Elgin

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll give you every word it's got. Somewhere in Bastrop County, there's a town that didn't just grow up, it picked itself up and moved. Back in 1871, the folks living in a place called Hogeye, a pioneer settlement with a name that could only come from honest Texas soil, they looked over at the newly completed Houston and Texas Central Railroad and made a decision.

The railroad wasn't coming to them, so they were going to the railroad. They moved the whole townsite. Lock, stock, and community.

Right up to those fresh-laid tracks. Now, every town needs a name, and this one got christened after the surveyor who helped make sense of the land. R.

M. Elgin. Just his name, plain as daylight, and it stuck.

But here's where Elgin starts to earn a reputation that stretches well beyond Bastrop County. The soil around there turned out to hold something special, something that brickyards dream about. By 1882, craftsmen were making handpressed brick right there in Elgin.

Handpressed. That's not a machine doing the work, that's human hands shaping something meant to last. And last it did.

Elgin didn't just make brick. It became the Brick Capital of the Southwest. That's the title the marker gives it, and titles like that don't come cheap.

The land pulled its weight in other ways too. The whole area built a name as an agricultural center, feeding the region the way good Texas bottomland knows how. A pioneer settlement called Hogeye, a surveyor named Elgin, a railroad that changed everything, and a brick tradition that put this small town's name on buildings across the Southwest.

Not a bad legacy for a place that, not so long before, had to move just to get on the map.

What the marker says

Founded 1871 when nearby pioneer Hogeye citizens moved townsite to newly completed Houston & Texas Central Railroad. Named for surveyor R. M. Elgin and known as "Brick Capital of the Southwest." Made handpressed brick as early as 1882. Area noted as agricultural center. (1967)