Arcola, Texas - A Local Area Guide
From an 1822 land grant to a freedman's community to a small incorporated city today
More about this in Arcola
Arcola sits near the eastern edge of Fort Bend County, about 22 miles south of downtown Houston, right where Texas State Highway 6 runs between Sugar Land and Alvin. At just 2.0 square miles, it's one of the smallest incorporated cities in the region, and its history runs a lot deeper than its small footprint suggests. This page is a plain guide to that history, written for anyone who wants the background before reading anything else on this site. For the full record, the Texas State Historical Association's handbook entry on Arcola is a good starting point.
A land grant that became a plantation
Arcola's ground was first granted in 1822 to David Fitzgerald, one of Stephen F. Austin's original "Old Three Hundred" colonists. By 1850, Jonathan Dawson Waters had acquired the entire league and built one of the largest cotton and sugar plantations in Texas on it, giving the place the name Arcola. The Houston Tap Railroad reached the plantation grounds in 1858, and in 1878 Arcola became a railroad junction when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe line came through the county.
A community built by freed people
After emancipation, the Arcola community that grew up around the old plantation land was formed predominantly by formerly enslaved people. A post office opened in 1869 and operated off and on until 1920. By 1884, the settlement had a sugar mill, two steam gristmill-cotton gins, two general stores, a Baptist church and a school — a small but complete community built on the same ground that had once been a plantation.
A slow, steady rise to a city
Unlike many of its neighbors, Arcola grew gradually rather than in one big rush. The population was only around 50 by 1914, 120 by 1949, and 299 by 1968. When the city finally incorporated in 1986, it had just 661 residents. Growth continued from there at a similar steady pace: 1,048 by the 2000 census, 1,642 by 2010, and 2,034 by 2020 — nearly doubling in two decades, but on a footprint that has stayed at exactly 2.0 square miles the entire time.
A city with its own airport
One of Arcola's more distinctive features today is Houston Southwest Airport, a privately owned general aviation field that sits entirely inside the city limits. As of 2023 it handled more than 42,000 aircraft operations a year, with 120 based aircraft spread across 24 hangars and 39 T-hangars — a substantial piece of aviation infrastructure for a city of just over 2,000 residents. You can find current city information through the City of Arcola website.
That is Arcola: land granted in 1822, turned into one of Texas's largest plantations, rebuilt by the freed people who made it their own community, and grown slowly since into a small, compact city that today shares its two square miles with a busy general aviation airport.