Killeen, Texas: Bidding to be 2024 ‘eclipse central’

Killeen, Texas, is in the running to be selected as America’s favorite destination to view the 2024 total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Its total blackout time of 4 minutes, 17 seconds puts it in the top tier of places to go and watch.

 

It’s a military friendly kind of place, home to the U.S. Army’s Fort Cavazos (formerly Fort Hood), which employs more than 36,000 soldiers and a few thousand more civilians.

 

Fort Cavazos is considered to be the largest single-site employer in all of Texas as well as one of the largest active-duty armored posts in the U.S. military.

 

Fort Cavazos’ annual economic impact is estimated at $28.8 billion. (Texas trails only California in U.S. Department of Defense payroll. North Carolina is third in line, but there’s a large dollar gap between ranking second and third.) 

Prior to the establishment of Fort Hood during World War II in 1942, Killeen was just another rough-and-tumble frontier town that grew up along the side of the railroad. 

When the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway came through in 1882, an excited assemblage of folks observed. William “Wild Bill” Scoggins, a Methodist preacher’s son, had hitched a ride on the engine’s cowcatcher. 

“As the train screeched to a stop, Wild Bill jumped off, uncoiled his lariat and proceeded to lasso the smokestack of the Santa Fe engine,” a local historian reported. Onlookers cheered. 

The community was named for Irishman Frank Patrick Killeen, who was assistant general manager for the railroad. 

Primarily an agricultural area, Killeen had a population of about 1,250 pre-World War II. 

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. Army moved quickly to build a “military post to train soldiers in tank destroyer tactics.” Killeen was selected as the site for Camp Hood, named for Confederate Civil War Gen. John Bell Hood.

 

Local historian Margie Messer Jean said Camp Hood brought “construction workers, soldiers and their families by the thousands. At one point, about 1,000 people lived in a tent city, and some newcomers found themselves paying rent to sleep in henhouses that people were fixing up.” 

Sue Hallmark of the Killeen Area Heritage Association says one of Killeen’s most famous citizens was the legendary singer…and Army private…Elvis Presley, who was stationed at Fort Hood in 1958.

 

Looking forward to the 2024 eclipse, the Killeen kingpin may be Fred Chavez, director of the planetarium at the Mayborn Science Theater at Central Texas College in Killeen. He’s telling “a swarm of scientists, science tourists and cosmic yahoos: “Come for the eclipse, stay for the kolaches.” 

What is a kolache? The widely accepted pronunciation is ko-LAH-chee. A kolache is a “savory pastry hailing from the eastern European nation now known as the Czech Republic. It’s a pillowy pastry…filled with a dollop of fruit or other filling.” Typically, kolaches were enjoyed as afternoon snacks.

 

More than 200 distinctively Czech communities were established in the mid-1800s in central and south-central Texas. The area is commonly called the “Czech belt.” Here, the kolache traditions have remained strong. 

Elizabeth Abrahamsen is a writer for Wide Open Country of Austin, Texas, a social media site that caters to the “country and western music lifestyle.” She likes her kolaches filled with apricot, cream cheese or other sweet fillings,” such as cherries or apples.

 

Abrahamsen said Texans have turned kolaches into breakfast foods, often containing “savory ingredients like brisket, sausage, eggs, cheddar cheese, jalapenos and combinations thereof.”