Biohazard Cleanup Near Valencia Richmond, TX

Richmond is the county seat of Fort Bend County, Texas, a Houston suburb located on the Brazos River about fifteen miles southwest of Houston.

In 1822, a group of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists camped near present-day Richmond and built a fort called Fort Bend at a bend in the Brazos River.

The town of Richmond was established in early 1837 by Robert Eden Handy and William Lusk, was named after Richmond, England, and was among the first cities incorporated by the Republic of Texas in May 1837.

When Fort Bend County was formed in December 1837, Richmond became its seat of government, a role it still holds today.

On August 16, 1889, Richmond was the site of the Battle of Richmond, an armed fight that ended the Jaybird–Woodpecker War, a violent feud over political control of Fort Bend County.

Richmond's historic Morton Cemetery, established in 1825, holds the graves of Texas lore figures Jane Long, Deaf Smith, and Mirabeau Lamar, as well as Walter Moses Burton, the nation's first Black elected sheriff.

Hilmar Moore served as Richmond's mayor from 1949 until his death in 2012, one of the longest mayoral tenures in American history.

The 2020 census counted 11,627 residents in Richmond, a modest total for a county seat whose surrounding Fort Bend County suburbs are among the fastest-growing in the United States.

Richmond has about 4,756 households according to Census QuickFacts (2020–2024), with an owner-occupied housing rate of about 53.5% and roughly 2.40 persons per household.

Historic points of interest in Richmond include the 1908 Historic Fort Bend County Courthouse and the Fort Bend Museum, which preserves the region's early Texas history.