Leon County Texas map
31.30° N · 96.00° W · County seat: Centerville · 1,080 sq mi · Central Time
I-45 runs the length of Leon County, and Centerville sits almost exactly at the midpoint of the drive between Houston and Dallas. That accident of geography gives a county of 15,719 people a truck-stop economy at Buffalo and Centerville and, off the freeway, 1,080 square miles of cattle pasture, post oak and Trinity River bottomland.
Centered on Centerville. I-45 runs northwest to southeast through Buffalo and Centerville; the timbered strip along the eastern county line is the Trinity River.
Where Leon County sits
Leon County has seven neighbors, more than most counties in this part of the state. Freestone County is north and Anderson County northeast; Houston County lies east across the Trinity River; Madison County is south, Brazos County southwest, Robertson County west and Limestone County northwest.
No city page on this site is close. Bryan is 49 miles southwest by straight line, College Station 51 miles southwest, Waco 70 miles northwest, and Lufkin and Conroe both 75 miles away, east and southeast respectively. The nearest city of any size is Palestine, over the Anderson County line.
The county was cut from Robertson County in 1846. Where the name came from is genuinely disputed: one account credits Martín De León, the Mexican empresario who founded Victoria, and the other says it comes from the león, a local name for the yellow wolf that once ranged the creek bottoms here.
Towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population in county |
|---|---|---|
| Buffalo | City | 1,766 |
| Centerville | City (seat) | 953 |
| Jewett | City | 791 |
| Normangee (part) | Town | 446 |
| Oakwood (part) | Town | 362 |
| Marquez | City | 180 |
| Leona | City | 151 |
Buffalo, the largest town, is not the county seat; Centerville was chosen for its position at the center of the county, which is where the name came from. Normangee reaches into Madison County and Oakwood into Freestone County.
Roads
- I-45 – enters from Freestone County above Buffalo and runs southeast through Centerville into Madison County. Exits at Buffalo, Centerville and Leona carry most of the county's fuel and food business.
- US-79 – crosses the northwestern corner through Jewett and Marquez, running from Franklin in Robertson County toward Buffalo and on northeast to Palestine.
- SH-7 – the east–west route through Centerville, heading west toward Marquez and east across the Trinity River into Houston County toward Crockett.
- SH-75 – the old highway paralleling I-45 through Buffalo and Centerville, now the local frontage route.
- SH-164 – northwest out of Buffalo toward Groesbeck in Limestone County.
- SH-OSR – the Old San Antonio Road, running along much of the county's southern and southwestern boundary with Madison County.
The Trinity bottoms and the pasture country
The Trinity River forms the entire eastern boundary of the county, separating Leon from Houston County. The bottomland along it is a broad belt of hardwood timber, oxbows and sloughs that floods in wet years and is mostly left in trees and hunting lease rather than crops. SH-7 is the only state highway that crosses it here.
Away from the river the county is rolling post-oak savanna on sandy soil, and the dominant land use is beef cattle and hay. Lignite lies under the northwestern part of the county near Jewett and has been strip-mined there. Only about 7 of the county's 1,080 square miles are water, so there is no large public reservoir inside its boundaries — the nearest big lakes are outside it in adjoining counties.
The historic marker country here is thick. The Old San Antonio Road along the southern line was the Spanish colonial route between the Rio Grande and Nacogdoches, and the settlements strung along it in the 1830s and 1840s — Leona among them — predate the county itself.