Many people think that the name was originally meant to be Mina, but it wasn't. From the beginning the settlement's name was intended to be Bastrop. It is also fairly certain that Stephen F. Austin himself intended that the name of Bastrop be given to the town and area surrounding the Old San Antonio Road crossing of the Colorado. His reasons were:

1."Baron De Bastrop" was essential to Moses's colonization and had been invaluable to Stephen F. Austin as land commissioner.

2."Bastrop" had been a long-time resident of Texas and had been popular with Spanish and Mexican officials, being a Spanish/Mexican citizen for thirty-one years.

3.When the Little Colony Grant was made in November of 1827, "Bastrop's" death, less than a year before, may have been on Austin's mind when he thought of a name.

News Flash: Historians have concluded that the man this city is named after, the "Baron de Bastrop", was a fraud.

His real name was Philip Hendrick Nering Bogel and he was formerly a tax collector in Holland who had fled that country when charged with embezzlement. Even though he was a fraud, his place of honor in Texas history is genuine. Using his cloak of fictitious royalty, he was serving as the second alcalde of San Antonio when Moses and Stephen F. Austin made their second attempt to obtain permission to set up a colony in Texas. The "Baron" is credited with convincing the Mexican government to give the Austins the colony grant. It is conceivable that without his intercession they would have been turned down again.

The town was established on the site of an old Spanish post that guarded the place where El Camino Real (The King's Highway) crossed the Colorado River en route to East Texas. Naturally, Stephen F. Austin named the new colony Bastrop after its benefactor. But in 1834, the newly independent Mexican government renamed the town Mina after a Revolutionary hero. Then came the Texas Revolution. Three Bastropians were among the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, 11 died in the Alamo, and around 60 were recorded as having fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. In 1837, after the revolution, the name was changed back to Bastrop and given to both the town and the new county. Bastrop is the site of what are known as the 'Lost Pines of Texas.' This is a large (70 square miles) but isolated forest of Southern pine trees located 80 miles west of the main pine belt. In the nineteenth century these loblolly pines supported the local lumber industry.

The first edition of The Bastrop Advertiser and County News was published on March 1,1853, giving it claim to being the oldest continuously published weekly in the state. At one time Bastrop also had the oldest drug store in the state. That burned down, but, still around although not quite so old, is Lock's Drug Store on Main Street, with a turn-of-the-century interior and an old-time soda fountain. In 1979, the National Register of Historic Places admitted 131 Bastrop buildings and sites to its listings (see Historic Places). It took a while for the historical significance of this to sink in, but now there is a concerted effort to restore and preserve, with the result that the city is becoming more attractive to both residents and visitors.

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Created by Logan K. at Bastrop Middle School, Bastrop, Texas, in the 1998/1999 school year.
For more information, please contact Kathy Kincheloe at kkincheloe@bastrop.isd.tenet.edu