History of Austin, Texas
After declaring its independence from Mexico in March, 1836, the Republic of Texas had various changing locations as its seat of government. One stable location was perceived as preferable and so a search for a permanent site for the capital began. In January, 1839, with Mirabeau B. Lamar as its newly elected president, a site selection committee of five commissioners was formed. Edward Burleson had surveyed the planned townsite of Waterloo, near the mouth of Shoal Creek on the Colorado River, in 1838; it was incorporated January 1839. By April of that year the site selection commission had selected Waterloo to be the new capital. A bill previously passed by Congress in May, 1838, specified that any site selected as the new capital would be named Austin, after the late Stephen F. Austin; hence Waterloo upon selection as the capital was renamed Austin. The first lots in Austin went on sale August 1839.
Austin's history has also been largely tied to state politics and in the late 19th century, the establishment of the University of Texas made Austin a regional center for higher education, as well as a hub for state government. In the 20th century, Austin's music scene had earned the city the nickname "Live Music Capital of the World." With a population of over 800,000 inhabitants in 2010, Austin is experiencing a population boom. During the 2000s Austin was the third fastest-growing large city in the nation.
Beginning
Evidence of habitation of the Balcones Escarpment region of Texas can be traced to at least 11,000 years ago. Two of the oldest Paleolithic archeological sites in Texas, the Levi Rock Shelter and Smith Rock Shelter, are located southwest and southeast of present-day Austin respectively. Several hundred years before the arrival of European settlers, the area was inhabited by a variety of nomadic Native American tribes. These indigenous peoples fished and hunted along the creeks, including present-day Barton Springs, which proved to be a reliable campsite. At the time of Austin's founding, the Tonkawa tribe was the most common, with Comanches, Lipan Apaches and Waco also frequenting the area.The first European settlers in the present-day Austin were a group of Spanish friars who arrived from East Texas in July 1730. They established three temporary missions, La Purísima Concepción, San Francisco de los Neches and San José de los Nazonis, on a site by the Colorado River, near Barton Springs. The friars found conditions undesirable and relocated to the San Antonio River within a year of their arrival. Following Mexico's Independence from Spain, Anglo-American settlers began to populate Texas and reached present-day Central Texas by the 1830s. The site where Austin is located was surveyed by Edward Burleson in 1838, calling it Waterloo. It was incorporated in January, 1839, only months before selection as the site of the new capital, ending its existence. Early Austin resident and chronicler Frank Brown says the first and only settler in 1838 was Jacob Harrell who may have been living there already. Living in a tent with his family, he later built a cabin and small stockade near the mouth of Shoal Creek. In its short lifespan of less than two years the population of Waterloo grew to only about twelve people made up of four families.
Capital City of A New Republic
By 1836 the Texas Revolution was over and the Republic of Texas was independent. That year was also characterized by political disarray in Texas. Between 1836 and 1837 no fewer than five Texas sites served as temporary capitals of the new republic, before President Sam Houston moved the capital to Houston in 1837.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. They chose a site on the western frontier, after viewing it at the instruction of President Lamar, who visited the sparsely settled area in 1838. Lamar was a proponent of westward expansion. Impressed by its beauty, abundant natural resources, promise as an economic hub, and central location in Texas territory, the commission purchased along the Colorado River consisting of a planned townsite surveyed by Edward Burleson in 1838 he called Waterloo, and adjacent lands.
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. However, Lamar prevailed in his nomination, which he felt would be a prime location that intersected the roads to San Antonio and Santa Fe.
Officially chartered in 1839, the Texas Congress designated the name of Austin for the new city. According to local folklore, Stephen F. Austin, the "father of Texas" for whom the new capital city was named, negotiated a boundary treaty with the local Native Americans at the site of the present-day Treaty Oak after a few settlers were killed in raids. The city's original name is honored by local businesses such as Waterloo Ice House and Waterloo Records, as well as Waterloo Park downtown.
Lamar tapped Judge Edwin Waller to direct the planning and construction of the new town. Waller chose a site on a bluff above the Colorado River, nestled between Shoal Creek to the west and Waller Creek to the east. Waller and a team of surveyors developed Austin's first city plan, commonly known as the Waller Plan, dividing the single square-mile plot into a grid plan of 14 blocks running in both directions. One grand avenue, which Lamar named "Congress", cut through the center of town from Capitol Square down to the Colorado River. The streets running north and south were named for Texas rivers with their order of placement matching the order of rivers on the Texas state map. The east and west streets were named after trees native to the region, despite the fact that Waller had recommended using numbers. The city's perimeters stretched north to south from the river at 1st Street to 15th Street, and from East Avenue to West Avenue. Much of this original Waller Plan design is still intact in downtown Austin today.
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. During the Republic of Texas era, France sent Alphonse Dubois de Saligny to Austin as its chargé d'affaires. Dubois purchased of land in 1840 on a high hill just east of downtown to build a legation, or diplomatic outpost. The French Legation stands as the oldest documented frame structure in Austin. Also in 1839, the Texas Congress set aside of land north of the capitol and downtown for a "university of the first class." This land became the central campus of the University of Texas at Austin in 1883.
Political turmoil and the Texas Annexation
Austin flourished initially but in 1842 entered the darkest period in its history. Lamar's successor as President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston, ordered the national archives transferred to Houston for safekeeping after Mexican troops captured San Antonio on March 5, 1842. 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. Houston moved the government anyway, first to Houston and then to Washington-on-the-Brazos, which remained the seat of government until 1845. The archives stayed in Austin. 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. Deprived of its political function, Austin languished. Between 1842 and 1845 its population dropped below 200 and its buildings deteriorated.During the summer of 1845, Anson Jones, Houston's successor as president, called a constitutional convention meeting in Austin, approved the annexation of Texas to the United States and named Austin the state capital until 1850, at which time the voters of Texas were to express their preference in a general election. After resuming its role as the seat of government in 1845, Austin officially became the state capital on February 19, 1846, the date of the formal transfer of authority from the republic to the state.
Austin's status as capital city of the new U.S. state of Texas remained in doubt until 1872, when the city prevailed in a statewide election to choose once and for all the state capital, turning back challenges from Houston and Waco.
Statehood and the U.S. Civil War
Austin recovered gradually, population reaching 854 by 1850, 225 of whom were slaves and one a free black. Forty-eight percent of Austin's family heads owned slaves. 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. For the first time the government constructed permanent buildings, among them a new capitol at the head of Congress Avenue, completed in 1853, and the Governor's Mansion, completed in 1856. State-run asylums for deaf, blind, and mentally ill Texans were erected on the fringes of town. Congregations of Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Catholics erected permanent church buildings, and the town's elite built elegant Greek Revival mansions. By 1860 the population had climbed to 3,546, including 1,019 slaves and twelve free blacks. That year thirty-five percent of Austin's family heads owned slaves.While Texas voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy in 1861, Travis County was one of a few counties in state to vote against the secession ordinance. However, Unionist sentiment waned once the war began. By April 1862 about 600 Austin and Travis County men had joined some twelve volunteer companies serving the Confederacy. Austinites followed with particular concern news of the successive Union thrusts toward Texas, but the town was never directly threatened. Like other communities, Austin experienced severe shortages of goods, spiraling inflation, and the decimation of its fighting men.
After learning in late April 1865 of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, civil order in Austin began to break down. Governor Pendleton Murrah vacated his office and fled to Mexico with other officials. Lieutenant Governor Fletcher Stockdale then stepped up to serve as Acting Governor. In May, Captain George R. Freeman organized a company of 30 volunteers to protect the city. On June 11, a group of 50 men broke into the state treasury northeast of the Capitol. A gunfight ensued when Freeman and his volunteers arrived at the treasury. One of the robbers was mortally wounded, and the others fled west toward Mount Bonnell with $17,000 in gold and silver, trailing currency along their path. None of the thieves and none of their loot was found.
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. By 1870, Austin's 1,615 black residents constituted some 36 percent of the town's 4,428 inhabitants.