Burleson County Texas map
30.49° N · 96.62° W · County seat: Caldwell · 677 sq mi · Central Time
Caldwell calls itself the Kolache Capital of Texas, and the pastry is a fair marker of who settled here: Czech and German farm families took up the sandy post-oak land between the Brazos River and Yegua Creek in the second half of the 1800s. The county still has fewer than 21,000 people and only three incorporated towns.
Centered near Caldwell at the crossing of SH-21 and SH-36. The water at the southwestern corner is Lake Somerville; the wooded band on the eastern edge is the Brazos River bottom.
Where Burleson County sits
The county sits in a bend of the Brazos River between Austin and Bryan. It has five neighbors: Robertson County north, Brazos County northeast across the Brazos, Washington County southeast, Lee County southwest and Milam County northwest.
Straight-line distances from the county's center: College Station 19 miles east, Bryan 20 miles northeast, Temple 60 miles northwest, Round Rock 63 miles west and Austin 69 miles southwest. No interstate comes near; the closest is I-35 well to the west.
Burleson County was created in 1846, the year Texas joined the Union, out of Milam County. It is named for Edward Burleson, a general of the Texas Revolution who later served as vice president of the Republic of Texas. Caldwell, the seat, took its name from Matthew Caldwell, another Republic-era figure.
The three towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Caldwell | City (seat) | 3,992 |
| Somerville | City | 1,314 |
| Snook | City | 499 |
Roughly two-thirds of the county's residents live outside any incorporated town, on farms and in unincorporated settlements such as Deanville, Lyons, Clay and Tunis.
Roads
- SH-21 – the main route, crossing the county southwest to northeast on the line of the old El Camino Real. It enters from Lee County near Lincoln, passes through Caldwell, and leaves northeast across the Brazos River toward Bryan.
- SH-36 – the north–south route, coming down from Milam County and Cameron, crossing SH-21 at Caldwell, and continuing south through Lyons toward Somerville and on to Brenham in Washington County.
- Loop 83 – the short business loop that carries the two highways around and through Caldwell.
With only three state-numbered routes, nearly all local travel in the county is on farm-to-market roads; FM-60 runs east from Snook toward the Texas A&M campus.
Lake Somerville and Yegua Creek
Yegua Creek drains the southern half of the county and forms most of the boundary with Lee and Washington counties before emptying into the Brazos. In the late 1960s the Corps of Engineers dammed it just above the town of Somerville, creating Lake Somerville for flood control and water supply. The reservoir spreads across the corner where Burleson, Lee and Washington counties meet, and it is the reason 18 of the county's 677 square miles are water — nearly all of the county's surface water in one place.
Lake Somerville State Park has two separate units on opposite shores. The Birch Creek unit is the Burleson County side, reached from SH-36 and FM-60; the Nails Creek unit is on the Lee County side. A trailway of more than a dozen miles connects the two around the western end of the lake and is used by hikers, cyclists and riders on horseback. Bluebonnets along the lake road are a heavy draw in late March and April.
Somerville itself grew as a railroad town: the Santa Fe built a tie-treating plant there, and the rail line still runs through the middle of town. Caldwell's Kolache Festival, held on the courthouse square each September, is the county's largest single event.