McLennan County Texas map
31.55° N · 97.20° W · County seat: Waco · 1,061 sq mi
McLennan County is the halfway house of the I-35 corridor. Waco sits almost exactly midway between Austin and Dallas, roughly 100 miles from each, at the point where the Bosque River runs into the Brazos and the interstate crosses both.
Waco fills the centre of the county with Bellmead, Hewitt, Woodway and Robinson around it; the three-armed reservoir west of the city is Lake Waco, and I-35 is the diagonal running northeast to West and southwest toward Lorena.
Where McLennan County is
Six counties ring it: Hill to the north, Limestone east, Falls southeast, Bell south, Coryell southwest and Bosque northwest. Temple is 32 miles south and Killeen 43 miles southwest in a straight line; Bryan is 78 miles southeast by State Highway 6.
The county was created in 1850 out of Limestone and Milam counties and named for Neil McLennan, a Scottish-born settler who had moved onto the South Bosque a few years earlier. It is the whole of the Waco metropolitan statistical area and, with 260,579 people in 2020, the most populous county between the Austin and Dallas–Fort Worth metros.
Physically it straddles a boundary. West of Waco the land climbs into limestone hills and cedar breaks along the Bosque; east of the Brazos it flattens into the black prairie farmland that runs on toward Mart and Limestone County.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Waco | City (county seat) | 138,486 |
| Hewitt | City | 16,031 |
| Robinson | City | 12,430 |
| Bellmead | City | 10,507 |
| Woodway | City | 9,408 |
| Lacy-Lakeview | City | 7,199 |
| McGregor (part) | City | 5,384 |
| West | City | 2,557 |
| Beverly Hills | City | 1,877 |
| Lorena | City | 1,783 |
| Mart (part) | City | 1,772 |
| Moody | City | 1,554 |
| Bruceville-Eddy (part) | City | 1,441 |
| Gholson | City | 1,192 |
Beverly Hills is entirely surrounded by Waco, and Bellmead, Lacy-Lakeview, Woodway, Hewitt and Robinson form a continuous suburban ring around it. West, 20 miles north on I-35, was settled by Czech families and is the reason the interstate rest stop there sells kolaches; Crawford, an unincorporated town west of McGregor, drew the national press corps for eight years as the location of President George W. Bush's Prairie Chapel Ranch.
Roads
- Interstate 35 – the spine, entering from Hill County past West and leaving south of Lorena toward Bruceville-Eddy and Temple; Waco is close to the midpoint of the Austin–Dallas run.
- US-84 – west from Waco through Woodway and McGregor toward Gatesville and the Hill Country; east through Mart toward Groesbeck.
- State Highway 6 – southeast from Waco through Riesel toward Marlin, Bryan and College Station; northwest toward Clifton.
- US-77 – the older parallel of I-35, running through Waco, Lorena and Bruceville-Eddy.
- State Highway 31 – east from Waco toward Corsicana and Tyler.
- Loop 340 – the outer ring around the east and south sides of Waco, carrying through traffic off the interstate.
The Brazos, the Bosque and Lake Waco
The Brazos River cuts the county from northwest to southeast and takes in the Bosque River right at Waco. Lake Waco, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Bosque immediately west of the city, holds most of the county's 24 square miles of water and supplies Waco's drinking water; its three arms follow the North, Middle and South Bosque. Cameron Park runs along the bluffs where the two rivers meet, a large city park of cliffs, hardwood bottom and trails on the northern edge of downtown, with Cameron Park Zoo at its southern end.
The Waco Suspension Bridge opened in 1870 as the first bridge across the Brazos here, built with cable supplied by John A. Roebling's works. Cattle on the Chisholm Trail crossed on it for a toll, and it still stands over the river downtown, now carrying only foot traffic between Indian Spring Park and the east bank.
Baylor, mammoths and the airfield
Baylor University occupies a campus on the Brazos in Waco. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas at Independence and moved to Waco in 1886, it is the oldest continuously operating university in the state; McLane Stadium sits on the opposite bank, reached from campus by a footbridge over the river.
The Waco Mammoth National Monument, on the Bosque River northwest of downtown, protects a bone bed of Columbian mammoths found by two men looking for arrowheads in 1978. The excavation shelter is built over the fossils where they lie, and the site was made a national monument in 2015; it is run jointly with the city and Baylor. On the other side of Waco, Texas State Technical College occupies the runways and hangars of the former James Connally Air Force Base, which is also the county's main airport.