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My understanding from a local historian is that Booneville was poised to be the large community of the area until a college was put in a cow pasture. I don't know much about Bryan, but 90% of people in the Brazos valley would be unemployed without these college students.
Actually, it's more like 40%.
Does that only count university employees, or does it also count the employees of the 2nd and 3rd mcdonalds because of the additional demand from the college?
He said Brazos Valley. That's a lot of area.
And no, the numbers say that a lot of the economy in the BV is due to several factors, one of which is agriculture (the river was here long before TAMU) and oil. That was here before the Ags too.
It's tough to speculate on these things. But those two things stand and you could argue that Bryan might not be the same as it is now, but at the same time, it's location between the big cities and it's location to the river tell you that it would probably be a decent sized place either way.
I am not saying that TAMU isn't the driving force behind what the area is today. Not at all.
All I am saying is that long before there were 50,000 college students here, Bryan had a good economy. And the reasons for that are probably valid reasons for saying it would have endured.