Deal a card. Go find Waco.

The hunt needs JavaScript

The hunt needs JavaScript to shuffle you a card, and your browser has it switched off — which is a perfectly respectable thing to do. Everything else here works without it: the twenty-eight sculptures of the Sculpture Zoo, and the thirty-six walls of Waco’s Walls, stories and all.

Your card stays on your phone. We count that somebody opened this page. That’s all we count — not what you found, not where you stood, not how long it took you. There’s no account, no sign-up and no email box. If you clear your browser the card goes with it, so write the code down if it matters to you. → Privacy

Ten walls we left off the card

There are ten places in Waco that we will never turn into a game square.

This Is Bear County draws Waco’s twentieth century in pencil-grey across a whole city block, and carries the May 1953 newspaper headline along the top. The final count from that tornado was 114 people.

Water on the Thirsty Land runs a river the entire length of a wall, with trees from all over the world growing out of it — a promise, painted brick by brick.

La Dignidad — The Dignity — is sixty feet of Hispanic Texas in three panels by Jesús Rivera, painted with modelled faces and real shadows, closer to an oil painting than a spray can.

Heart to Heart was painted in 1990 by an American artist, a Soviet artist and a Russian cosmonaut, standing together on a Waco parking lot — one year before the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

Metamorphosis belongs to Jesus Said Love and to the women they walk out of exploitation. Read it left to right and you can watch a woman become herself, like a sentence finishing.

Justice in a Garden keeps a light on for Dr. King on the side of a small law office on North 25th, with the line he wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963.

The Sailor at the Bow is the Doris Miller Memorial on the east bank of the Brazos: two long walls shaped like a ship’s hull, a steel sculpture carrying one piece for each of the 2,403 people killed at Pearl Harbor, and a nine-foot bronze of the Waco man who went toward the guns.

The Dream, Painted on a Bridge Pier wraps Dr. King around a surviving pier of the old Interurban railway bridge — the March on Washington, a jail cell, a lectern, a headstone. Ira Watkins painted it in 2005, and came back from California to repaint it by hand after somebody defaced it in 2017.

Holy Deliverance is a cross, an open Bible and a descending dove on the side of a small East Waco church, all three of them weathering quietly back into the wall. Nobody signed them. They were never made for us.

Freedom, in Every Language is the fountain on the Convention Center lawn, dedicated in May 1973 for twelve Waco citizens who had flown to Paris two years earlier to argue for American prisoners of war. Two of the men they argued for stood here at the dedication. A Ring of Freedom circles the pool, carrying the same word over and over in the languages of the world.

A scavenger hunt is a wonderful way to meet a city. It is the wrong way to walk up to a memorial. So these ten aren’t squares to tick — they’re an invitation. Go and stand in front of them anyway. Go slowly, and read the whole wall. They are the best ten things on the trail.

This Is Bear County · Water on the Thirsty Land · La Dignidad · Heart to Heart · Metamorphosis · Justice in a Garden

How this works

Three steps, and one of them is lunch

Everybody in the car can play the same card. Pass along the code and you’re all, literally, on the same page.

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1 · Deal a card.

Nine squares, sixteen, or twenty-five. Every card is a fresh shuffle of the real trail, dealt so the stops actually sit near each other — so no two Saturdays look the same, and none of them ask you to drive across town twice.

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2 · Go find them.

Tap a square and that piece’s story comes up. Read it out loud — they’re written to be read out loud. The wall will tell you the part most people walk straight past.

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3 · Keep it.

Your card saves itself on this phone. Close the tab, eat lunch, come back at four. Nothing here expires. There is no timer and there is no leaderboard, because this is a walk, not a race.

The three decks

Sculpture Zoo: Twenty-two bronze and concrete animals along the Brazos, from an 1870 bridge to the zoo gates. Flat, paved, stroller-proof. The easiest yes in Waco. → the whole trail
Waco’s Walls: Thirty painted walls, ghost signs, fountains, a courthouse goddess and one genuine Blek le Rat, across downtown, Franklin, the Silo District and a few worth the drive. → the whole trail
All of Waco: Everything, river and walls together — ninety-odd squares in the deck. The one that turns an afternoon into an expedition.

The three sizes

Quick Hunt · 9: Eight stops and a free square. An hour, a stroller, a snack.
The Walk · 16: Sixteen stops. No free square, no mercy. The honest one.
The Whole Thing · 25: Twenty-two stops, a free square, and two Waco Moments that have nothing to do with art and everything to do with being here. On the zoo deck it renames itself The Whole Zoo — every animal there is.

About the Find-me button

GPS is optional, and it never un-stamps anything

Keep this page open and awake. Your phone quietly stops sending your location the second you switch apps — that’s the phone, not us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It keeps the screen on and it works the battery, so switch it off when you’re done. And GPS never un-stamps anything: if it misses one, just tap it yourself.

Good questions, quick answers

Is it really free?

Yes. All of it. Always. There is nothing to buy on this page and never will be.

Do I need an app?

No. This is a web page. It works on whatever phone you already have, and it works on paper.

Can four of us play the same card?

That’s what it’s built for. Send everyone the link, or read the six-character code out loud across the parking lot. Same card, same squares, same order.

Does it work without GPS?

Completely. GPS is a convenience that stamps squares as you arrive. Tapping them yourself is the normal way to play.

What if we only find a few?

Then you found a few, and that’s a good day. Your card saves itself and nothing expires — come back for the rest whenever. There’s a Call it a day button that will make you a picture out of what you did find.

Can the kids just tap everything?

They can. There’s no referee here and there isn’t going to be one. If somebody stamps a square from the back seat, that’s between them and Waco.

Why aren’t some of the murals on the cards?

Ten stops are memorials — a tornado, a civil-rights quote, a fountain raised for prisoners of war. We don’t put those on a game board. They’re on the map, they’re worth the trip, and there’s a note about them further up this page.

The Art Waco Scavenger Hunt