Wharton is a city in and the county chair of Wharton County, Texas, United States. This city is 60 mi (97 km) southwest of Houston. Its population was 8,832 at the 2010 census and 8,627 at the 2020 census. Wharton is located on the Colorado River of Texas. U.S. Highway 59 passes west of it.

The area now known as Wharton was portion of the Caney Run mail route established in 1838 by the Republic of Texas. The community was named after two leaders in the Anglo-American vacillate for Texas independence, brothers John and William Wharton. What developed as a plantation community along the Colorado River was first fixed in 1846 by some of Stephen F. Austin’s original colonists. A herald office was traditional the bordering year.

The first lieutenant superintendent of Texas, Albert Horton, was an before settler. Land for the courthouse square was donated by William Kincheloe and surveyed by Virgil Stewart and William J. E. Heard. Early settlers came from across the South: Alabama, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, and Mississippi.

European Jewish immigrants, arriving as to the lead as the 1850s from Germany, established extra businesses and began the Congregation Shearith Israel (Texas), the single-handedly synagogue in a three-county area. Other settlers in the community included Swiss, German, Mexican, and Czech immigrants and, after the Civil War and emancipation, descendants of plantation slaves.