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 July 14, 2008 | Colorado County Courthouse Texas County Courthouse Project #11: Colorado County (Columbus, Texas) Colorado County was named for the Colorado River, the largest river contained entirely in Texas. But the river that gave the county its name didn’t always flow through here, the Brazos River did instead…well, sort of. Way back in 1690 when Alonso De León was busy going around Texas naming things, he came across a muddy river and named it the Colorado. Colorado is a Spanish word for “reddish” or “having a red color”. The only problem is that he wasn’t talking about the Colorado River that we know today, he was describing the Brazos River. Most historians agree that sometime after De León’s exploration a map was created of the territory he had just finished exploring, but two rivers were mistakenly transposed: the Colorado and the Brazos. The reversed names of the rivers became so universally used that it became impossible to correct the mistake. And that’s why the Colorado now runs through Colorado County and not the Brazos. Most of the colonists who settled in the territory that would become Colorado County were members of Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred, Anglo-Americans who purchased land to move to and colonize Texas in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1836 Sam Houston’s army camped here (on the east banks of the Colorado in Columbus) during the Runaway Scrape, a retreat from Gonzales eastward following the fall of the Alamo. Santa Anna’s army camped just a few miles away at the same time. Houston ordered Columbus burned so that the Mexican army could not use the town for supplies. Originally named Beeson's Ferry the name of the county seat was changed to Columbus in 1835. Supposedly the name was suggested by a resident who was from Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is sixty-five miles west of Houston. The 1890 courthouse’s original cupola was blown off during a 1909 hurricane and replaced with the current dome. 
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