Located in bison rangelands beyond the reach of the 1847 treaty negotiated by John O. Meusebach with the Comanche to permit European settlement, the Brady area was not settled until the mid-1870s, after the Indians had been forcibly removed. Brady developed quickly and became the county seat in 1876. The Western Trail from south Texas to the Kansas railheads ran through Brady from the mid-1870s to the early 1880s. Railroads arrived in 1903 and 1912, making Brady a principal shipping point for a large region of Central Texas, with an economy based on ranching and farming. A Mission-styled station built in 1911 at 505 N. Bridge Street served both railroads. On U.S. 377, about 19.5 miles north of Brady, is a historical marker noting the geographic center of Texas. Curtis Airfield (U.S. 377, 2 miles north of Brady) was used for military pilot training from 1940 to 1944. This was one of seventeen civilian airfields in Texas used for training during World War II, with over ten thousand cadets at Curtis Airfield alone.
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