Bastrop County Courthouse
Bastrop, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Bastrop County Courthouse - 1883
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bastrop, one of Texas's oldest towns, anchored a county seat whose courthouse dates to 1883, in the confident Gilded Age decades when Texas counties raised substantial public buildings to signal permanence and civic pride. A courthouse of this era stood at the center of local government, commerce, and community life.
Why it matters
The county courthouse was the beating heart of nineteenth-century American civic life, and Bastrop's reflects the ambitions of one of Texas's earliest Anglo-settled communities.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Baron de Bastrop Monument
Bastrop, TX
This monument honors Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron de Bastrop (1770–1829), a colonizer whose intervention proved decisive for Anglo-American Texas. As a land commissioner and Red River empresario, he helped Moses Austin win the first Spanish contract to colonize Texas in 1821 and later served in the Congress of Coahuila and Texas. In 1837 the town and county — once called Mina — were renamed Bastrop in his memory.
Bastrop County Jail
Bastrop, TX
Built in 1891–92 to a design by prominent Houston architect Eugene T. Heiner, the Bastrop County Jail combined civic function with real architectural ambition: tan brick walls trimmed in red, a pressed-metal cornice, and a mansard roof. A clever exterior disguised the fact that jailer's quarters occupied the first floor while cell blocks filled the second and third. It served the county until 1974.
Captain James Burleson
Bastrop, TX
Captain James Burleson served as a commissary under General Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and fought at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815, with his son Edward alongside him as bookkeeper. Decades later, the aging veteran took up arms again under that same son in the Army of Texas at the Grass Fight of 1835. Born in 1758, he died in early 1836 as Texas fought for its independence.
Wallace - Holme House
Bastrop, TX
This Bastrop house began about 1840 during the ownership of Dr. L. B. Harris, in the days of the Republic of Texas, and had taken its lasting shape by the turn of the twentieth century with the addition of a jigsawn wraparound porch. Among its residents were James P. Wallace, an early Texas Ranger and soldier of the Republic's army, and brickmason James S. Holme, who supervised Civilian Conservation Corps work at nearby Bastrop State Park in the 1930s.