Bragg

Bragg is on Farm Road 1293 ten miles west of Kountze in northwestern Hardin County. The site was named for former Confederate general Braxton Bragg and was a flag stop on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, which was built through the area in 1901. A small community grew up around the stop when John Henry Kirby, seeking to harvest the rich forests of the Big Thicket, built a sawmill there in 1901. Although the mill was not rebuilt after a 1903 fire, Bragg became an important railroad junction when the Santa Fe system extended a branch line to the oil boomtown of Saratoga in 1904. A hotel, a depot, and a post office were built at Bragg to serve railroad and oil men in the region. The community's post office was closed in 1914. The other railroad installations were dismantled when the Saratoga trunk line was abandoned in 1934. Scattered oil and gas wells were drilled north of Bragg during the 1950s. A small agricultural community remained there in 1990.