Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Bronte Bronte, TX

Bronte is a town in east-central Coke County, at the junction of U.S. Highway 277 and State Highway 158 in West Texas.

Bronte was founded in the late 1880s and named for the English novelist Charlotte Bronte - but locals pronounce the name as a single syllable, 'brahnt.'

The townsite was first called Oso and then Bronco before residents settled on Bronte, and a post office was granted under that name in 1890.

By 1910 Bronte had 635 residents, two cotton gins, a bank, and its own newspaper, the Enterprise, established in 1906.

After Kickapoo Creek flooded in 1953, federal support helped create the Kickapoo Coke County Water Control and Improvement District in 1959.

The 2020 census counted 933 people in Bronte, in 457 households and 327 families, within the town's 1.4 square miles - down from a peak of 1,076 in 2000.

Bronte is served by the Bronte Independent School District, and all of Coke County lies in the service area of the Howard County Junior College District.

About eight miles north of Bronte on Oak Creek stands old Fort Chadbourne, a U.S. Army post of 1852-1867 that also served as a Butterfield Overland Mail stop.

Recreation near Bronte centers on Lake Spence, a roughly 14,950-acre reservoir popular for water sports, and on Oak Creek.

The Coke County Juvenile Justice Center just south of Bronte was the area's largest employer - with about 180 workers - until the Texas Youth Commission emptied the facility and it closed in 2007, costing the Bronte school district an estimated $2 million in funding.