Cattle grazing in a green pasture with bare trees under a blue sky beside US-290 in Washington County, near Chappell Hill.
Carol M. Highsmith / public domain via the Library of Congress
Texas · Region

Washington-on-the-Brazos & the Brazos Valley

Washington-on-the-Brazos and Independence Hall, Barrington farm, the Fanthorp Inn, old Baylor at Independence, Navasota, Calvert, the Bush library and Serbin.

9 places to explore

Washington grew at a ferry on the La Bahia crossing of the Brazos, and on March 1, 1836, delegates met there in an unfinished building. They adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, wrote a constitution, and fled on March 17 as Santa Anna's army came on. Washington was the capital again from 1842 to 1845, when Anson Jones was the Republic's last president, and then faded after the railroads passed it by. The state historic site holds the townsite, Independence Hall, the Star of the Republic Museum and Jones's Barrington farm.

The old La Bahia Road ran on east across the Navasota River. Henry Fanthorp's inn at Anderson took travelers from the 1830s, and Navasota grew at the crossing, where four stage lines stopped by the mid-1850s. North of Brenham, Independence, then the richest town in Texas, won Baylor University, which opened there in 1846, and Sam Houston was baptized in a creek nearby in 1854.

Cotton built these counties on the labor of enslaved people. In Robertson County their number grew from 264 to 2,258 in the 1850s, and Calvert later claimed the largest cotton gin in the world. Bryan and College Station hold Texas A&M and the George Bush library. To the west, more than 500 Wends from Lusatia followed Pastor John Kilian to Serbin in Lee County in 1854.

What to See in Washington-on-the-Brazos & the Brazos Valley

9 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Natural Areas

Low water exposing a sandy shoreline at Lake Somerville during the 2011 drought, with wooded shores beyond.

Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway

Somerville

Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.

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Historic Sites

Main Street in Calvert, with brick storefronts and a two-story building with a long porch under a cloud-dotted sky.

Calvert

Calvert

A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.

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The grounds of the Fanthorp Inn site in Anderson: a grassy yard with a low stone border and a tall pine, with bare trees beyond.

Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site

Anderson

A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

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The long white colonnade of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M, behind a bed of red flowers.

George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

College Station

The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.

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The four stone columns of the old Baylor Female College standing on a stone base under oak branches at Independence.

Independence and Old Baylor Park

Brenham

A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.

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Navasota City Hall at night, a brick building with a lit clock tower beside flagpoles flying the United States and Texas flags.

Navasota

Navasota

A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.

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Star of the Republic Museum

Navasota

A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.

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Two reenactors in period dress beside a canvas tent at the Texas Independence Day reenactment at Washington-on-the-Brazos.

Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site

Navasota

The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

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Towns & Gateways

The long nave of St. Paul Lutheran Church at Serbin, with blue and white galleries, white columns and dark wooden pews.

Texas Wendish Heritage Museum

Giddings

A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.

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Washington-on-the-Brazos & the Brazos Valley rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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