Brown County Texas map
31.76° N · 99.00° W · County seat: Brownwood · 956 sq mi
Brown County is where four U.S. highways converge on one town. Brownwood, with 18,886 residents, is the trade centre for a wide stretch of country between Abilene and the Hill Country, and Lake Brownwood on Pecan Bayou is the recreation water for all of it.
Brownwood sits centre-right on the map with Early adjoining it to the east; Lake Brownwood is the branching reservoir to the northwest.
Where Brown County is
The county lies at the meeting point of West Texas, the Hill Country and Central Texas, which is why sources disagree about which region it belongs to. Seven counties touch it: Eastland north, Comanche northeast, Mills southeast, San Saba south, McCulloch southwest, Coleman west and Callahan northwest.
Abilene is 64 miles northwest in a straight line, San Angelo 87 miles southwest and Killeen 87 miles southeast; Waco is 110 miles southeast. No interstate touches the county, and that distance from the freeway network is the main reason Brownwood built itself into a self-contained regional centre with its own hospital, college and airport. The Brownwood micropolitan statistical area is exactly Brown County and nothing else.
The county was created in 1856 out of Comanche and Travis counties and organized in 1858. It is named for Henry Stevenson Brown, a trader and militia commander at the Battle of Velasco in 1832.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Brownwood | City (county seat) | 18,886 |
| Early | City | 3,076 |
| Bangs | City | 1,546 |
| Blanket | Town | 366 |
Early adjoins Brownwood on the east side of Pecan Bayou and incorporated separately; the two run together as one built-up area of about 22,000 people. Bangs is west of Brownwood on US-67/84 toward Coleman, and Blanket is a small town in the northeast on State Highway 279 toward Comanche. Together the four incorporated places hold about 63 percent of the county's people, so a good share of the population lives on rural roads and around the lake.
Highways
- US-67 and US-84 – run together through Brownwood on a southwest–northeast line, west to Bangs, Coleman and San Angelo, northeast toward Comanche and Dublin.
- US-183 – the north–south route, up to Rising Star and Eastland, down to Brookesmith and Brady.
- US-377 – southeast from Brownwood toward Goldthwaite, Mills County and the Hill Country.
- State Highway 279 – northwest out of Brownwood past Lake Brownwood, and the main access to the state park.
- Farm to Market Road 45 – the lake road along the eastern shore, connecting the reservoir's communities back to Brownwood.
Lake Brownwood
Lake Brownwood was impounded on Pecan Bayou in the 1930s, upstream and northwest of the city, and it accounts for most of the county's 12 square miles of water. It supplies Brownwood and the surrounding towns and it is the reason the county has a summer population of its own — the shoreline is lined with cabins, boat ramps and small subdivisions reached from State Highway 279 and FM 45.
Lake Brownwood State Park sits on a peninsula on the southeastern shore. It was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and the stone cabins, the recreation hall and the group barracks are original CCC work — the park is one of the better preserved examples of that programme in Texas. It has camping, swimming areas and short trails through post oak and mesquite.
Brownwood: college and camp
Howard Payne University, a private Baptist liberal arts university founded in 1889, has its campus just north of downtown Brownwood and is the county's oldest continuing institution. Camp Bowie Training Center, a Texas Military Department post used by the Army National Guard for manoeuvres and live-fire training, occupies rangeland southwest of the city; it takes its name from the First World War camp of the same name and remains one of the larger training areas in the state. Brownwood Regional Airport is on the same side of town.