Taylor
Location: Taylor, TX (~30 miles northeast of Austin on US-79) Anchor Site: Louie Mueller Barbecue / Historic Downtown Taylor
The Hook
Taylor once billed itself “the largest inland cotton market in the world” — a Gilded Age boast from a railroad town that’s reinvented itself twice since: first into a barbecue pilgrimage site anchored by a James Beard Award-winning smokehouse, and now into the center of a Samsung semiconductor build-out reshaping Central Texas.
Key Facts
- Founded August 9, 1876 as “Taylorsville,” renamed Taylor in 1892 to honor Edward Moses Taylor, an official of the International-Great Northern Railroad
- Reached 1,000 residents and 32 businesses by 1878; a fire destroyed 29 of those businesses in 1879
- Once billed itself “the largest inland cotton market in the world” at the height of the cotton boom
- Czech and German immigrants arrived heavily in the 1880s–1890s; the Taylor Brethren Church (1895) descends directly from the Bohemian Unity of the Brethren, founded by followers of Jan Hus
- Louie Mueller Barbecue, opened 1949, won a James Beard Foundation “America’s Classics” award in 2006 — the first Texas barbecue restaurant so honored
- Samsung is building a semiconductor fabrication campus in Taylor — an initial $17 billion investment, later expanded toward $40 billion with CHIPS Act support — expected to bring thousands of jobs
Story / History
Taylor exists because of the railroad, the same way Manor and Round Rock do, but it grew faster and bigger than its neighbors. The Texas Land Company auctioned town lots in 1876 in anticipation of the International-Great Northern Railroad’s arrival, and the settlement — first called Taylorsville — was named for Edward Moses Taylor, a railroad official. Growth was immediate: 1,000 residents and 32 businesses within two years. A fire wiped out 29 of those businesses in 1879, but the town rebuilt and kept growing as a shipping point for cattle, grain, and cotton. By the early 20th century Taylor was calling itself the largest inland cotton market in the world — a boast that, true or not, captures how central the crop was to the town’s identity.
Czech and German immigrants arrived in large numbers in the 1880s and 1890s, drawn by the same agricultural economy that built much of Central Texas’s “Czech Belt.” Many of Taylor’s Czech arrivals were Protestants belonging to the Unity of the Brethren, a faith tradition founded in 1457 by followers of the reformer Jan Hus — centuries older than the Texas town they settled in. Unable to worship comfortably in English-language Protestant churches, they organized their own congregation, formally established as the Taylor Brethren Church in 1895. That Czech and German heritage still shows in the town’s architecture and surnames, even as the cotton economy that brought the immigrants here has long since faded.
Out of that same German-Czech meat market tradition came Taylor’s most famous export: barbecue. Louie Mueller opened his market in 1949; his son Bobby took over in 1974, and grandson Wayne has run the smoker since 2007 — three generations in the same family, the last several decades inside a converted 1959 gymnasium downtown that’s been nicknamed a “cathedral of smoke.” In 2006, Louie Mueller Barbecue became the first Texas barbecue restaurant to win a James Beard Foundation “America’s Classics” award, cementing Taylor’s place on the state’s barbecue map. The town leaned into it: the Taylor International Barbecue Cook-off launched in 1978, when a group of local pitmasters set out to prove Taylor had the best cooks in the country, and the event has run continuously since.
The most recent chapter has nothing to do with cotton or smoke. In November 2021, Samsung announced it would build an advanced semiconductor fabrication plant in Taylor — an initial $17 billion investment, later expanded toward $40 billion with the help of federal CHIPS Act funding, expected to bring roughly 2,000 permanent jobs and tens of thousands more across the region as the broader investment plays out. It’s among the largest single foreign investments in Texas history, and it’s transforming a town of a few thousand people into ground zero for one of the most significant industrial build-outs in the state.
Local Legend
Old-timers in Taylor will tell you the “world’s largest inland cotton market” claim wasn’t just civic boosterism — they’ll insist Taylor genuinely outshipped every comparable inland point in the country at the height of the boom. No contemporary trade record actually ranks it that way; it was the kind of claim plenty of cotton towns made about themselves in the early 1900s. Still, Taylor’s gins and warehouses really did move enormous volumes of cotton at the peak, so the boast wasn’t pure invention — just bigger than the receipts.
Insider Tips
- Louie Mueller Barbecue (206 W 2nd St) — go early, popular cuts sell out; the dining room itself (a converted gymnasium, blackened by decades of smoke) is worth lingering in
- Combine with a downtown walk — Taylor’s commercial core has a good run of late-19th and early-20th century buildings reflecting its cotton-boom prosperity
- The Taylor International Barbecue Cook-off (summer) is a good excuse to time a visit around
- The Samsung campus isn’t a visitor site, but its scale — and the construction traffic around US-79 — is now part of explaining what Taylor is becoming
Annual & Seasonal Events
Summer (Jun–Aug)
- Taylor International Barbecue Cook-off (founded 1978) — one of the longest-running barbecue cook-offs in Texas
Logistics
- Tour stop duration: 1–1.5 hours (BBQ lunch stop)
- Parking: Street parking and lots near downtown / Louie Mueller
- Nearby stops: Round Rock (20 min west), Georgetown (25 min northwest), Elgin (25 min south)
