Brazoria & Stephen F. Austin's Colony Coast

Long before Angleton held the courthouse, the town of Brazoria was one of the busiest places in Anglo Texas. John Austin laid it out in 1828 on land granted by his cousin Stephen F. Austin, and the little port on the Brazos River grew into a landing where cotton and sugar left for market and settlers, news, and revolution arrived. Under a spreading oak here, a handful of Master Masons met to organize what would become the first Masonic lodge in Texas; a widow of the doomed Long Expedition ran a tavern that doubled as a political salon; and decades later a pioneering woman surgeon made Brazoria famous for a necklace of bullets she had cut from her patients. This driving tour threads the townsite and its old cemetery, tracing the people who made Brazoria a cradle of the Texas Revolution. Drive carefully and pull over safely at each stop.