Brazoria Townsite

John Austin laid out Brazoria in 1828 and said he chose the name because he knew of nothing else like it. By 1884 the town had around 800 people, several cotton gins, grist and sugar mills and about a dozen general stores, with farmers shipping crops down the river. Then the railroad went elsewhere. Angleton grew along the tracks and won the county seat in the 1890s, and Brazoria shrank into the decades of quiet that followed. Oil and sulfur finds nearby, plus a new traffic bridge, began reviving it around 1939.

What the plaque says

Brazoria Townsite Established 1828 by John Austin, friend of Stephen F. Austin, "Father of Texas". Site of tavern of Jane Long, widow of Dr. John Long, who had tried in 1819 to free Texas from Spain. Port, social center, market for colony. Burned by enemy during Texas Revolution, was rebuilt. County seat, business center till 1897. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 6.4 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 8.9 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 16 mi
  Coastal prairie, salt marsh and bays between Freeport and Christmas Bay, where an auto tour along Big Slough passes wintering geese, ducks and wading birds in the tens of thousands.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 23 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.

More markers nearby

• Dr. Sofie Deligath Herzog — steps away
• Don Carlos Barrett — steps away
• Site of Jane Long's Tavern — 0.2 mi
• Site of the Home of John Austin — 0.2 mi