The Brazos Valley

The Brazos Valley lies along the Brazos River and spans seven counties-Burleson, Robertson, Grimes, Leon, Madison, and Washington-and is centered around Brazos County. Modern-day Brazos county was included in Stephen F. Austin’s second land grant from the government of Mexico, and was originally part of Washington Municipality. Colonists who came with Austin to settle sought plantation sites on the Brazos River between 1821 and 1831 due to the highly fertile nature of the soil. The original territory was split into two counties in 1841 along the Brazos River, and in the following year the northern county was named Brazos county. 148 enslaved settlers were documented in the 1850 census, compared with 466 white settlers, and by the 1860 census the number of enslaved black residents numbered 1,063. The original county seat for Brazos county was Millican, which by 1860 was the terminus of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. Industrial progress was put on hold during the Civil War, and in 1865, federal troops arrived in Millican, beginning an eight year process of federally mandated Reconstruction. This period resulted in a huge amount of racial tension in the area, which peaked with the 1868 Millican race riot, which is also the same year the Ku Klux Klan appeared in the county. Black residents held important political and legal offices during the first few decades following the Civil War, but in 1890, local white Democrats ran a “White Man’s Campaign" which served to disenfranchise black voters, and ushered in a long period of Jim Crow. During the approximately fifty years following the Civil War, emancipated residents founded what became known as Freedom Colonies, or Freedmen’s Towns, across the state of Texas, including Brazos county. These were often unofficial African American communities which did not leave much trace in the historical record. These colonies have left a diaspora, as the younger generations moved away following economic opportunity.

Whiskey Bridge over the Brazos River (HWY 21 near former Stone City)

The Brazos Bottoms

The Brazos Bottoms referred to the alluvial floodplain of the Brazos River, which produced incredibly fertile farmland. This area, west of Bryan along the banks of the Brazos, was home to many African American communities following the Civil War. One such community was Mudville, or Steele’s Store, and was located eleven miles west of Bryan. A post office opened in 1878, and the community eventually boasted two churches, three cotton gins, two general stores, and a steam gristmill. A spur of the railroad from Bryan was built to reach the Brazos Bottoms, in order to connect the cotton farming and processing industries located there with regional and national markets. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the population of Steele’s Store was approximately 3⁄4 black, and many of the business were African American owned. Many of these prominent community members were later buried in the Canaan Cemetery, where their headstones are still visible today.

Dorothea Lange Collection: Brazos Bottoms (1938)

American Documentary Photographer & Photojournalist: Depression-Era Series

"You could write a book of 500 pages on just the conditions of us. We have to stay lean all the time, work 13 to 16 hours for 85 or 90 cents" (Quoted in Dorothea Lange Field Notes)

Water barrels on plantation cabin near Bryan, Texas

Plowboys on cotton plantation

Plantation in the Brazos River Bottoms

Sharecropper with twenty acres. He receives eight cents a day for hoeing cotton, near Bryan, Texas

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