Waco, Texas

About 2 hours north of Austin is scenic Waco, TX. Not much of a city beyond incredibly hot, sticky weather; Baylor University; several surrounding farms; and what seems to be a migrant agricultural labor force. That, and the Branch Davidian Compound/Mount Carmel, about 10 miles out of town. We couldn’t resist going a bit out of our way to check out what remained, despite it being a bit heavy on voyeurism/vulturism. Not sorry we did.

Any sign of the compound itself, the siege, the fire, etc. are gone, cleaned up shortly after the 1993 incident. What stands today (in addition to what appears to be the original mail box) are four or five memorial sites, a Seventh Day Adventist Church, and the land itself. Not much more. Accordingly, our visit was pretty quick, but still pretty creepy.

Odd to see David Koresh’s name on a memorial stone, along with those of several other men, women, and young children killed, to feel the tangible anti-government vibe that still pervades the area,** and to see how quickly and thoroughly a site can be scrubbed clean. If not for the few memorial stones, it would be hard to know that anything happened there. Further, the site was almost completely hidden and would have been nearly impossible to find without the help of GPS instructions we found online: www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/1308.

Adding to the creep factor were the several million big, loud, very active bugs that have clearly taken over the premises. We saw at least two huge, scary looking spiders that had spun webs on the stones of the primary memorial site, and I was almost overrun by two inch long grasshoppers as I gave a small donation to the church (that and took the “WACO” propaganda set out for tourists). The noise of the bugs was the only thing that broke the silence as we walked around the deserted compound.

** As evidenced by the sign on the fence at the front of the property reading something like “NO TRESSPASSING. TDOT NOT WELCOME.”