Excerpt: The Texas Superconducting Super Collider would have dwarfed CERN’s LHC, according to reports. It was designed as an enormous underground ring complex situated close to Waxahachie and had it been allowed to go forward, would have been considered the most energetic particle accelerator in the world. The project’s construction commenced in the early ‘90s, but only 14 miles of tunnel were bored-out prior to the sunsetting of the whole thing.
Ah, the SSC. I lived about 20 minutes from Waxahachie in the early 90s, cancelling the project messed up the local economy. My family’s house was suddenly worth way less than when we had bought it. We wound up moving away in 94 and had to pay the difference.
I think a lot about what the area would have been like if the SSC had been completed (and how bad the traffic might have been).