Geographic Center of Texas
Brady vicinity, McCulloch County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Five miles northwest is the geographic center of Texas, an imaginary point whose coordinates divide the state into four equal areas. In straight-line distance it is 437 miles from the state's most westerly point on the Rio Grande River above El Paso, 412 miles from the most northerly point in the northwest corner of the Panhandle near Texline, 401 miles from the most southerly point on the Rio Grande below Brownsville and 341 miles from the most easterly point on the Sabine River near Burkeville. Maximum border-to-border distance is 801 miles from north to south and 773 miles from east to west. Enclosed within the 4,137-mile perimeter of the state are 267,339 square miles or 7.4 per cent of the nation's total area. Fifteen of the 50 states could be readily accomodated within Texas' borders--with more than 1,000 square miles left over. Brewster, in southwest Texas, is the largest of the state's 254 counties with 6,208 square miles, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. Smallest county is Rockwall in northeast Texas with 147 square miles. Texas elevations rise from sea level along the 624-mile coast of the Gulf of Mexico to 8,751 feet atop Guadalupe Peak in the Guadalupe Mountains. Altitude at this point is 1,545 feet. Terrain varies from the subtropic Rio Grande Valley to the trackless Great Plains, from the lush forests of East Texas to the rugged Trans-Pecos region where mountain ranges thrust 90 peaks a mile or more into the sky. But perhaps nowhere are Texas contrasts more pronounced than in average annual rainfall: from more than 56 inches along the Sabine River, nearly as much as Miami's, to less than 8 inches in the extreme West, as little as Phoenix's.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Five miles northwest lies the geographic center of Texas, an imaginary point balancing the state into four equal areas. The marker fans out from there into a portrait of Texas's sheer scale — some 267,339 square miles, a 4,137-mile border, elevations from sea level to Guadalupe Peak's 8,751 feet, and rainfall ranging from Miami-like abundance in the east to Phoenix-like scarcity in the far west. It notes that fifteen states could fit inside the whole.
Why it matters
The marker celebrates the vastness and dramatic contrasts of Texas, a sense of scale that has shaped the state's outsized place in the American imagination.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cowboy Cemetery
Brady, TX
Legend gives this burial ground its name from a cowboy who died passing through and may have been its first grave, but the record begins with four-year-old William Hughes in 1882. His parents, W.G.S. and Sarah Hughes, donated the land — and an additional acre for a school — that year, with Sarah and family deeding nearly five more acres to a cemetery association in 1932. The grounds preserve the heritage of the Deep Creek community on the Central Texas frontier.
Bowser Community
Richland Springs, TX
Around 1858 the Abel Bowser family settled at a bend of the Colorado River, and the village of Bowser Bend grew up with a school, cemetery, cotton gin, and store by the late 1880s. Recurring floods pushed the town to relocate after Paul Varga donated higher land for a chapel and cemetery in 1890, but the loss of its post office, gin, and school sent Bowser into decline by the 1940s.
Fife Cemetery
Brady, TX
Alexander and Isabella Mitchell brought their children to this part of McCulloch County in 1878, where Alex worked as a surveyor while farming and ranching the rolling land. After their deaths their widowed daughter, Elizabeth Mitchell Bradley, raised her sons on the family homesite and in 1900 deeded an acre for a cemetery around her parents' graves, the ground's earliest burials. Maintained by the family and neighbors and enlarged by later Bradley heirs, the burial ground became the resting place of the Fife community.
Rochelle Cemetery
Rochelle vicinity, TX
Cattleman E.E. Willoughby settled near Rochelle in 1883 and, over the following years, donated land for the community's school, church, and — beginning with the 1896 burial plot around his infant son's grave — the Rochelle Cemetery. As the town migrated to follow the Fort Worth & Rio Grande Railroad, the cemetery endured and grew, now holding nearly 500 graves.