AMSTERDAM, TEXAS. Amsterdam is on Chocolate Bayou ten miles west of Angleton in east central Brazoria County. A post office operated there from 1897 until 1905, when mail was routed through Liverpool. The town shipped cotton to Galveston from area plantations and depended on water traffic in the 1890s. At its height around 1900, Amsterdam had a hotel and school. However, the Galveston hurricane of 1900^qv did considerable damage, and afterward the town failed to grow. State highway maps of 1936 showed only scattered dwellings at the townsite. By the 1970s construction of a nearby chemical plant had increased the number of local residences, and 1988 state highway maps showed several buildings. In 2000 the population was 193.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: James A. Creighton, A Narrative History of Brazoria County (Angleton, Texas: Brazoria County Historical Commission, 1975).

Diana J. Kleiner