Freestone County Texas map
31.70° N · 96.15° W · County seat: Fairfield · 892 sq mi
For fifty years Freestone County ran on lignite: strip mines north and east of Fairfield fed the Big Brown power plant next door, and the plant's cooling reservoir became one of the busiest state parks in East Texas. The plant shut in 2018, the park closed in 2023 when the land under it was sold, and a county of 19,435 people is working out what comes next between the I-45 exits.
Fairfield sits on I-45 in the west of the county at the US-84 junction; Teague is east on SH-179 and Wortham northwest on SH-14. Fairfield Lake is the water body northeast of the county seat.
Where Freestone County is
Freestone County lies in east-central Texas roughly halfway between Dallas and Houston on I-45 — the stretch where drivers stop for fuel because there is nothing else for forty miles either way. Waco is 60 miles southwest, Tyler 67 miles northeast and Mesquite 78 miles northwest in a straight line.
Five counties border it: Henderson to the north, Anderson northeast across the Trinity River, Leon southeast, Limestone southwest and Navarro northwest. The Trinity forms the whole eastern boundary; Richland Creek and Tehuacana Creek drain the western half toward it.
The county was created in 1850 out of Limestone County and organised the year after. Its name comes from the freestone peach — the kind whose flesh pulls cleanly off the pit — which was grown in the area when the county was laid out. It is one of a handful of Texas counties named for a crop rather than a soldier or a politician.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Teague | City | 3,388 |
| Fairfield | City (county seat) | 2,859 |
| Wortham | Town | 989 |
| Streetman (part) | Town | 249 |
| Kirvin | Town | 101 |
| Oakwood (part) | Town | 24 |
Teague is the largest town and the county seat is not. Teague was laid out in 1906 as a railroad division point on the Trinity and Brazos Valley line, and its brick depot now houses the Burlington–Rock Island Railroad Museum. Oakwood lies mostly in Leon County and Streetman mostly in Freestone with a corner in Navarro; both counts above cover only the Freestone share. Kirvin, with 101 residents, is the smallest incorporated place in the county.
Roads
- I-45 – the north–south interstate through the western county, past Streetman and Fairfield; Dallas is about 90 road miles north, Houston about 150 south.
- US-84 – the east–west route crossing I-45 at Fairfield, west to Mexia and Waco, east toward Oakwood and Palestine.
- SH-14 – the old railroad-town road linking Streetman, Wortham and Teague, north to Corsicana and south toward Mexia.
- SH-75 – the pre-interstate highway running beside I-45 through Fairfield.
- SH-179 – the direct road between Fairfield and Teague.
- US-79, US-287, SH-164 – additional through routes crossing the county's edges.
Lignite, the power plant and Fairfield Lake
The Big Brown Steam Electric Station opened near Fairfield in the early 1970s and burned lignite — soft brown coal — dug from surface mines a short conveyor ride away. Fairfield Lake was built as its cooling reservoir, and because warm water grows fish fast the lake became known for oversized largemouth bass and for a population of red drum stocked into fresh water. Texas Parks and Wildlife leased land on the shore and ran Fairfield Lake State Park there for decades without ever owning it.
Big Brown closed in 2018 as cheap natural gas and wind undercut lignite. The mines were reclaimed, and in 2023 the owner sold the whole property to a private developer. The state park closed to the public that year, the state's attempt to take the land by eminent domain was fought and then abandoned in 2024, and the lake is now private. It remains the clearest example in Texas of a state park that existed only on a lease.
Two things survive that period: the reclaimed mine land, which supports cattle and deer leases, and the county's natural gas production, which continues along the eastern side toward the Trinity.
Wortham and the blues
Blind Lemon Jefferson, one of the first blues musicians to record commercially and a major influence on the Texas guitar tradition, was born in the 1890s at Coutchman in Freestone County and is buried at Wortham. A granite marker stands at the cemetery on the edge of town, and a historical marker on the highway in Wortham points the way. It is the sort of thing a county of nineteen thousand people can claim that a metropolitan county cannot.