Brownwood

With the closing of Camp Bowie in 1946 Brownwood's wartime gains began to slip away. Attempts to sustain the growth rate of the war years were blocked by the seven-year drought of the late 1940s and early 1950s and its deleterious impact on the agribusiness of the region. In spite of the postwar depression, the city numbered 20,140 inhabitants, 71 percent of the county population, in 1950. Business revolved around wool, oil, poultry, livestock, peanuts, and pecans. Part of the business district burned down in 1953. Brownwood's population declined during the 1950s by more than 15 percent to 16,974 in 1960, and has remained relatively static over the next forty years, with 17,368 inhabitants in 1970, 19,203 in 1980, 18,387 in 1990, and 18,813 in 2000. The growth of nearby Early, located at the old site of Brownwood on the east side of Pecan Bayou has kept the combined population of the two cities at around 20,000; they comprised almost three-quarters of the county inhabitants in 1970. After the old city auditorium, the Memorial Hall, burned in 1960, the city built Brownwood Coliseum in 1963. In the 1970s Brownwood manufactured industrial and transportation equipment, furniture, clothing, woolen goods, crushed stone, livestock drenches, feeds, and also food, glass, plastic, and leather products. In the 1980s important businesses included meat packing, commercial printing, and the manufacture of plumbing fixtures, leather gloves, oilfield machinery and construction equipment. In 2000, with the development of other county communities, the Brownwood-Early area held only 57 percent of Brown County's population, but the city remained an important distributing center for the county and the region. Area attractions included Lake Brownwood State Recreation Area,^qv Camp Bowie Memorial Park, and the Brown County Museum of History.

Brownwood, the county seat of Brown County, is almost in the exact geographical center of Texas. It is situated in the Pecan Valley on the Pecan Bayou and surrounded by hills and rolling prairies.

Brownwood was one of the smaller villages in Brown County until the railroad came in 1885. Brownwood was to be the county seat of the newly organized county in 1857 but there was a struggle to keep and maintain the county government during the first thirty years of the county's existence.

Brownwood changed locations three times. The threat of Indians was constant and often disrupted life in general. The Civil War and Reconstruction days brought changes in local government and then there was another village in Brown County making its bid for the county seat.

The citizens of the village were thrifty, ambitious, yet careful people who began working together to make changes. By the turn of the century Brownwood had become the "gateway to the west".