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Museum and Visitor Center
of the Bastrop County Historical Society

History of Bastrop, Texas

Bastrop, Texas is situated on the banks of the Colorado River and has long been a focal point in Texas history.  Before any European explorers entered the picturesque Colorado River basin,  the area was well known to native Indian groups who hunted game, gathered food, traded goods and sought refuge from native foes.  Archeological evidence of prehistoric Indians in Bastrop County indicates that Indians were present at least as early as 5,000 B.C.  One group, the Tonkawa, called the lands bordering the Colorado River  "home." The name Tonkawa is a Waco Indian term meaning "they all stay together;"  however, other Indians were not nearly as kind to the Tonkawa when choosing a name.  The Comanches, who were their bitter enemies, called them "Karice," a name that can best be translated as "cannibals."

1691
No one knows how long the Tonkawa had lived along the river before the arrival of a Spanish expedition in 1691when Don Domingo de Teran, the first provincial governor of Texas,  first blazed a trail from Mexico City, the seat of Spanish government, to the Spanish missions in east Texas.  The place where Teran and his party first crossed the Colorado is near what is now the city of Bastrop, and was later to become an important ford on the Old San Antonio Road, El Camino Real.

1832

While under Spanish rule, foreigners were forbidden to settle in Texas; however, in 1821, Mexico broke away from Spain, and a more liberal land policy was adopted by the new Mexican government. In 1827 Stephen F. Austin received permission to settle his "Little Colony," 100 pioneer families, along the east bank of the Colorado River where a new town, Bastrop, was platted in 1832 and named in honor of Philip Henrik Nering Bogel, or Baron de Bastrop. Baron de Bastrop, who had a shady past in Europe and was a native of the Netherlands, was Stephen F. Austin's friend and business associate.

1835-36
The development of the new town went forward despite Indian incursions and rising tension between Mexican authorities and Anglo settlers.  At first Bastrop leaders, having sworn loyalty to Mexico, sought accommodation with the government.  They even changed the town's name to Mina in honor of a hero of the Mexican Revolution against Spain.  But as tempers flared and attempts at mediation crumbled, volunteers rushed to join the armed uprising against Mexico in 1835-36.

The first man to give his life to the cause of Texas Independence was Richard Andrews, a member of the Little Colony.  Andrews was with Jim Bowie and James Fannin at the Battle of Concepcion and was killed on October 28, 1835.  Three Bastropians signed the Texas Declaration of Independence; several died at the Alamo; the town was evacuated during the Runaway Scrape; and 60 Bastrop men are recorded as having fought at the Battle of San Jacinto.  A leading local Indian fighter, Edward Burleson, served as second in command to General Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Following the defeat of the Mexican army at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, the men and women who had fled from their homes in the Runaway Scrape returned to Bastrop.  The town was renamed Bastrop in 1837 by the newly established congress of the Republic of Texas.  In the years following the Texas Revolution, peace came to the settlers in the Little Colony.  The economic growth of the area, which had been hindered by the fear of Indians and the threat of interference by the Mexican government, was finally able to move forward.

1837
The year 1837 began the arrival of slaves and cotton cultivation. Cotton became  the favored crop in Bastrop County for 50 years.  Lumbering activity reached a peak in the early 1840s as Bastrop mills supplied lumber to early Austin buildings, including the State Capitol, San Antonio, Houston and other settlements. The first Bastrop County courthouse, called a Meeting House, was built in 1840.  The second was built a few years later on a lot purchased from Pinkney Hill for the price of a slave girl and a mule.

1853 
The town of Bastrop grew in wealth and sophistication.  In 1853 a third county courthouse was constructed, and, in the same year, the Bastrop Advertiser newspaper began its long publishing history.  In 1856 the Bastrop Military Institute replaced the fashionable Bastrop Academy. The Institute was attended by one of Governor Sam Houston's children as well as a future Texas governor, Joseph D. Sayers.  Governor Sayers was reared in Bastrop and is buried in beautiful and historic Fairview Cemetery.

1861

Although the citizens of Bastrop voted initially not to secede from the Union, many of Bastrop's men and Bastrop Military students volunteered  for service in the Confederate armies, staffing Apperson's Company, Walker's Texas Division, Wash Jones' Bastrop Volunteer Infantry, Terry's Texas Rangers, Morgan's Rangers, and Terrell's Cavalry.  On the home front, citizens aided the Confederate cause in raising money to equip companies.  N. B. Tanner, a Bastrop gunsmith, won a modest contract to manufacture rifles while other businessmen launched a cotton mill.

1862
Fire destroyed most of the commercial buildings in the 900 block of Main St. in 1862.  Before the South surrendered in 1865, money became scarce, trade withered and the families of many soldiers fell into distress.  With slavery abolished at the war's end, Bastrop County's economic, political and social life underwent a difficult transformation.  To add insult to their situation, in 1869, the highest flood in the town's recorded history forced evacuation.

1870s-1890s
Finally, agricultural production was reestablished, trade revived and cultural activity resumed.   In the 1870s railroads north of Bastrop spawned the bustling towns of Paige, McDade and Elgin.  Steel rails reached Bastrop in 1886, and in 1894 the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad selected Smithville as the site of its central shops.  This move soon made the community rival Bastrop and Elgin in size.

In 1881, Robert A. Kerr was the first African-American to be elected to the Texas House of Representatives from this district.  In 1889, a group of businessmen launched Bastrop's first bank, the First National Bank of Bastrop,

and in the same year, the Bastrop Opera House opened its doors for theatre, music and other cultural activities.  The town could boast of fine homes and beautiful churches. A wrought-iron bridge built across the Colorado River at Bastrop in 1890 put the in-town ferries out of business.

1920
In the 1920s, Bastrop County was the scene of extensive lumber operations and coal mining which provided lignite to area residents and various state institutions.  Clay deposits around Elgin were making the town the "Brick" Capital of the Southwest." Bastrop State Park was established in 1938 when the city of Bastrop gave the State of Texas 2,100 acres of over-cut pine forest.  The Civilian Conservation Corps cleared and seeded the land and built rustic buildings from native stone and hand-hewn timbers to make the park a significant tourist attraction.

1942

The population of Bastrop and other towns in Bastrop County increased tremendously in 1942 after the establishment of Camp Swift on 52,000 acres, seven miles north of Bastrop.  Camp Swift was the largest army training and transshipment camp in Texas and reached a maximum strength of 90,000 troops.  It also housed 3,865 German prisoners of war.

In 1979, the National Register of Historic Places admitted 131 Bastrop buildings and sites to its listings. Homes date from 1832 to 1920 and at least 34 have been designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.  The Bastrop Landmark Commission has designated 75 City of Bastrop Significant and Historic Landmark sites.