Elgin — Sausage Capital (and Brick Capital) of Texas

Location: Elgin, TX (~30 miles east of Austin on US-290)
Anchor Sites: Southside Market & Barbeque / Meyer’s Elgin Smokehouse

The Hook

Elgin produces 3 million pounds of sausage and 232 million bricks annually. The sausage gets most of the attention. But look at what nearly every historic building in the Austin area is made of — those bricks came from here, from clay deposits that also gave rise to one of the strangest dual identities in Texas: the Sausage Capital and the Brick Capital of the Southwest.

Key Facts

• The Texas Legislature designated Elgin the “Sausage Capital of Texas” — known for “Elgin hot guts,” a coarse-ground beef sausage with a snappy natural casing
• Southside Market & Barbeque was founded in 1882 by William Moon, who raised and slaughtered animals and sold door-to-door by horse-drawn wagon; smoked sausage arose from the need to preserve meat without refrigeration
• Meyer’s Elgin Smokehouse traces its recipe to a German family who opened a drive-in grocery in 1949; the German immigrant sausage tradition underlies the whole Central Texas BBQ culture
• Elgin was also formerly known as “Hogeye” — though the exact origin of this colorful nickname is debated
• Three brick manufacturing companies operated here from 1884 onward, using abundant local clay; at the industry’s peak Elgin supplied bricks for buildings across Texas and the Southwest
• Many downtown Austin buildings from the 1880s–1940s were built with Elgin brick

Story / History

Elgin was settled in the 1870s and platted in 1872 along the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. The railroad connection made it an immediate shipping hub for cotton, grain, and livestock. Brick manufacturing began in 1884 when Thomas O’Connor started operations using the area’s high-quality clay deposits; two more companies followed, and the industry produced bricks for a century.

The sausage tradition is specifically German. Central Texas was heavily settled by German and Czech immigrants in the mid-1800s, and their meat market tradition — buying whole animals, butchering on-site, smoking scraps and lesser cuts — became the foundation of the region’s BBQ culture. At Elgin, the sausage specifically became the star product. “Hot guts” is the local term; it refers to the natural hog casing that pops when you bite through it, releasing juice and rendered fat. The snappy casing is a point of pride — tube-shaped links with loose, coarse filling and a spicy, peppery seasoning profile distinct from the more refined German-style sausage found elsewhere.

Elgin eventually got a formal Texas Legislature designation as Sausage Capital, cementing what had been a de facto title for over a century.

Frontier Times

Elgin’s two industries — sausage and brick — both owe something to the closing of the open range.

Through the 1870s, Central Texas east of Austin was cattle and cotton country, and Elgin was a railroad shipping point for both. When barbed wire arrived in the early 1880s and the fence-cutting conflict swept through the region — armed bands cutting wire at night, ranchers defending property, $20 million in damage statewide by fall 1883 — the resolution came partly through the railroad itself. Once cattle could ship by rail directly from local stockyards instead of walking hundreds of miles on open-range trail drives, the need for unfenced common land evaporated. The open range closed. Farmers plowed the grassland.

The transition to intensive agriculture created demand for permanent buildings — and Elgin’s brick industry supplied them. The same clay deposits that had made Elgin a brick capital helped anchor the new settled, fenced, cultivated landscape that replaced the open range. Meanwhile, the German and Czech butcher tradition — smoking meat from animals raised on local farms rather than driven from distant ranges — continued and grew. The sausage business William Moon started in 1882 was doing exactly what the times demanded: processing local livestock, adding value, selling to a settled population that had stopped moving.

Local Legend

The name “Hogeye” — Elgin’s early nickname — has several competing explanations. The most printed version says the town’s early settlers were known for their hogs, and the settlement was visible from the road through the trees like “a hog’s eye peering through the brush.” A less charitable version says the original postmaster had a famously wandering eye — hence hog’s eye. A third version holds that the name was invented specifically to embarrass the founder of a rival settlement. None of these can be verified. What’s certain is that the residents eventually wanted a less porcine identity, so when the railroad came through, they took the name Elgin from a town in Illinois — or possibly Scotland, depending on which Elgin founding story you prefer.

The more colorful version of the name’s origin skips Illinois entirely. In this telling, the US-290 corridor east of Austin was thick with highwaymen in the frontier era — gangs working the road between Austin and the Gulf Coast ports, preying on travelers and freight. The settlement at Hogeye was rough enough that train conductors, calling out the stop as the Houston and Texas Central came through, would announce it as “Hell — again.” Land developers who needed to sell lots in the area found this branding unhelpful. They shortened “Hell again” to “Elgin,” filed the plat, and got on with business. The historical record does not support this etymology. The story has survived anyway, which says something about either the town’s past or its present sense of humor.

Insider Tips

• Southside Market (1212 US-290) is the anchor stop — they’ve been in the same family of ownership since 1882 and the sausage is still made with natural casings
• Order the sausage by the pound; they’ll slice and wrap it in butcher paper in the classic style
• The historic downtown has several Elgin-brick buildings worth pointing out to guests as a tangible connection to Austin’s growth
• Pairs well with a Bastrop trip (20 min south) as a food-and-nature day

Annual & Seasonal Events

Spring (Mar–May)

• Sausage cook-off season (various spring dates) — Central Texas BBQ competition circuit includes Elgin stops; check local listings

Fall (Sep–Nov)

• Hogeye Festival (October) — Elgin’s signature annual event; celebrates the town’s old nickname with live music, food, a 5K run, and vendors; Southside Market is a natural anchor stop the same day

Logistics

• Tour stop duration: 1 hour (lunch/sausage stop)
• Parking: Free lot at Southside Market
• Nearby stops: Manor (15 min west), Bastrop (20 min south), Austin (30 min west)

Sources

• Texas State Historical Association: tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/elgin-tx
• Southside Market: southsidemarket.com