Fruitland

Anchor is at the intersection of Farm roads 521 and 44 four miles northwest of Angleton in central Brazoria County. A two-story residence that was once the Whistler Hotel is all that remained in the 1980s to mark a once thriving town that stood at the junction of three railroads. The Columbia Tap, from Houston to East Columbia, was built through the area about 1852. The Houston and Brazos Valley crossed the original line in 1893, at a point first called Chenango Junction. In 1908 a third line was built through to Sugar Land. Four passenger trains ran through Anchor each day until World War I; afterward the passenger and freight traffic increased. A depot built in the 1890s handled all railroad business from West Columbia and Brazoria, and many "special trains" took people to the circus in Houston, to tours of a ship in port at Galveston, to a baseball game at Velasco, or elsewhere.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.