What is the history of Bastrop, Texas?
Spanish soldiers lived temporarily at the current site of Bastrop as early as 1804, when a fort was established where the Old San Antonio Road crossed the Colorado River (Texas)Colorado River and named Puesta del Colorado. Bastrop’s namesake, Felipe Enrique Neri, “Baron de Bastrop” (he was not actually nobility in his native country of the Netherlands), assisted Moses and Stephen F. Austin in obtaining land grands in Texas, and he served as S.F. Austin’s land commissioner. In 1827, Stephen F. Austin located 100 families in an area adjacent to his earlier Mexican contracts. Austin arranged for Mexican officials to name a new town there after the baron who died the same year On June 8, 1832, the town was platted along conventional Mexican lines, with a square in the center and blocks set aside for public buildings and officially named Bastrop, but two years later the Coahuila y Texas legislature renamed it Mina in honor of Francisco Javier Mina, a Mexican martyr and hero. The town was in
