Belton is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. Belton is the county seat of Bell County and is the fifth largest city in the Killeen-Temple metropolitan area. In 2020, the population of Belton was 23,054, and the metro region had a population of 450,051 according to US Census estimates.

Belton and Bell County have been the site of human habitation since at least 6000 BCE. Evidence of in the future inhabitants, including campsites, kitchen middens and burial mounds from the late prehistoric epoch have been discovered in the Stillhouse Hollow Lake and Belton Lake areas. The antediluvian identifiable inhabitants were the Tonkawa, who traditionally followed buffalo by foot. Belton was also house to the Lipan Apache, Wacos, Nadaco, Kiowas and Comanche. By the 1840s most tribes had been pushed out by settlements, but skirmishes in the same way as the Comanche existed until the ahead of time 1870s.

Belton was first approved 1850 and named Nolanville, taking the publish of easily reached Nolan Springs which were named for Texan explorer Philip Nolan. In 1851, it distorted its publish to Belton after mammal named the county seat of newly created Bell County named after Peter Hansborough Bell, the Governor of Texas at that time. In 1860, the population was 300, the largest in the county. During the direct up to the civil war, Belton had a large pro-Union minority. A Whig Party paper and anti-secession paper called “The Independent” was published there and the city voted overwhelmingly for Sam Houston for governor, who was strongly adjacent to Texas secession. Nonetheless, in 1861 Bell County voted for secession and many residents fought in the Confederate Army. After the civil war, Belton experienced unrest. Several pro-union sympathizers were lynched in 1866 and Federal troops were called in to guard the Federal Judge serving in the city. After Reconstruction, the city, close to a major feeder of the Chisholm Trail, served as growing business middle for the region.

In 1868, Martha McWhirter, a prominent figure in Belton’s non-sectarian Union Sunday School, created the Woman’s Commonwealth, the unaccompanied Texas women’s commune of the 1800s. The
commune started several situation ventures including a affluent hotel. In 1899, the outfit sold their holdings and relocated to Maryland. The town experienced immediate growth in the 1880s next the building of the courthouse, Baylor Female College buildings, and a “railroad war” in
which, by 1881, Belton was bypassed by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad, which built Temple, 8 miles to the east, as the local junction and depot town. In 1904, the town reported
a population of 3,700. The town began to be plentiful and reached a population of 6,500 in 1928. However the town was decimated by the Great Depression and was the length of to a population of 3,779 deserted three years well along in 1931.