1.
Austin, Texas
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Austin is the capital of the U. S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. It is the 11th-most populous city in the U. S. and it is the fastest growing large city in the United States and the second most populous capital city after Phoenix, Arizona. As of the U. S. Census Bureaus July 1,2015 estimate and it is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 2,056,405 as of July 1,2016. In the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River, in 1839, the site was officially chosen to replace Houston as the new capital of the Republic of Texas and was incorporated under the name Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas and the republics first secretary of state. The city subsequently grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin. After a lull in growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its development into a city and, by the 1980s, it emerged as a center for technology. A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin, including Amazon. com, cisco, eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Texas Instruments, 3M, and Whole Foods Market. Dells worldwide headquarters is located in nearby Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, residents of Austin are known as Austinites. They include a mix of government employees, college students, musicians, high-tech workers, blue-collar workers. The city also adopted Silicon Hills as a nickname in the 1990s due to an influx of technology. In the late 1800s, Austin was known as the City of the Violet Crown because of the glow of light across the hills just after sunset. Even today, many Austin businesses use the term Violet Crown in their name, Austin is known as a clean-air city for its stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars. The FBI ranked Austin as the second-safest major city in the U. S. for the year 2012, U. S. News & World Report named Austin the best place to live in the U. S. in 2017. Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of habitation since at least 9200 BC. When settlers arrived from Europe, the Tonkawa tribe inhabited the area, the Comanches and Lipan Apaches were also known to travel through the area. Spanish colonists, including the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area for centuries, in 1730, three missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in area for only about seven months
2.
Texas
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Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Other major cities include Austin, the second most populous state capital in the U. S. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify its former status as an independent republic, and as a reminder of the states struggle for independence from Mexico. The Lone Star can be found on the Texan state flag, the origin of Texass name is from the word Tejas, which means friends in the Caddo language. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10 percent of Texas land area is desert. Most of the centers are located in areas of former prairies, grasslands, forests. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the term six flags over Texas refers to several nations that have ruled over the territory. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas, Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the United States as the 28th state, the states annexation set off a chain of events that caused the Mexican–American War in 1846. A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, after the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. One Texan industry that thrived after the Civil War was cattle, due to its long history as a center of the industry, Texas is associated with the image of the cowboy. The states economic fortunes changed in the early 20th century, when oil discoveries initiated a boom in the state. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy, as of 2010 it shares the top of the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with California at 57. With a growing base of industry, the leads in many industries, including agriculture, petrochemicals, energy, computers and electronics, aerospace. Texas has led the nation in export revenue since 2002 and has the second-highest gross state product. The name Texas, based on the Caddo word tejas meaning friends or allies, was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves, during Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas, La Provincia de Texas. Texas is the second largest U. S. state, behind Alaska, though 10 percent larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Chile, Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers, the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Stephen F. Austin
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Stephen Fuller Austin was an American empresario born in Virginia and raised in southeastern Missouri. Known as the Father of Texas, and the founder of Texas, he led the second, in addition, he worked with the Mexican government to support emigration from the United States. He was also granted Mexican nationality when settling Texas, Stephen F. Austin was born in the mining region of southwestern Virginia in what is known as Austinville today, some 256 miles southwest of Richmond, Virginia. He was the child of Moses Austin and Mary Brown Austin. On June 8,1798, when Stephen was four years old, his family moved west to the region of present-day Potosi. His father Moses Austin received a sitio from the Spanish government for the site of Mine à Breton. His great-great-grandfather Anthony Austin in Bishopstoke, Hampshire, England, he and his wife Esther were original settlers of Suffield, after graduating, Austin began studying to be a lawyer, at age 21, he served in the legislature of the Missouri Territory. As a member of the legislature, he was influential in obtaining a charter for the struggling Bank of St. Louis. Left penniless after the Panic of 1819, Austin decided to move south to the new Arkansas Territory and he acquired property on the south bank of the Arkansas River, in the area that would later become Little Rock. After purchasing the property, he learned the area was being considered as the location for the new territorial capital and he made his home in Hempstead County, Arkansas. Two weeks before the first Arkansas territorial elections in 1820, Austin declared his candidacy for Congress and his late entrance meant his name did not appear on the ballot in two of the five counties, but he still placed second in the field of six candidates. He was later appointed as a judge for the First Circuit Court, over the next few months, Little Rock did become the territorial capital, but Austins claim to land in the area was contested, and the courts ruled against him. The Territorial Assembly reorganized the government and abolished Austins judgeship, Austin left the territory, moving to Louisiana. He reached New Orleans in November 1820, where he met and stayed with New Orleans lawyer and former Kentucky congressman Joseph H. Hawkins and made arrangement to study law. During Austins time in Arkansas, his father traveled to Spanish Texas, Moses Austin caught pneumonia soon after returning to Missouri. He left his empresario grant to his son Stephen, Austin boarded the steamer Beaver and departed to New Orleans to meet Spanish officials led by Erasmo Seguín. He was at Natchitoches, Louisiana, on June 31,1821 and this news has effected me very much, he was one of the most feeling and affectionate Fathers that ever lived. His faults I now say, and always have, were not of the heart, at the age of 24, Austin led his party to travel 300 miles in four weeks to San Antonio with the intent of reauthorizing his fathers grant, arriving on August 12
5.
Bellville, Texas
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Bellville is a city in the U. S. state of Texas and the seat of Austin County. The citys population was 4,097 at the 2010 census, Bellville was named for Thomas B. Bell, one of Stephen F. Austins earliest colonists, after he, the original county seat was located in San Felipe. Bellville is located at the intersection of State Highway 36 and State Highway 159 as well as FM529, FM1456 and it is home to Trump Cafe, a restaurant named in honor of President Donald Trump. Bellville is located in southern Austin County at 29°56′50″N 96°15′31″W, Sealy, along Interstate 10, is 10 miles to the south, Hempstead is 15 miles to the northeast, and Brenham is 18 miles to the northwest. Downtown Houston is 64 miles to the southeast via Sealy and Interstate 10, according to the United States Census Bureau, Bellville has a total area of 2.7 square miles, all of it land. As of the census of 2000, there were 3,794 people,1,425 households, the population density was 1,452.0 people per square mile. There were 1,566 housing units at a density of 599.3 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 81. 89% White,11. 68% African American,0. 40% Native American,0. 34% Asian,3. 95% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 11. 97% of the population. 27. 9% of all households were made up of individuals and 15. 3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.52 and the average family size was 3.11. In the city, the population was out with 26. 4% under the age of 18,8. 3% from 18 to 24,25. 3% from 25 to 44,20. 2% from 45 to 64. The median age was 38 years, for every 100 females there were 90.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.1 males, the median income for a household in the city was $40,806, and the median income for a family was $49,730. Males had an income of $36,719 versus $21,685 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,671, about 4. 5% of families and 8. 0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7. 9% of those under age 18 and 8. 1% of those age 65 or over. Bellville Independent School District serves Bellville, the Köppen Climate System describes the weather as humid subtropical, and uses the abbreviation Cfa
6.
Sealy, Texas
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Sealy is a city in Austin County in southeastern Texas, United States, within the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area. The population was 6,019 at the 2010 census, Sealy is located 50 miles west of the downtown Houston area. Sealy is located at 29°46′27″N 96°9′27″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 15.5 square miles, of which,13.38 square miles of it is land and 0.16 square miles is water. Sealy is 50 miles west of Downtown Houston, san Felipe, Texas, sold part of its original 22, 000-acre township to the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad to create Sealy in 1879. Sealy gets its name after business tycoon and majority stock holder of the GCSF RR, in 1881, Daniel Haynes, a cotton gin builder, filled a request for a cotton-filled mattress which started a company. He named this the Sealy Mattress Company after the town, business grew exponentially, which led to more innovation and several patents, such as a machine that compressed cotton. As of the census of 2000, there were 5,248 people,1,882 households, the population density was 759.3 people per square mile. There were 2,077 housing units at a density of 300.5 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 75. 1% White,12. 3% African American,0. 30% Native American,0. 55% Asian,12. 88% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 30. 43% of the population. 24. 5% of all households were made up of individuals and 11. 7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.75 and the average family size was 3.30. In the city, the population was out with 30. 2% under the age of 18,9. 3% from 18 to 24,28. 9% from 25 to 44,19. 2% from 45 to 64. The median age was 33 years, for every 100 females there were 91.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.8 males, the median income for a household in the city was $34,277, and the median income for a family was $40,348. Males had an income of $28,720 versus $20,793 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,986, about 11. 2% of families and 15. 6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18. 9% of those under age 18 and 13. 5% of those age 65 or over. People who live in Sealy are zoned to schools in Sealy Independent School District, the schools in Sealy ISD are Selman Elementary School, Selman Intermediate School, Sealy Junior High School, and Sealy High School. All of the schools are in Sealy, blinn College has a Sealy Campus located along Interstate 10 east of State Highway 36. The Greyhound Bus Lines operates the Sealy Station at Mazac Muffler City AC
7.
Texas's 10th congressional district
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Texas District 10 of the United States House of Representatives is a congressional district that serves the northwestern portion of the Greater Houston region stretching to the Austin area of Texas. The current representative is Michael McCaul, list of United States congressional districts Martis, Kenneth C. The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, the Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present
8.
Houston
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Houston is the most populous city in the state of Texas and the fourth-most populous city in the United States. With a census-estimated 2014 population of 2.239 million within an area of 667 square miles, it also is the largest city in the southern United States and the seat of Harris County. Located in Southeast Texas near the Gulf of Mexico, it is the city of Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land. Houston was founded on August 28,1836, near the banks of Buffalo Bayou and incorporated as a city on June 5,1837. The city was named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had commanded, the burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the citys population. Houstons economy has an industrial base in energy, manufacturing, aeronautics. Leading in health care sectors and building equipment, Houston has more Fortune 500 headquarters within its city limits than any city except for New York City. The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled, the city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse city in Texas and has described as the most diverse in the United States. It is home to cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year to the Museum District. Houston has a visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District. In August 1836, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York, Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen, purchased 6,642 acres of land along Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city. The Allen brothers decided to name the city after Sam Houston, the general at the Battle of San Jacinto. The great majority of slaves in Texas came with their owners from the slave states. Sizable numbers, however, came through the slave trade. New Orleans was the center of trade in the Deep South. Thousands of enslaved African Americans lived near the city before the Civil War, many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations, while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs. Houston was granted incorporation on June 5,1837, with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor, in the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas
9.
The Woodlands, Texas
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The Woodlands is a master-planned community and census-designated place in the U. S. state of Texas in the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area. According to The Woodlands Development Company, the population was 107,769 as of a January 2014 estimate and it is 28 miles north of Houston along Interstate 45. It won a Special Award for Excellence in 1994 from the Urban Land Institute and it was dedicated by George P. Mitchell in 1974 and managed by The Woodlands Corporation as an extension of Mitchell Energy & Development. Mitchell, an oil businessman, planned to establish a center, hotels, office parks, retail malls, schools, large distribution centers. Houses would range from affordable to expensive and large, Bill Schadewald of the Houston Business Journal said that Mitchell wanted the development to entice city slickers looking for far-flung suburban quality of life. Schadewald said that sources stated that the HUD New Town program. The Woodlands Corporation was acquired on July 31,1997, by a partnership between Morgan Stanley and Crescent Real Estate Equities, in December 2003, The Rouse Company acquired Crescents interest, and Rouse was bought by General Growth Properties on November 12,2004. In 2011 The Woodlands was sold to the Howard Hughes Development Corporation, the land was previously occupied by the Grogan-Cochran Lumber Mill, hence Grogans Mill and Cochrans Crossing neighborhoods, called villages. The original development plan included environmental design principles espoused by Ian McHarg and it continues to grow residentially and commercially as many companies are moving there. The Town Center includes shopping and eating facilities, a waterway resembling the San Antonio River Walk, on September 13,2008, it sustained extensive damage from Hurricane Ike. Sustained winds of 85 mph brought down thousands of trees, powerlines, Ike was the first hurricane to directly affect the area since Hurricane Alicia in 1983. The summer of 2011 brought an unprecedented drought throughout Texas, which caused thousands of trees to die and requiring they be taken down, in 2011, Schadewald said Now, Obviously, The Woodlands had quite a future. Somewhere between First Colony and The Woodlands, I realized why visionary real estate developers strike it rich more often than real estate reporters. In 2012, the U. S. Mitchells original plan was for The Woodlands to be annexed by the city of Houston, in the middle part of the 2000s, some residents feared such an annexation, as had happened to the Kingwood development almost a decade before. To counteract any possible move by the city, a movement began to create an independent city government, however, the formation of an independent government would require authorization by the State of Texas and the City of Houston, as Houston held extraterritorial jurisdiction over the area. In 2007, two state legislators representing Woodlands, Sen. Tommy Williams and Rep. Robert Eissler, created and passed two bills in the 2007 Legislature – House Bill 4109 and Senate Bill 1012, the passage of these bills allowed an opportunity for The Woodlands to incorporate itself. The Woodlands is primarily in Montgomery County, Texas, with a portion of the CDP in Harris County. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has an area of 43.9 square miles, of which 43.3 square miles is land and 0.58 square miles, or 1. 32%, is water
10.
Sugar Land, Texas
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Sugar Land is a city in the U. S. state of Texas. The city is within the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area and Fort Bend County and it is one of the most affluent and fastest-growing cities in Texas, having grown more than 158 percent between 2000 and 2010. In the time period of 2000–2007, Sugar Land also enjoyed a 46. 24% job growth, as of the 2010 census, the citys population was 78,817. In 2015 the population had risen to an estimated 88,156, founded as a sugar plantation in the early mid-20th century and incorporated in 1959, Sugar Land is the largest city and economic center of Fort Bend County. Sugar Land is home to the headquarters of Imperial Sugar, recognizing this heritage, the Imperial Sugar crown logo can be seen in the city seal and logo. Sugar Lands heritage traces its roots back to the original Mexican land grant to Stephen F. Austin, Williams brother, Nathaniel, purchased the land in 1838. They operated the plantation by growing cotton, corn, and sugarcane, during these early years, the area that is now Sugar Land was the center of social life along the Brazos River. In 1853, Benjamin Terry and William J. Kyle purchased the Oakland Plantation from the Williams family, Terry is known for organizing Terrys Texas Rangers during the Civil War and for naming the town. Upon the deaths of Terry and Kyle, Colonel E. H. Cunningham bought the 12, 500-acre plantation soon after the Civil War, and developed the town around his sugar-refining plant around 1879. The Ellis Plantation had originally been part of the Jesse Cartwright league, in 1908, the partnership acquired the adjoining 12, 500-acre Cunningham Plantation, with its raw-sugar mill and cane-sugar refinery. Around the turn of the 20th century, most of the crops were destroyed by a harsh winter. As part of the Kempner-Eldridge agreement, Eldridge moved to the site to serve as general manager, the trains running through Sugar Land are on the route of the oldest railroad in Texas. As a company town from the 1910s until 1959, Sugar Land was virtually self-contained, Imperial Sugar Company provided housing for the workers, encouraged construction of schools, built a hospital for the workers well-being, and provided businesses to meet the workers needs. Many of the homes built by the Imperial Sugar Company remain today in The Hill and Mayfield Park areas of Sugar Land. During the 1950s, Imperial Sugar wanted to expand the town by building more houses and this led to the creation of a new subdivision, Venetian Estates, which featured waterfront homesites on Oyster Creek and on man-made lakes. As the company expanded, so did the interest of establishing a municipal government. Voters chose to make Sugar Land a general law city in 1959, in the early 1970s, a new subdivision development called Covington Woods was constructed. Later that year, the Imperial Cattle Ranch sold about 1,200 acres to a developer to create what became Sugar Creek in 1968, as a master-planned community, Sugar Creek introduced country club living, with two golf courses and country clubs, swimming pools, and security
11.
Greater Houston
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Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land is a nine-county metropolitan area defined by the Office of Management and Budget. It is located along the Gulf Coast region in the U. S. state of Texas, the metropolitan area is colloquially referred to as Greater Houston and is situated in Southeast Texas. The population of the area is centered in the city of Houston—the largest economic. Houston is among the metropolitan areas in the United States. From 2000 to 2007, the area grew by 912,994 people, from 2000 to 2030, the metropolitan area is projected by Woods & Poole Economics to rank fifth in the nation in population growth—adding 2.66 million people. It is a part of the Texas Triangle megapolitan area, the OMB lumps the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugarland MSA with four micropolitan statistical areas to form the Houston-The Woodlands, TX Combined Statistical Area. Bay City, Brenham, El Campo, and Huntsville, the metropolitan area is located in the Gulf Coastal Plains biome, and its vegetation is classified as temperate grassland. Much of the area was built on forested land, marshes, swamp. The Houston area land mass is very diverse, there is forested land and hills to the north, beaches and grasslands to the south, swamps and marshlands to the east, rice fields and praires to the west. Much of the Houston metropolitan area is flat, making flooding a recurring problem for some areas. Underpinning Houstons land surface are unconsolidated clays, clay shales, the regions geology developed from stream deposits formed from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains. These sediments consist of a series of sands and clays deposited on decaying organic matter that, over time, transformed into oil, beneath these tiers is a water-deposited layer of halite, a rock salt. The porous layers were compressed over time and forced upward, as it pushed upward, the salt dragged surrounding sediments into dome shapes, often trapping oil and gas that seeped from the surrounding porous sands. This thick, rich soil provides a good environment for rice farming in suburban outskirts into which the city continues to grow near Katy. Evidence of past rice farming is still evident in developed areas as an abundance of rich, dark. The Houston region is generally earthquake-free and these faults generally move at a smooth rate in what is termed fault creep. As defined by the Office of Management and Budget, the area of Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land encompasses nine counties in Texas. They are listed below with figures as of the 2010 U. S. Census
12.
Travis County, Texas
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Travis County is a county located in south central Texas. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,024,266 and it is the fifth-most populous county in Texas. Its county seat is Austin, the capital of Texas, the county was established in 1840 and is named in honor of William Barret Travis, the commander of the Republic of Texas forces at the Battle of the Alamo. Travis County is part of the Austin-Round Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area and it is located along the Balcones Fault, the boundary between the Edwards Plateau to the west and the Blackland Prairie to the east. Evidence of habitation of the Balcones Escarpment region of Texas can be traced to at least 11,000 years ago, two of the oldest Paleolithic archeological sites in Texas, the Levi Rock Shelter and Smith Rock Shelter, are located in southwest and southeast Travis County, respectively. Several hundred years before the arrival of European settlers, the area was inhabited by a variety of nomadic Native American tribes and these indigenous peoples fished and hunted along the creeks, including present-day Barton Springs, which proved to be a reliable campsite. At the time of the first permanent settlement of the area, the region was claimed by the Spanish Empire in the 1600s, but at the time no attempt was made to settle the area. In 1691 Domingo Terán de los Ríos made a tour through East Texas that likely took him through Travis Country. The first European settlers in the area were a group of Spanish friars who arrived from East Texas in July 1730. They established three missions, La Purísima Concepción, San Francisco de los Neches and San José de los Nazonis. The friars found conditions undesirable and relocated to the San Antonio River within a year of their arrival, in 1821 Mexico won its independence from Spain, and the new government enacted laws encouraging colonists to settle the Texas frontier by granting them land and reduced taxation. Over the next decade, thousands of immigrants moved into Texas, in particular, American empresario Stephen F. Austin established one of his colonies near what is now Bastrop. Josiah and Mathias Wilbarger, Reuben Hornsby, Jacob M. Harrell, in 1836 Texas declared and won its independence from Mexico, forming a new Republic of Texas. After Texas Vice President Mirabeau B, lamar visited central Texas during a buffalo-hunting expedition between 1837 and 1838, he proposed that the republics capital be relocated to a site on the north bank of the Colorado River. In 1839 the site was chosen as the republics new capital and given the name Waterloo, Texas. A new county was established the following year, of which Austin would be the seat. In 1861 Travis County was one of the few Texas counties to vote against secession from the Union, since the majority of the state did favor secession, Travis County then became a part of the Confederacy for the duration of the Civil War. After the Confederacys defeat, Texas was fully readmitted to the Union in 1870, according to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,023 square miles, of which 990 square miles is land and 33 square miles is water
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Austin County, Texas
