24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in West, TX

West is a city in McLennan County, Texas, about 20 miles north of Waco on Interstate 35 — despite its name, it is not in the West Texas region, so locals sometimes call it "West, comma, Texas."

West is named after Thomas West, the area's first postmaster, who sold land to the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad when it was laid through in 1881; the depot settlement grew from an earlier farming community called Bold Springs.

West was officially organized as a town on June 11, 1892, and had become a center of commerce with cotton gins, churches, schools, and doctors' offices.

Czech immigrants began settling around West in the 1880s, and the city has one of the largest concentrations of Czech Texans in the state; Czech is still spoken by some older residents.

In 1997 West was officially designated the "Home of the Official Kolache of the Texas Legislature," and it is also recognized as the Czech Heritage Capital of Texas.

West celebrates its Czech heritage each year at Westfest, a festival honoring the culture of its large Czech population.

Three miles south of West, the temporary town of Crush was the site of the "Crash at Crush" on September 15, 1896, a staged head-on locomotive collision publicity stunt that drew over 30,000 spectators and killed two people when the boilers exploded.

On April 17, 2013, an ammonium nitrate explosion at the West Fertilizer Company plant killed 15 people — including 12 first responders — injured more than 160, destroyed nearby schools, an apartment complex, and a nursing home, and registered as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake.

West's population was 2,531 at the 2020 census, living in 1,008 households, with a median age of about 42 years.

West students attend the West Independent School District, home of the West High School Trojans.