Bastrop County Texas map
30.10° N · 97.31° W · County seat: Bastrop · 895 sq mi
Bastrop County holds the Lost Pines, an isolated stand of loblolly pine about 100 miles west of the main East Texas pine belt, growing on a deep sand formation that holds water where the surrounding post-oak country does not. The Colorado River cuts through the middle of it, and Austin's growth is now pushing east along SH-71 into the same woods.
Bastrop is on the Colorado River in the centre of the county, with Smithville downstream to the southeast and Elgin to the northwest on US-290.
Where Bastrop County is
The county lies immediately southeast of Austin, on the Gulf Coastal Plains side of the Balcones fault line, where elevations run gently between about 400 and 600 feet. Five counties border it: Williamson to the north and northwest, Lee northeast, Fayette southeast, Caldwell southwest and Travis west.
Austin is 28 miles northwest in a straight line, San Marcos 41 miles southwest and College Station 69 miles northeast. Bastrop County is part of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan statistical area, and it is one of the fastest-growing counties in it: 97,217 people at the 2020 census, with the Census Bureau estimating about 115,000 by 2024.
Bastrop is one of the original counties created by the Republic of Texas in 1836. It is named for Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, the European colonist who helped Stephen F. Austin secure his land grants from the Spanish and Mexican authorities. Caldwell, Fayette and Lee counties were all carved partly out of Bastrop's original territory.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Bastrop | City (county seat) | 9,689 |
| Elgin (part) | City | 8,150 |
| Smithville | City | 4,038 |
Only three incorporated places of any size sit in the county, and together they hold barely a fifth of its people — the rest live on FM roads, in subdivisions cut into the pines, and in unincorporated communities such as Cedar Creek, Red Rock, Paige, McDade and Rosanky. Elgin straddles the line into Travis County and is known for its sausage makers and, historically, its brick works. Smithville, on the Colorado downstream from Bastrop, kept its 1890s main street largely intact and has been used repeatedly as a film location. Mustang Ridge, mostly in Travis County, has a small piece in the county's western corner.
Roads
- State Highway 71 – the main road, a four-lane divided highway running west to Austin-Bergstrom airport and Austin, and east past Smithville toward Columbus and I-10. It is the Austin–Houston route for anyone avoiding US-290.
- State Highway 21 – the diagonal northeast–southwest route through Bastrop, following the line of the Camino Real de los Tejas, the Spanish road between the Rio Grande and the Louisiana missions. Northeast it runs to Caldwell and Bryan; southwest to San Marcos.
- US-290 – crosses the north of the county through Elgin and McDade, the direct Austin–Houston route.
- State Highway 95 – the north–south road linking Elgin, Bastrop and Smithville and continuing south toward Flatonia.
- State Highway 304 – southeast from Bastrop toward Rosanky and Gonzales.
- Loop 150 – the Bastrop business route across the Colorado on the old iron bridge into downtown.
The Lost Pines and two state parks
The Lost Pines grow on the Carrizo Sands, a band of deep, acidic sandy soil running northeast to southwest across the county. The sand holds enough moisture for loblolly pine to survive in a rainfall belt that would otherwise support only post oak savannah, and the result is a pine forest with no connection to the East Texas Piney Woods.
Two state parks protect parts of it. Bastrop State Park lies immediately east of the city off SH-21, with cabins, a stone refectory and a golf course built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Buescher State Park sits about 12 miles southeast near Smithville. Park Road 1C connects the two along a narrow, curving 13-mile route through the woods, and it is the reason the pair are usually visited together.
The 2011 Complex Fire
On Labor Day weekend in September 2011, at the end of the worst single-year drought in the state's recorded history and with a tropical storm's winds passing to the east, several fires merged into what became known as the Bastrop County Complex Fire. It burned tens of thousands of acres of the Lost Pines, destroyed roughly 1,600 homes and killed two people, making it the most destructive wildfire in Texas history. Most of Bastrop State Park's mature pine canopy burned.
Recovery has been slow because loblolly pine does not resprout: the forest has had to be replanted seedling by seedling, and volunteers and the parks department have put well over a million young pines into the ground since. Driving Park Road 1C or SH-21 east of Bastrop today, the pattern of standing dead timber, young replanted pine and untouched older stands still maps the fire's edges.