McCulloch County Texas map
31.21° N · 99.36° W · County seat: Brady · 1,074 sq mi
McCulloch County sits at the northern edge of the Edwards Plateau, and the calculated geographic center of Texas falls inside it. Five federal and state highways meet at Brady, the county seat and the only town of any size, which is why a county of 7,630 people has a road network built for through traffic.
Brady sits near the middle of the county where US-87, US-190, US-283, US-377 and SH-71 converge. Zoom out to see San Saba to the east and Eden to the west.
Where McCulloch County is
The county is a rough square in the middle of the state. Coleman County is north and Brown County northeast; San Saba County is east; Mason County is south and Menard County southwest; Concho County is west.
San Angelo lies 66 miles northwest and is the nearest city over 50,000. Abilene is 89 miles northwest, Killeen 97 miles east and Fredericksburg 70 miles southeast. No interstate touches the county; the closest are I-10 to the south and I-20 to the north, each more than 80 miles away.
Towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Brady | City (county seat) | 5,113 |
| Melvin | Town | 125 |
Between them the two incorporated places hold about two thirds of the county's residents. Everyone else lives on ranches and in unincorporated settlements such as Rochelle, Voca, Lohn and Fife.
Roads
- US-87 – enters from the northwest at Eden and runs southeast through Brady toward Mason and Fredericksburg. Melvin sits on it southwest of Brady.
- US-190 – crosses the county east to west, arriving from Menard and leaving toward San Saba and Lampasas.
- US-377 – comes in from the northeast at Brownwood and continues southwest through Brady toward Menard and Junction.
- US-283 – runs north–south, joining the other routes for the stretch through Brady; north it leads to Coleman and Albany.
- SH-71 – begins at Brady and runs southeast to Llano, Marble Falls and Austin.
The middle of the map
Brady calls itself the Heart of Texas, and the claim has arithmetic behind it: the point usually given as the geographic center of the state lies in northern McCulloch County, in the ranch country in Brady's vicinity rather than at any marked spot in town. The exact coordinates shift depending on whether the calculation includes coastal waters and how the Rio Grande boundary is drawn, so treat the center as a small area on the map, not a pin. What is not in dispute is that Brady is the closest town of any size to it.
The town has used the position. The World Championship Barbecue Goat Cook-Off has been held in Brady over Labor Day weekend for decades, drawing cooking teams from across the state to a county where goats have long outnumbered people.
Water and sand
Brady Creek Reservoir, west of town on Brady Creek, is the city's water supply and its main recreation water. It is a small impoundment on an intermittent creek, and it has dropped to critically low levels in drought years, pushing the city toward groundwater and pipeline options. There is no large lake anywhere in the county — only 8 of its 1,074 square miles are water.
What the county does have underground is sand. The Hickory Sandstone reaches the surface in northern McCulloch County, and mines and processing plants north and east of Brady dig it for use as hydraulic-fracturing proppant. The business arrived in force in the 2010s, when Permian Basin operators wanted sand closer than Wisconsin, and it made Brady an industrial town as well as a ranching one. Trucks hauling sand are a large part of the traffic on US-87 and US-377.