Meridian, TX

Meridian is the seat of Bosque County, laid out in 1854 at the county's center on land donated by Josephus M. Steiner and Andrew Montgomery. The county's first courthouse was a one-room log cabin in the middle of town; after a fire, a tent carried county business for four years, and the present Victorian Gothic courthouse rose in 1886. That limestone courthouse, with its clock tower and courthouse square, still gives Meridian a clear civic center 47 miles northwest of Waco. The town's name is tied to Meridian Creek and Meridian Knobs, named for their proximity to the 98th meridian.

Meridian's wider landscape is Bosque County ranch and farm country, shaped by the Bosque and Brazos rivers, limestone hills, and the Norwegian immigration that began in 1854. Three miles southwest, Meridian State Park sits at the prairie-to-hill-country transition around a 72-acre lake built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The city has its own school district and high school, so the everyday map runs from the courthouse square to school, ranch and agricultural work, and the state park roads beyond town. Meridian is a county-government town with a regional landscape built from courthouse history, immigrant settlement, water, and limestone.