Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Wallis Wallis, TX

Wallis began as Bovine Bend — Anglo-American settlers arrived in the late 1830s on the strip of land between the Brazos and San Bernard rivers, and a post office named Bovine Bend was established in 1873.

Wallis was renamed Wallis Station in honor of J. E. Wallis, a director of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, after that railroad built its Galveston-to-Brenham line through the community after 1880, and the town shortened its name to just Wallis in 1911.

Wallis became a genuine two-railroad town in 1887, when the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway also reached it, and it still sits at a rail junction — today the BNSF Railway — in far southeastern Austin County.

Wallis was shaped by Czech immigrants who began moving into the area around 1890, a heritage still visible at the Guardian Angel Catholic Church on Demel Street.

Wallis had a population of 1,292 at the 2020 census, living in 495 households, within a total area of about 1.5 square miles along State Highway 36 between Rosenberg and Sealy.

Wallis has grown slowly for a century: it counted 631 residents in 1904, and 900 residents with thirty-nine businesses by 1943.

Wallis students are served by the Brazos Independent School District — formerly Wallis-Orchard ISD — and the town is home to the Brazos High School Cougars; the designated community college is Wharton County Junior College.

Wallis has a small place in film history: the opening scene of the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy was filmed at a farm just outside town on FM 1952, and Wallis was one of the key towns featured in the 2009 documentary The Heart of Texas.