Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Freeport Freeport, TX

Freeport was founded in November 1912 by the Freeport Sulphur Company on the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Brazos River in Brazoria County, and it was incorporated on February 10, 1917.

In 1957 Freeport merged with neighboring Velasco, a port town that had served as a temporary capital of the Republic of Texas in the 19th century.

Stephen F. Austin and 38 men landed at the mouth of the Brazos River near present-day Freeport aboard the schooner Lively in 1821, and more than 25,000 settlers later entered Texas through the port of Velasco.

Freeport counted 10,696 residents in the 2020 census, down from 12,049 in 2010, and just over half of its population is Hispanic or Latino.

Freeport has about 3,877 households averaging 2.72 people each, and only about 59% of its homes are owner-occupied, a low share for a Texas city.

Freeport's economy was transformed in 1939 when Dow Chemical began building facilities there that became the largest integrated chemical manufacturing facility in the United States and remain the city's largest employer.

Dow's Texas Operations at Freeport sprawl over more than 7,000 acres with 65 production plants that together produce roughly 44% of the products Dow sells in the United States.

In 1929 the Brazos River was diverted south of town, leaving the old river channel as a protected harbor connecting Freeport to the Gulf of Mexico.

Freeport LNG's natural gas liquefaction and export terminal on Quintana Island came online in 2019, although a pipeline rupture and explosion in June 2022 shut it down until February 2023.

In 2003 Freeport annexed Bryan Beach, adding 3.5 miles of Gulf of Mexico beach running down to the mouth of the Brazos River.