Brazos (brä′ zōs), formerly called Brazos-de-Dios, is a large river in Texas. It rises in the elevated region of the northwest that once was called the Llano Estacado or Staked Plain, and flows southeastward between Colorado and Trinity Rivers. After a course of about nine hundred miles it falls into the Mexican Gulf, forty miles southwest of Galveston. During the wet season it affords 300 miles of steamboat navigation. The cotton plantations along the river are highly productive. About midway between the source and the mouth is Waco (population, 30,000). This is an important railway center and the chief city on the river.
