History of Austin, Texas
[17] Shortly after the election of President Mirabeau B. Lamar, the Texas Congress appointed a site-selection commission to locate an optimal site for a new permanent capital.
Impressed by its beauty, abundant natural resources, promise as an economic hub, and central location in Texas territory, the commission purchased 7,735 acres (3,130 ha) along the Colorado River consisting of a planned townsite surveyed by Edward Burleson in 1838 (incorporated Jan, 1839) he called Waterloo, and adjacent lands.
[18][19] Because the area's remoteness from population centers and its vulnerability to attacks by Mexican troops and Native Americans displeased many Texans, Sam Houston among them, political opposition made Austin's early years precarious ones.
[27] Convinced that removal of the republic's diplomatic, financial, land, and military-service records was tantamount to choosing a new capital, Austinites refused to relinquish the archives.
When Houston sent a contingent of armed men to seize the General Land Office records in December 1842, they were foiled by the citizens of Austin and Travis County in an incident known as the Texas Archive War.
The city entered a period of accelerated growth following its decisive triumph in the 1850 election to determine the site of the state capital for the next twenty years.
Congregations of Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Catholics erected permanent church buildings, and the town's elite built elegant Greek Revival mansions.
[32] The end of the Civil War brought Union occupation troops to the city and a period of explosive growth of the African-American population, which increased by 57 percent during the 1860s.
During the late 1860s and early 1870s the city's newly emancipated blacks established the residential communities of Masontown, Wheatville, Pleasant Hill, and Clarksville.
Accompanying these dramatic changes were civic improvements, among them gas street lamps in 1874, the first mule-drawn streetcar line in 1875, and the first elevated bridge across the Colorado River about 1876.
[36] Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute, the forerunner of Huston–Tillotson University, founded by the American Missionary Association to provide educational opportunities for African-Americans, opened its doors in East Austin by 1881.
P. J. Franciscus strengthened the prestige of the academy by securing a charter, changing its name to St. Edward's College, assembling a faculty, and increasing enrollment.
Subsequently, St. Edward's began to grow, and the first school newspaper, the organization of baseball and football teams, and approval to erect an administration building all followed.
Well-known architect Nicholas J. Clayton of Galveston was commissioned to design the college's Main Building, four stories tall and constructed with local white limestone in the Gothic Revival, that was finished in 1888.
At the urging of local civic leader Alexander Penn Wooldridge, the citizens of Austin voted overwhelmingly to put themselves deeply in debt to build a dam along the river to attract manufacturing.
Monroe M. Shipe established Hyde Park, a classic streetcar suburb north of downtown, and smaller developments sprang up around the city.
Silt had filled nearly half the lake by February 1900, and the dam's design failed to accommodate the force that could be created by a large volume of water.
However, the flow of the Colorado proved to be far more variable than the project's promoters had claimed, and the dam was never able to produce the kind of steady power needed to drive a bank of mills.
The manufacturers never came, periodic power shortfalls disrupted city services, Lake McDonald silted up, and, on April 7, 1900, the Austin Dam was dealt its final blow after a spring storm.
Wooldridge headed the reform group voted into office in 1909 and served a decade as mayor, during which the city made steady if modest progress toward improving residential life.
A $4,250,000 bond issue, Austin's largest to date, provided funds for streets, sewers, parks, the city hospital, the first permanent public library building, and the first municipal airport, which opened in 1930.
Though some date back to slavery, by the 1920s these communities were located across the city and include Kincheonville (1865), Wheatville (1867), Clarksville (1871), Masonville, St. Johns, Pleasant Hill, and other settlements.
Gradually the barriers receded, a process accelerated when the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations.
Nevertheless, the town fared comparatively well, sustained by its twin foundations of government and education and by the political skills of Mayor Tom Miller, who took office in 1933, and United States Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson, who won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1937.
Modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority, the LCRA is a nonprofit public utility involved in managing the resources along the Highland Lakes and Colorado River.
Environmentalists organized a powerful movement to protect streams, lakes, watersheds, and wooded hills from environmental degradation, resulting in the passage of a series of environmental-protection ordinances during the 1970s and 1980s.
City election campaigns during the 1970s and 1980s frequently featured struggles over the management of growth, with neighborhood groups and environmentalists on one side and business and development interests on the other.
In the 1970s, Austin became a refuge for a group of country and western musicians and songwriters seeking to escape the music industry's corporate domination of Nashville.
In the following years, Austin gained a reputation as a place where struggling musicians could launch their careers in informal live venues in front of receptive audiences.
The sudden growth has brought up several issues for the city, including urban sprawl, as well as balancing the need for new infrastructure with environmental protection.
