Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Buffalo Buffalo, TX

Buffalo was established in 1872 on the International-Great Northern Railroad in northern Leon County and was named for the herds of buffalo that had once roamed the area.

Buffalo got its post office in 1876, incorporated in 1913 with an area of four square miles, lost its charter in 1917, and was later reincorporated.

Buffalo boomed quickly in its railroad youth, with its reported population jumping from 200 in 1890 to 500 by 1892, when it already had cotton gins, saloons, druggists, and Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches.

Buffalo had a population of 1,767 at the 2020 census, living in 658 households, and it is the most populous community in Leon County — though the county seat is Centerville.

Buffalo sits on Interstate 45 at the junction of U.S. Highways 79 and 75, about halfway between Dallas and Houston, a location that kept the town alive as a way point even after rail passenger service ended in 1970.

Buffalo covers about 4.0 square miles of East Texas, on the route of the old Missouri Pacific tracks north of Centerville.

Buffalo students attend the Buffalo Independent School District, whose mascot is the Bison — 'Bucky the Bison' — and whose Buffalo High School serves a district of roughly 1,000 students that reaches from northern Leon County into southern Freestone County.