Travis County Once Covered 40,000 Square Miles

When Travis County was created in 1840, it covered about 40,000 square miles. That is nearly as large as Kentucky. Over the next few decades, the Texas Legislature kept cutting off pieces to form new counties. Comal was cut off in 1846. Gillespie and Hays followed in 1848. Burnet came in 1852, Brown in 1856, and Eastland in 1858.

Today Travis County covers about 989 square miles. It is one of the more crowded counties in Texas. The shrinking of its borders follows the same pattern seen across Texas: as settlers moved west through the 1800s, the state kept creating smaller, more local counties.