• Brownwood Airport Improvements - Brownwood TX
    The Abilene Reporter-News discusses various New Deal projects in northern Texas, and includes the following: "In Brownwood, more than $350,000 was designated for improving the Brownwood Municipial airport as a WPA project. Later, another WPA project was added, constructing an $80,000 road from the city to the airport."
  • Erosion Control and Drainage (Camp Bowie) - Brownwood TX
    Until World War II, the site of present-day Camp Bowie was privately owned agricultural land. It is presently the site of Camp Bowie, a military installation owned by the Texas Military Department. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp 3818(V), active in Brown County from 1935 to 1936, was composed of 250 local veterans (hence the “V”) and was tasked with erosion control and drainage projects on privately owned land around Brown County. A few structures (now in ruins) likely built by CCC Camp 3818(V) remain on what became part of Camp Bowie, a military installation, at the start of World War...
  • Farm to Market Road 45 Extension - Brownwood TX
    This section of Farm to Market Road (FM) 45 is a 4.6 mile two-lane paved road running in an east-west direction below the south corporate city limits of Brownwood. The Works Progress Administration constructed the road in 1941 as a new access road to Camp Bowie. The military reservation had been established a year earlier in September of 1940 as a training center for the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division, Texas National Guard. The camp expanded rapidly during the early years of World War II, increasing form its original 2,000 acres to 120,000 by October of 1942. As part of the expansion,...
  • Lake Brownwood State Park Improvements - Brownwood TX
    Pecan Bayou flooded the city of Brownwood in late September of 1900 causing considerable damage to the business district and washing away the train track that served the city. The citizens of Brown County looked for a way to control Pecan Bayou. They voted in 1926 to create the Brown County Water Improvement District. The water district acquired seven tracts of land for the purpose of building a dam on Pecan Bayou. The water district completed the dam in 1932 just before another flood swept down the Bayou quickly filling the reservoir. The Texas State Parks Board acquired 538 acres of...