"BASTROP COUNTY. Bastrop County, located on State highways 71, 95, 21, and 304, on the upper Gulf coastal plains just below the Balcones Escarpment, encompasses 895 square miles of southeast central Texas. Its seat of government, Bastrop, is situated in the center of the county at approximately 30°04' north latitude and 97°22'west longitude, a location about thirty miles southeast of downtown Austin. The terrain throughout most of the county is characterized by rolling uplands and broken hills with surface layers of primarily sandy, loamy soils, and woods where post oaks predominate but where cedar, hickory, elm, and walnut also occur. In the northwestern corner of the county and along the central southeastern border, the topography changes to blackland prairie with waxy clay soil and tall grass cover. The Colorado River bisects the county from northwest to southeast; along this waterway and its tributaries can be found rich alluvial silts and clays. Near the river, the Lost Pine Forest extends through an east central section of the county. Elevations range from 400 to 600 feet above sea level. The county's climate has been described as subtropical humid, with a low average January temperature of 40° F, a high average July temperature of 96° F, and an average annual rainfall of 36.82 inches; the growing season is 270 days long. Mineral resources include clay, oil, gas, lignite, sand, gravel, and surface and underground water.

The McCormick site near McDade has produced archeological evidence of human life in the area during the Neo-American period, a thousand years ago. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Tonkawa Indians inhabited the area, and Comanche Indians came to hunt along the river each autumn. With an early road between Nacogdoches and San Antonio running through the region, in 1804 Spanish governor Manuel Antonio Cordero y Bustamante established a fort at the Colorado River crossing where the town of Bastrop now stands. The Baron de Bastrop planned a German community at the site, but it was not until after Stephen F. Austin obtained a grant for a "Little Colony" from the Mexican government in 1827 that settlement began. Pioneers met with intense Indian resistance, but by 1830 the town of Bastrop, named for the baron, had been founded and settlers from Austin's lower colonies were clearing farms over the southern portion of the county.

In 1831 Austin received a second land grant; the two grants, Mina Municipality, took in almost all of what is now Bastrop County. The district was presumably named in honor of Spanish general Francisco Xavier Mina. In 1834 the vast municipality, comprising all or part of sixteen present-day counties, was established by the government of Coahuila and Texas, and the town of Bastrop also took the name Mina. When Texas became a republic, Mina Municipality assumed its place as one of twenty-three original counties. In 1837 the Congress of the Republic of Texas changed the county name to Bastrop in honor of the baron and allowed the town to revert to the name as well. Congress also began whittling away at the boundaries of the huge county; in 1840, when Travis County was formed, Bastrop County shrank almost to its present dimensions ...

In 1853 a county courthouse was constructed in Bastrop to replace the rented building that had been serving the purpose. The next year twenty-three common-school districts were reported in the county. Settlement was spreading through the southern two-thirds of the county, with many immigrants arriving from the southern United States. In addition, hundreds of German emigrants were joining the Americans or establishing their own communities, such as Grassyville. Between 1850 and 1860 the population of Bastrop County more than tripled, reaching 7,006, with 2,248 slaves making up almost a third of the total and foreign-born residents totaling 700. The county had 596 farms in 1860, and livestock raising was growing; the number of cattle increased from about 12,000 in 1850 to over 40,000 in 1860. Six churches were reported in an 1860 survey: two Methodist, two Lutheran, one Christian, and one Baptist. Despite the fact that the county possessed a large slave population and a growing cotton economy, Bastrop County residents voted 352 to 335 against secession. But they rallied for the Confederate cause, arming and equipping military companies and providing for soldiers' families. Reconstructionbrought tensions similar to those experienced across the South, with racial confrontations flaring around the community of Cedar Creek ...

In 1874 Bastrop County assumed its present size with the establishment of Lee County. Nine years later, the Bastrop County Courthouse burned and a new one, still in use more than 100 years later, was built. Further railroad development occurred in the 1880s and 1890s, when the Taylor, Bastrop and Houston Railway connected the Bastrop County towns of Smithville and Bastrop with Lockhart, Waco, San Antonio, and Houston. In 1894 the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, which had taken over the Taylor, Bastrop and Houston, selected Smithville as the site of its central shops. This move soon made the community rival Bastrop and Elgin in size ...

The discovery of oil in the county in 1913 led to years of oil testing and drilling at various sites. The pool found at the Yost farm four miles east of Cedar Creek in 1928 was representative of those discovered­productive but unspectacular. In the 1920s, however, oil was not the only resource being developed. County coal belts were being mined, with the Winfield mines providing lignite to various state institutions. Clay deposits around Elgin were making the town the "Brick Capital of the Southwest," and the lumber industry around Bastrop was reviving ...

The U.S. census counted 78,069 people living in Bastrop County in 2014; about 55.8 percent were Anglo, 34.2 percent were Hispanic, and 8 percent African-American. Of residents age twenty-five and older, 77 percent had completed high school, and seventeen percent had college degrees. In the early twenty-first century tourism, agriculture, bio-technology research and computer-related industries were important components of the local economy. In 2002 the county had 2,187 farms and ranches covering 422,852 acres, 49 percent of which were devoted to pasture, 34 percent to crops, and 14 percent to woodlands. That year farmers and ranchers in the area earned $27,822,000; livestock sales accounted for $23,535,000 of the total. Hay, beef cattle, horses, goats, and pecans were the chief agricultural products. Elgin hosts Western Days in June and the Hogeye festival in October. " [By Paula Mitchell Marks. https://tshaonline.org/]