Waxahachie, Historical district in Ellis County, Texas, United States.
Waxahachie is a small town in North Texas about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Dallas, serving as the seat of Ellis County. The streets mostly run straight in a grid around the central courthouse square, with low buildings and wide sidewalks giving the feel of a typical Texas country town.
The town was laid out in the mid-19th century and grew rapidly after the railroad arrived in the 1870s, when cotton became the main industry. Many of the buildings now visible in the center went up in the 1880s, reflecting that period of prosperity as a trading hub.
The name comes from a Native American language and likely means buffalo creek or cow creek. Today the downtown retains many late 19th-century buildings with elaborate Victorian trim on their facades, shaping the character of the town and recalling the era of cotton production.
The center can easily be explored on foot, with most points of interest within a few blocks. Visiting on a weekday morning works best, when shops are open and traffic is lighter.
In the early 1990s tunnels were dug here for a large particle accelerator project before it was abandoned. These empty underground passages still stretch beneath the fields around the town, a reminder of the scientific vision that never came to be.
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