Cameron Park. Edward Cameron Bolton, an heir of the Cameron family, joined in and filed a lawsuit in 1968 to try to stop the construction.

In a letter to the city, he said Cameron Park “was not given as cheap right of way or other activities of city government.”

Bridge and road

Opponents, including Congressman Bob Poage, claimed that the bridge and four-lane road would spoil the park’s natural beauty and quiet, especially in the Proctor Springs and Kendall Rose Garden areas.

Firmin said the opponents’ struggle today is remembered as an effort to stop blacks in East Waco from visiting Cameron Park. But, he said, racial concerns probably were not the main motivation, given that the opponents suggested other nearby routes for a bridge into East Waco and that the city’s black community was apparently silent on the issue.

Fred Gehlbach, a Baylor biology professor, remembers standing in front of a bulldozer to try to stop work on the bridge. He said he joined the fight because he valued the park as a place to take his students.

“It was not a racial thing with me as it was with some,” he said. “It was about saving natural history.”

Bolton’s lawsuit made it to the Texas Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the city.

No matter how people felt about the bridge, the park was rapidly changing. Mexican-Americans and blacks were increasingly using the park, and black youth football and baseball teams made it a home base.

Meanwhile, Lions Park and the new Lake Waco parks provided competition.

Larry Simms, now a park ranger supervisor, began patrolling Cameron Park with two other rangers in 1985. “The park was basically overrun by a group of people who felt like they could go and do what they wanted to do,” he said.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald, file

Cruising traffic

And while Cameron Park always was a place for motoring, cruising traffic increasingly clogged the park.

By the late 1970s, the driving loops through Pecan Bottoms became so crowded that getting through on a weekend sometimes took an hour, city officials from the time recall. And the atmosphere became unfriendly for families of any race.

“In the mid-70s, cruising led to other things,” said Larry Simms, a black Waco native who served as a police officer in the 1970s. “It wasn’t just a black-white thing. If you weren’t cruising or involved in some of those activities, you really didn’t go. It was just wasn’t a good place to go.”

Simms said the park users would signal each other when police approached and intentionally block the access to patrol cars.

“They had a lot of illegal drug activity, illegal gambling, fighting,” he said. “The park was basically overrun by a group of people who felt like they could go and do what they wanted to do.”

Park rangers

In 1985, the city hired three rangers to ride unarmed through the park and bring back order. One of the first recruits was Simms, a park ranger supervisor today.

He said being black didn’t protect him from accusations of racial profiling.

“I knew it was going to be a challenge,” Simms said. “We were going to have park rangers in there unarmed. I didn’t go into it blind. We had conflicts. People were accustomed to doing what they wanted to do.

“People were wanting to know why we put park rangers in there. They’d say, ‘Are they trying to run us out?’ Especially toward me. A lot of people knew I had been a police officer. They said, ‘Tell us the truth, what’s the city trying to do?’ ”

Still, he said the park ranger program had an immediate effect on reducing crime and disorder.

So did the city’s decision in 1985 to close off part of the loop to stop cruising, said Max Robertson, who went to work for the parks department in 1978 and became park director in 1980.

“We hired a firm to do a master plan and they recommended taking those loops out,” he said. “That was very controversial. It was such a racially charged issue.

“But it was one of the things that helped start the revitalization of the park.”

By that point, the park had fallen into physical decline. Slowly, though, redevelopment began.

Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

A gift by Congressman Bob Poage in 1984 established the wildflower preserve known as Miss Nellie’s Pretty Place near the Cameron Park Clubhouse.

In 1987, the Junior League developed Anniversary Park in the same area. Two years later, voters approved a $9.6 million bond package to relocate the city’s zoo to the park.

The natural habitat Cameron Park Zoo, finished in 1993, has become Waco’s biggest single tourist attraction.

The 1990s saw the development of new activities in the park, including disc golf and mountain biking, events that have drawn large tournaments to the park.

More funds

New lighted trails were built on both sides of the river, connected by a footbridge on Herring Avenue. In 2000, the city built a spray park near Herring Avenue bridge. It followed with several million dollars in other improvements before the 2007 bond issue.

Firmin said Cameron Park suffered from chronic underfunding and changes in recreational habits.

“I think the city was at a loss for ways to get people interested in going to the park,” he said. “It takes a while for government or society to catch up with people’s interests as the culture changes.”

Firmin, 26, said the negative memories of the park from 30 years ago — compounded with rumors of crime in the park — continue to keep many people away. But as an avid disc golf player, he said he knows that the century-old park is safe and welcoming of all races.

“The park is just a very healthy mixture of Wacoans enjoying different activities,” he said. “It’s one of the few places in Waco where that happens.”

jbsmith@wacotrib.com

757-5752

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