Temple, Texas map
31.10° N · 97.34° W · Bell County · elev. ~700 ft · Central Time
Temple was laid out in 1881 as a division point on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, and the railroad's hospital work turned it into the largest medical center between Austin and Waco. It sits on the Blackland Prairie on the east side of I-35, about 8 miles northeast of Belton, the Bell County seat.
Centered on downtown Temple. Zoom out once to pick up Belton, Belton Lake and Killeen along US-190.
Where Temple is in Texas
Temple sits on I-35 roughly halfway between Austin and Waco — 68 miles south to the state capital, 35 miles north to Waco. It is the eastern end of the Killeen–Temple metropolitan area, which also takes in Killeen, Harker Heights, Copperas Cove and Fort Hood, all of them west of the interstate along US-190. Bell County recorded 370,647 residents in 2020, and in 2010 the U.S. Census Bureau placed the mean center of population for Texas inside the county, near the town of Holland.
Bell County touches McLennan County to the north, Williamson County to the south, and Coryell and Lampasas counties to the west. Two Corps of Engineers reservoirs sit on the western edge of the county: Belton Lake on the Leon River, north of Belton, and Stillhouse Hollow Lake on the Lampasas River, south of it. Temple's own water comes from Belton Lake.
Highways
- I-35 – north to Waco, Hillsboro and Dallas; south past Salado to Georgetown, Round Rock and Austin.
- I-14 / US-190 – west through Belton to Killeen, Harker Heights and Copperas Cove; east toward Cameron.
- SH-36 – northwest to Gatesville; southeast to Cameron, Caldwell and, eventually, Brenham and the coast.
- SH-53 – Temple's east–west arterial, running out toward Rosebud.
- SH-95 – north to Rosebud and south to Holland and Bartlett, parallel to and east of I-35.
- Loop 363 – the ring road around the south and east of the city, connecting I-35, SH-36 and SH-53.
- FM-2305 (Adams Avenue) – west from downtown toward Morgan's Point Resort and the Belton Lake shoreline.
The railroad and the hospitals
The Santa Fe named the townsite for Bernard Moore Temple, one of its civil engineers, and built shops and a division headquarters here. Railroad medicine followed: the Santa Fe hospital in Temple drew doctors to a town that had no obvious reason to have any. In 1904 Arthur C. Scott and Raleigh R. White founded the clinic that became Scott & White, now Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Temple, the anchor of a hospital district on the south side of town. The Olin E. Teague Veterans' Medical Center, part of the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, stands next to it, and Temple College sits in the same quadrant. Health care and the two hospital campuses are the city's largest employers by a wide margin.
Freight trains still run through the middle of town, and the 1910 Santa Fe depot on Avenue B now houses the Railroad and Heritage Museum and serves as Temple's Amtrak stop on the Texas Eagle route between Chicago, Dallas and San Antonio.
The rest of the local economy runs on distribution and manufacturing, drawn by the interstate and the rail yards. Draughon-Miller Central Texas Regional Airport, north of town off SH-36, is the general-aviation field; scheduled airline service for the area runs out of Killeen–Fort Hood Regional Airport, about 30 miles west. Temple's public schools, the college and the Wildflower Country Club area fill the ground between the medical district and Loop 363.
Areas and neighborhoods
| Area | What's there |
|---|---|
| Downtown | Santa Fe depot and Railroad and Heritage Museum, Main Street and Central Avenue storefronts, Amtrak platform |
| Medical district | Baylor Scott & White campus, VA medical center, Temple College, South 31st Street |
| West Temple | Newer subdivisions along SH-317 and FM-2305 toward Belton Lake |
| North Temple | Draughon-Miller Central Texas Regional Airport, industrial land north of Loop 363 |
| East Temple | SH-53 and SH-95 corridor, rail yards, distribution and manufacturing plants |
| South 31st / Midway | Retail strip between the medical district and Loop 363 |
| Morgan's Point Resort | Separate lakeside city on a peninsula in Belton Lake, west of Temple |
| Belton | County seat 8 miles southwest, courthouse square and the University of Mary Hardin–Baylor |
Distances from Temple
| City | Road miles | Route |
|---|---|---|
| Killeen | 24 | US-190 / I-14 W |
| Waco | 35 | I-35 N |
| Georgetown | 40 | I-35 S |
| Austin | 68 | I-35 S |
| College Station | 90 | US-190 E / SH-21 |
| Dallas | 130 | I-35 N / I-35E |
| Houston | 175 | SH-36 SE / US-290 E |