Brazos Bend State Park
| Brazos Bend State park | |
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| Location | Fort Bend County, Texas |
| Nearest city | Needville, Texas |
| Coordinates | 29°22′44″N 95°35′42″W / 29.37889°N 95.59500°WCoordinates: 29°22′44″N 95°35′42″W / 29.37889°N 95.59500°W |
| Area | 4,897 acres (19.82 km2) |
| Established | 1984 |
| Governing body | Texas Parks and Wildlife Department |
Brazos Bend State Park is a 4,897-acre (1,982 ha) state park along the Brazos River in Needville, Texas, run by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The park is a haven for a diverse mix of native wildlife and plants covering an equally diverse range of ecosystems. Brazos Bend contains areas of coastal prairie, bottomland forest, and a wide range of wetlands including open and semi-open lakes and transitional marshlands. Highlights of the Park's numerous inhabitants include over 300 species of resident and visiting migratory birds and mammals such as the white-tailed deer, nine-banded armadillo, raccoon, and North American river otter. The most noteworthy and popular residents of the park are the relatively large population of American alligators. The park is open year-round, with the exception of several weekends a year during which it is closed for controlled hunts to manage the white-tailed deer population.
Brazos Bend State Park occupies land bordering the Brazos River and includes within its boundaries low-lying areas left over from the River's previous meanderings. Pre-Columbian inhabitants included a series of Native American groups, most notably the Karankawa. The land passed through a variety of landowners' hands, resulting in some of the existing structures on the Park grounds, including a brick cistern built with slave labor. The Park's current nature center is built into a structure previously utilized as a hunting cabin. Over the years, improvements were made to the various water bodies in the Park for both recreational and flood management purposes. A low-elevation levied walkway surrounds the perimeter of some of the larger water bodies (Elm Lake, 40 Acre Lake, etc.). While significant modifications were made to the land within the Park in the past, the current management strategy is to allow, in balance with the recreational elements of the Park's mission, the maintenance of a natural landscape. In 1984 the Park was officially opened to the public, its lands having been donated to the state several years previously. In 2009, the Park celebrated its 25th Anniversary with a variety of special events and recognitions. Today the Park is run by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, with the assistance of an active non-profit volunteer organization.
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