Experience Fulshear’s 200-year history

Welcome to Fulshear, a city whose history dates back to Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas.” Fulshear celebrated its 200th birthday last summer, commemorating the bicentennial of when Churchill Fulshear Sr. obtained a land grant from Stephen F. Austin to establish the Fulshear community on July 16, 1824.

Fulshear — a town of only 100 residents less than a century ago but home to more than 26,000 residents today — is seeing explosive growth as master-planned communities like Cross Creek West draw residents to Fulshear’s rich history and small-town lifestyle.

At the time Fulshear was established, Texas was still part of Mexico, and Stephen F. Austin had obtained land grants to bring 300 families—one of which was the Fulshear family — to settle the territory we know now as Texas. Fulshear moved with his family from Tennessee and set up a plantation which grew cotton, corn, rice and pecans and had livestock. Upon Fulshear’s death in 1831, his son Churchill Fulshear Jr. added a cotton gin, flour mill and four-story mansion to the plantation in the 1850s.

Once the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway came through Fulshear in 1888, many families relocated to the area to be near the railroad. The community grew, and thus, the town of Fulshear was laid out, platted and granted a post office in 1890. A Fulshear school district was established in 1893, and a Methodist church — now known as First Fulshear Methodist Church — was established in 1894, which still stands today in downtown.

A few years later, the town’s population had reached 250 residents with 11 stores, three salons, a school and a hotel by 1898 and 300 residents in 1929, according to the Texas State Historical Association. However, the thriving town’s population fell to just 100 residents in 1933 when the Fulshear plantation house was torn down and the Great Depression ensued.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that Fulshear’s population began to rise above 250 residents again as the Houston metro area grew. Fulshear was incorporated as a city in 1977 but still only had a population of 716 residents in 2000.

Since that time, Fulshear’s growth has continued to increase exponentially with the onset of master-planned communities moving in like Cross Creek West and more shops, dining destinations and big-name retailers, like Target, staking their claim in the area. The city of Fulshear’s population was estimated to be more than 26,000 residents as of the 2023 American Community Survey 5-year estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Building on Fulshear’s rich history, you have a chance to be part of Fulshear’s future with a new home in Cross Creek West.