Sample book with community resources insert

It was that can-do spirit that moved pioneers to build
the city’s first reservoir, Lytle Lake, in 1897 and to bring
electricity and telephone service to citizens before the new
town’s fifteenth birthday. It was that can-do spirit that
brought a federal building, three colleges, and a hospital to
town within its first four decades.
It was that can-do spirit that drove civic leaders to
raise $125,000 to purchase land for a World War II Army
camp that eventually would house 60,000 soldiers,
dwarfing Abilene’s population of 26,000.
That same spirit pushed civic leaders to lobby for
Dyess Air Force base when the Army closed Camp
Barkeley in 1945. The decade of the ‘60s saw an
incredible burst of can-do spirit, beginning with the
opening that fall of Cooper High School and followed by
an unprecedented bond election in 1967 that paved the
way for construction of facilities still in use today—
Taylor County Courthouse, Abilene Convention Center,
and the Taylor County Coliseum.
The can-do spirit is alive and well in Abilene in the
21st century, just as it was in the 19th and 20th
centuries. Under the leadership of Archibald, plans were
started, and are moving along, for a downtown Festival
District, anchored by a convention hotel at the corner of
Cypress and North Sixth streets.
Colonel William E. Dyess, for whom Dyess Air Force Base is named.
ABILENE, TEXAS: HEART OF THE BIG COUNTRY
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