| History |
| Before the arrival of European settlers, the area
around present-day Austin was inhabited for several hundred
years by a mixture of Tonkawa, Comanche, and Lipan Apache Indians,
who fished and hunted along the creeks, including present-day
Barton Springs. |
| In the late 1700s the Spanish set up temporary missions in
the area, later moving to San Antonio. |
| The first Anglo settlers arrived in the area in the 1830s
when Texas was still part of Mexico. They founded the village
of Waterloo along the banks of the Colorado River. According
to local folklore, Stephen F. Austin, the "father of Texas",
negotiated a peace treaty with the local Indians at the site
of the present day Treaty Oak after several settlers were killed
in raids. |
| In 1839, Waterloo was chosen to become the capital of the
new Republic of Texas, and the town was renamed Austin in honor
of Stephen F. Austin. |
| A grid plan for the city streets was surveyed by Judge Edwin
Waller (after whom Waller Creek was named). The grid survives
nearly intact as the streets of present-day downtown Austin.
The north-south streets of the grid were named for the rivers
of Texas, following an east-west progression from Sabine Street
to Rio Grande Street (Red River Street being "out of order"
to the west of Sabine Street). The exception was the central
thoroughfare Congress Avenue, which leads from the far south
side of town over the river to the foot of the hill where the
new Texas State Capitol was to be constructed. The original
north-south grid was bookended by West Street and East Street
(now I-35). |
| The east-west streets of the grid followed a progression uphill
from the river and were named after trees native to the region,
with Pecan Street as the main east-west thoroughfare. The east-west
streets were later renamed in a numbered progression, with Pecan
Street becoming Sixth Street. The original tree-named streets
survive in nostalgic names, including Pecan Street, which is
the name of a locally-produced beer. |
| In October 1839, the entire government of the Republic of
Texas arrived by oxcart from Houston. By the next January, the
population of the town was 839 people. |
| In 1842, Austin almost lost its status as capital city during
the event known as the Texas Archive War. President Sam Houston
had tried to relocate the seat of government from Austin to
Houston, and then to Washington-on-the-Brazos. In the dead of
night on December 29, 1842, a group of men was sent to take
the archives of Texas from Austin to Washington-on-the-Brazos.
Mrs. Angelina Eberly fired a cannon at the men, who made their
escape, only to be caught by another group of men who returned
the archives back to Austin. |
| After Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845, two statewide
elections were held that attempted to move the capital elsewhere,
but Austin remained the capital. |
| In September 1881, the city schools admitted their first classes.
That same year, the first institution of higher learning, the
forerunner of Huston-Tillotson College, opened as the Tillotson
Collegiate and Normal Institute. |
Texas State Capitol |
|
| The Texas State Capitol was completed in 1888 on the site
specified in the 1839 plan. At the time it was billed as the
"Seventh largest building in the world." |
| In 1893, the Great Granite Dam on the Colorado River was constructed,
stabilizing the river's flow and providing hydroelectric power.
|
| In the 1930s, the original dam was replaced by a series of
seven dams built by the federal government which created the
string of reservoirs that now define the river's course through
Austin. Lyndon Baines Johnson, then a member of the House of
Representatives, was instrumental in getting the funding authorized
for these dams. |
| On August 1, 1966, Austin was terrorized by Charles Whitman,
who shot and killed 16 people with a high-powered rifle from
the clocktower of the Main Building on the University of Texas
campus. The event is considered the most traumatic event in
the city's history. |
| In the 1970s, Austin became a refuge for a group of Country
and Western musicians and songwriters seeking to escape the
corporate industry domination of Nashville. The best-known artist
in this group was Willie Nelson, who became an icon for the
local "alternate music industry." In the following
years, Austin gained a reputation as a place where struggling
musicians could come and launch their careers in informal live
venues in front of receptive audiences. This ultimately led
to the present situation where the city touts itself as the
"live music capital of the world." |
| During the 1970s and 1980s, the city experienced a tremendous
boom in development that temporarily halted with the Savings
and Loan collapse in the late 1980s. The growth led to an ongoing
series of fierce political battles that pitted preservationists
against developers. In particular the preservation of Barton
Springs, and by extension the Edwards Aquifer, became an issue
which defined the themes of the larger battles. |
| In the 1990s, the boom resumed with the influx and growth
of a large technology industry. Initially the technology industry
was centered around larger, established companies such as IBM,
but in the late 1990s, Austin gained the additional reputation
of being a center of the dot-com boom and subsequent dot-com
bust. |
| In 2000, Austin became the center of an intense media focus
as the headquarters of presidential candidate and Texas Governor
George W. Bush. Ironically, the headquarters of his main opponent,
Al Gore, were in Nashville, thus re-creating the old Country
Music rivalry between the two cities. |
