Town of Eagle Lake
Eagle Lake, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for lake where in 1821 exploring party of Stephen F. Austin killed an eagle. In 1851 resident Gamaliel Good started a Houston-to-San Antonio Stage line with lakeside headquarters. In 1856, with D. W. C. Harris, Good platted Eagle Lake townsite. The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad reached here in 1859. Early a cattle and farm market; after 1898 had rice production; later ranked as oil center and shipper of sand and gravel. Now fishing and goose hunting mecca. Home town of Gen. H. H. Johnson (born in 1895), military governor of Rome, Italy in the 1940s.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The town takes its name from a lake where, in 1821, an exploring party led by Stephen F. Austin killed an eagle. A stage line linking Houston and San Antonio set up lakeside headquarters in 1851, and the townsite was platted in 1856, just before the railroad arrived in 1859. Over the decades Eagle Lake reinvented itself again and again — cattle and farm market, then rice-growing center after 1898, then oil town and shipper of sand and gravel, and finally a mecca for fishing and goose hunting.
Why it matters
Eagle Lake's serial reinventions — stagecoach stop, rail town, rice belt, oil center — trace the shifting engines of the Texas economy across more than a century.
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Related people
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · Gamaliel Good
- · Gen. H. H. Johnson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hotel Dallas, 1912
Eagle Lake, TX
Eagle Lake grew up in the 1850s where three railroads crossed and stagecoaches paused, and Gamaliel Good's early hotel on this corner served the steady stream of travelers and traveling salesmen — the "drummers" — who kept a rail town's commerce humming. By 1912, when the surviving Hotel Dallas was built, the local economy had shifted to rice farming, and this house became the town's social and business hub. As railroads faded and automobiles took over, its trade declined, leaving it the last of Eagle Lake's historic hotels.
Lakeside Sugar Refinery
Eagle Lake, TX
Texas sugar-making, born before the Civil War, roared back to life around 1900 thanks to cheaper refining methods and the drive of Colorado County planter William Dunovant. He and his partners built the Cane Belt Railroad to haul cane, then erected this refinery about 1902; at its height it processed up to 1,000 tons of cane a day and turned out five million pounds of refined sugar a year. A little train nicknamed the "Whangdoodle" fed the mill from surrounding fields. But after a peak season in 1908–09, tropical storms, an early freeze, and a new law banning convict labor broke the industry, and the plant was dismantled in 1918 and shipped off to Jamaica.
Navigation of the Colorado River
Eagle Lake, TX
From 1829 through the Civil War, hopeful Texans tried to turn the meandering Colorado River into a highway for cotton, hides, and lumber, only to be defeated by "the raft" — a miles-long tangle of sunken and floating timber choking the river near its mouth. The keelboat David Crockett managed the first navigation in 1838, but goods still had to be unloaded and hauled by wagon around the obstruction to Matagorda. Despite chartered clearing companies and a state-authorized bypass channel, the raft endured until faster railroads made river shipping obsolete.
Tait Compound
Columbus, TX
Physician and civil engineer Charles William Tait came from Alabama in 1844 and opened the 6,000-acre Sylvania Plantation, growing cotton, corn, and cane and firing brick and lime. Enslaved workers hewed the logs and fired the brick that built the plantation headquarters compound in 1847. A grandson relocated and restored the double log barn and slave cabin here in 1969–70.