City of Brownwood
Brownwood, Brown County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(first site 1 mile E; second, 5 miles SE, present location) Settled 1857. Acquired a post office 1858. An oil vein ruined 1860s water well of townsite donor Greenleaf Fisk. Wagon-yard keeper Martin Meinsinger sold medicinal oil from 1878 well. Commercial drilling began 1889. Farming, cotton sales, business town since 1880s; was reached by Santa Fe Railroad, 1885; Frisco, 1890. Two colleges -- Daniel Baker and Howard Payne -- were situated here in 1889. Camp Bowie, World War II Military Post, operated in Brownwood from 1940 to 1946. Center for agriculture-retail sales-industry. Has a coliseum, parks, 110 miles of lake shore. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settled in 1857 and given a post office the next year, Brownwood grew from a frontier townsite donated by Greenleaf Fisk into a Central Texas hub for cotton, farming, and trade. The Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1885 and the Frisco in 1890, and by 1889 two colleges — Daniel Baker and Howard Payne — called it home. During World War II the huge Camp Bowie military post operated here from 1940 to 1946.
Why it matters
Brownwood's arc from frontier settlement to railroad, college, and wartime-training town mirrors how much of inland Texas grew up across the late 19th and 20th centuries.
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Related people
- · Greenleaf Fisk
Related events
- · Camp Bowie
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bangs Public Schools
Bangs, TX
The town of Bangs grew up along the Santa Fe Railroad, which deeded land for a school and helped anchor the young community. Its first schoolhouse, a two-room frame building, opened in 1892 with a single teacher, Miss Clemie King, and 35 pupils. A larger two-story stone building followed in 1903, and over the decades nine surrounding rural schools consolidated into the Bangs system.
Lovell-Dobbs House
Brownwood, TX
Scottish-born contractor Tom Lovell built this two-story Brownwood home around 1889, during a career that also produced courthouses, a local Episcopal church, and even a state capitol building in Arizona. In 1902 it passed to the Rev. Charles Holt Dobbs and his wife Elizabeth, Presbyterian missionaries who rode the rural country around Brownwood as traveling teachers. Their daughters Anna and Bess later ran a kindergarten in the house for more than thirty years.
J. A. Walker House
Brownwood, TX
By 1901, Brownwood was prosperous enough for a leading citizen to build a home that announced his standing. J. A. Walker, a prominent Texas Baptist and early benefactor of Howard Payne University, raised this Colonial Revival house with its ornate portico and wraparound veranda. It stayed in the Walker family for more than 75 years before a careful 1979 restoration.
Brooke Smith
Brownwood, TX
Born in Virginia in 1853 and drawn west to Waco and then frontier Brownwood, Brooke Smith opened a general store in 1876 with partners Sol Lyons and Otto Steffens. With no bank in town, their store safe held ranchers' and farmers' deposits — an arrangement that grew into Pecan Valley Bank. As mayor from 1886, Smith brought Brownwood its first water system, championed the dam that became Lake Brownwood, backed local colleges, and helped secure the rail lines that assured the town's future.