BAGDAD, TEXAS. Bagdad was a rural community on the South Fork of Brushy Creek one mile west of Leander in southwest Williamson County. It was surveyed in 1854 by Charles Babcock, who ran an inn at the site, and named for Bagdad, Tennessee, the hometown of an early settler. The settlement had a post office from 1855 to 1882 and was a mail stop on the early stage line between Austin and Lampasas. Bagdad thrived in the 1860s and 1870s and in 1882 had two blacksmith shops, a hotel, two schools, a Masonic lodge, three churches, and several stores. That year, however, the Austin and Northwestern Railroad reached nearby Leander, and the post office was moved from Bagdad to that town; several businesses moved as well. By the turn of the century Bagdad was virtually a ghost town. The site was included as part of Leander on the county highway map of 1977.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: A Williamson County History (Georgetown, Texas: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973).