Notable Events
- West is the location for Westfest, a festival celebrating the city's large Czech population and their heritage. There are several bakeries (such as the Czech Stop and Little Czech Bakery) and a hotel nearby called The Czech Inn.
- Crush, Texas was located just three miles (5 km) south of West and location of The Crash at Crush, a head-on collision between two locomotives that was staged on Sept. 15, 1896, as a publicity stunt for the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad. Over 30,000 spectators gathered at the crash site, named "crush" for MKT passenger agent William Crush, who conceived the idea. About 4 p.m. the trains were sent speeding toward each other. Contrary to mechanics' predictions, the steam boilers exploded on impact, propelling pieces of metal into the crowd. Two people were killed and many others injured, including Jarvis Deane of Waco, who was photographing the event. Texas Historical Marker 5315, located on Interstate 35 northbound frontage road, between Mangrum and Wiggins Road, commemorates the event.
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Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or events:
“a notable prince that was called King John;
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For he did great wrong, and maintained little right.”
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“I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire—thinner than the paper on which it is printed—then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)