Historic Temple

TEMPLE, TEXAS:
“THE CITY WITH A FUTURE”
CREATING A CITY FROM NOTHING
The “Queen City of the Prairie” was forged with steel rails and tempered by risk-takers’ sweat.
Born out of the treeless waxy soil, the city of Temple emerged, as an 1895 newspaper reported, “lifted
… from the harum-scarum new town ways into a city that had gained strength in adversity and that
had never ceased to build and grow.” The history of the city that became the hub of Texas is the story
of sinew and spirit—working people hammering out new visions of the future. These pioneers have
been innovative leaders in transportation, agriculture, manufacturing and medicine.
Some pioneers became opportunists, like Otto Karl Burwitz. A native of Germany who immigrated
in 1867, Burwitz juggled various enterprises in rural Bell County. When Temple, Texas, began
in 1881, he earned a peculiar distinction: he opened the first saloon to serve parched customers,
one of the first businesses in the new railroad town called Temple, just two miles away from the
tiny northern Bell County agricultural community of Birdsdale. The year before, he and the other
few Birdsdale residents noticed the activity a couple of miles east on Jonathan E. Moore’s acreage.
Tucked alongside meandering Bird’s Creek, Birdsdale was a loosely organized fusion of farmers
centered around a school, a church, a few general stores and a post office, which had opened in
January 1873.
That was the same year Galveston businessmen, hungry to expand their trade, organized the Gulf,
Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Company. The company’s ambitious plan included bypassing Houston,
a commercial rival to the Gulf port city, to stretch rails northwestward. The projected route would
cross the Brazos River near Columbia and run through Caldwell, Cameron and Belton on its way to
the western boundary of Texas and its terminus at Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, where builders
planned to connect with the Denver and Rio Grande. Two years later, construction began from
Galveston, and the Santa Fe Railway inched closer and closer to Central Texas every day through the
power of human brawn and sinew. Three large gangs of construction laborers completed a mile every
twenty-four hours.
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A bird’s-eye view of Temple shows the
city square at the right, where the
Temple City Hall is now located.
COURTESY OF THE CANNON/BENOIT COLLECTION.
“The City With a Future” ✦ 5