![]() ![]() By 1980, when the census counted 49,307 people in Killeen, it was the largest city in Bell County. The town continued to grow through the 1960s, especially after US involvement deepened in the Vietnam War and demand for troops kept rising.īy 1970, Killeen had developed into a city of 35,507 inhabitants and had added a municipal airport, a new municipal library, and a junior college ( Central Texas College). Troop cutbacks and transfers in the mid-1950s led to another recession in Killeen, which lasted until 1959, when various divisions were reassigned to Fort Hood. Joseph's parish in 1954, and around the same time, new Presbyterian and Episcopal churches were built.īy 1955, Killeen had an estimated 21,076 residents and 224 businesses. The city's first resident Catholic priest was assigned to the St. In 1956, the city school board voted to integrate the local high school. By the early 1950s, Marlboro Heights, an all-black subdivision, had been developed. No blacks lived in the city in 1950, for example. In addition to shaping local economic development after 1950, the military presence at Fort Hood also changed the city's racial, religious, and ethnic composition. Its population increased from about 1,300 in 1949 to 7,045 in 1950, and between 19, about 100 new commercial buildings were constructed in Killeen. Killeen then suffered a recession when Camp Hood was all but abandoned after the end of the Second World War, but when Southern congressmen got it established in 1950 as a permanent army post, the city boomed again. New businesses were started to provide services for the military camp. The loss of more than 300 farms and ranches led to the demise of Killeen's cotton gins and other farm-related businesses. The opening of Camp Hood radically altered the nature of the local economy, since the sprawling new military post covered almost half of Killeen's farming trade area. Laborers, construction workers, contractors, soldiers, and their families moved into the area by the thousands, and Killeen became a military boomtown. ![]() In 1942, Camp Hood (recommissioned as Fort Hood in 1950) was created as a military training post to meet war demands. The buildup associated with World War II changed that dramatically. Until the 1940s, Killeen remained a relatively small and isolated farm trade center. A public water system began operation in 1914 and its population had increased to 1,300 residents. By 1900, its population was about 780.Īround 1905, local politicians and businessmen convinced the Texas legislature to build bridges over Cowhouse Creek and other streams, doubling Killeen's trade area. Killeen expanded as it became an important shipping point for cotton, wool, and grain in western Bell and eastern Coryell Counties. By 1884, the town had grown to include about 350 people, served by five general stores, two gristmills, two cotton gins, two saloons, a lumberyard, a blacksmith shop, and a hotel. Many of the residents of the surrounding smaller communities in the area moved to Killeen. By the next year, the town included a railroad depot, a saloon, several stores, and a school. ![]() Killeen, the assistant general manager of the railroad. The railroad platted a 70-block town on its land and named it after Frank P. In 1881, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway extended its tracks through central Texas, buying 360 acres (1.5 km 2) a few miles southwest of a small farming community known as Palo Alto, which had existed since about 1872.
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