A Short History

Bastrop County is one of the oldest organized parts of Texas. The land along this stretch of the Colorado was used by Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, and Comanche peoples for centuries before European contact, and the El Camino Real de los Tejas — the Spanish royal road from Mexico to East Texas — crossed the Colorado River near present-day Bastrop more than two centuries before Texas independence.

What follows is the abbreviated chronology. Everything in this chapter could be its own chapter; the county has a great deal of history for its size.

Before the Settlement

The Tonkawa were the most consistent presence on this stretch of the Colorado for the centuries leading up to European contact. Lipan Apache and Comanche presence was more intermittent and more contested. The El Camino Real de los Tejas crossed the river here because it was a natural crossing point — firm ground on both banks, a relatively shallow channel, the right alignment with the next stretch of road. Spanish missions, expeditions, and supply trains used the crossing for nearly two hundred years.

The first Spanish-era settlement attempts at the crossing did not last. The land was contested, malaria was a problem, and the Spanish frontier was overextended. By the time Stephen F. Austin began organizing his colony in the 1820s, the river crossing had a name — Tahuayalle, a Spanish corruption of a Tonkawa word — but no permanent town.

The Founding (1832)

The town was founded in 1832 as part of Stephen F. Austin's colony. It was originally called Mina, after Francisco Xavier Mina, a Mexican federalist who had supported the early Texan colonization effort. After the Texas Revolution and independence in 1836, the town was renamed Bastrop in honor of the Baron de Bastrop, a Dutchman of dubious aristocratic credentials who had helped Austin negotiate his original colonization grant. Bastrop is the third-oldest Anglo settlement in Texas and one of the original 23 counties of the Republic.

The 19th Century

The town grew as a river port and timber-shipping hub. The Lost Pines made Bastrop a regional source of building lumber, and Bastrop pine was used in capitol buildings, courthouses, and homes across Central Texas. By the mid-19th century the county had a courthouse, a Main Street, a small commercial district, and a population of around 2,000.

The 1882 arrival of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad accelerated growth and gave Smithville its identity as a rail division point. Brick downtowns went up in Bastrop, Smithville, and Elgin in the 1880s and 1890s — many of those buildings still stand today, restored and in active use.

The county sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Reconstruction was slow and unevenly distributed. Freedmen's settlements developed at several locations in the county after emancipation, and a few of those communities are still recognizable on the modern map. Late-19th-century agricultural recovery brought cotton, then cattle, and a tentatively prosperous rural economy that lasted into the early 20th century.

The 20th Century

The Civilian Conservation Corps came to Bastrop in 1933 and built much of what is now Bastrop State Park — the headquarters, the swimming pool, the cabins, the road system, the network of stone bridges. The CCC stonework is still in daily use, and the park headquarters and the swimming pool are on the National Register of Historic Places. The CCC also built the original Park Road 1C connecting Bastrop and Buescher State Parks.

For most of the 20th century Bastrop County was rural — cotton, then cattle, then a quiet country-living shift in the 1970s and 80s as Austin began to grow and a few neighborhoods (Pine Forest, Tahitian Village, Circle D) were carved out of the forest. The population was under 25,000 for most of the century and only began to climb meaningfully after 1990.

The 2011 Fire

On September 4, 2011, fueled by the worst drought in Texas history, the Bastrop County Complex Fire ignited. Over the next 32 days it burned 34,000 acres, destroyed 1,673 homes, and killed two people. It is still the most destructive wildfire in Texas history. Most of Bastrop State Park burned. The recovery has reshaped local politics, building codes, insurance markets, forest management, and emergency-services capacity for more than a decade since.

The fire was the line that divided Bastrop County's modern era from everything before it.

The Present

Since the late 2010s, Bastrop County has been one of the fastest-growing counties in Texas. Major employers have built or announced facilities along the Highway 71 / 130 Toll corridor. Tesla, SpaceX, and various supporting industries have all touched the county in different ways. The population has grown roughly 17% in the past four years, crossing 100,000 in the early 2020s and now sitting around 115,000.

The county is, as much as any in Texas, in the middle of becoming something new. Newcomers, longtimers, ranchers, sausage-shop owners, tech workers, antique-shop owners, and CCC-era park rangers' grandchildren now share a county that is the same one their grandparents knew and a different one entirely.