It is all well and good that we know the important history and facts of Austin: that it was a favorite Indian watering hole before M Bonaparte Lamar expropriated it in 1838 in the name of future seats of empire; that it became the capital of the only nation ever to lapse into United Statehood; that it is the home of Barton Springs and Matt's El Rancho.
Austin is unique. Things have transpired here that could have happened nowhere else, that have forever altered Austin's quality of life, that betray some facet of the "Austin lifestyle," or are merely humerous.
Acts of God and men, pain and joy, crazy schemes and brilliant ideas, ignominious failures and untrammelled successes. All of the events offered here have been threaded into the rich and complex fabric that is Austin. Unfortunately, many of them have passed from the local mythology over the years.
Herewith then, and caveat reader, A Cocktail Buffet History of Austin, conveniently serialized.
1883
Everyone complains about the size of government these days, but back in 1883, city councilmen outnumbered the cops twenty-four to twelve. A common joke that year was that it was "easier to find an alderman than a policeman in Austin."
1908
The Driskill Hotel lobby has hosted many grand comings-out and goings-on over the years, but on April 16, 1908, the Driskill lobby was the site of a pitched gun battle between two prominent lawyers.
Austin Bar Association president John Dowell and San Antonio attorney Mason Williams had been at each other's legal throats for several months over a small ranch in Williamson County. The day before the shooting, Dowell had upped the ante by seeking to have Williams disbarred from the practice of law. The trial had been postponed until 2 p.m. the sixteenth.
But at one that afternoon, Dowell strode into the Driskill lobby armed with a double-barreled shotgun and revolver. The lobby was filled with lingerers from lunch. Among them was Mason Williams. Dowell winged him with the first blast as Williams entered the lobby from the bar.
Williams dodged behind a pillar, as did Dowell, and the rest of the room cleared out. Williams drew his pistol, and they traded volleys back and forth until disarmed. Neither was seriously wounded. Read the original article.
1911
As any visitor will tell you, Austin is an easy town to get lost in. One reason is Austin's crazy-quilt pattern of streets.
When you take a look at a map, at the core of Austin-that square of blocks bordered by 1st Street, IH 35, Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, and West Avenue, you see order: rectangles and right angles. But outside this tidy core, you note that the courses of these precise streets begin to run awry. For example: E. 12th tacks off sharply to the north, E. 11th slightly to the south. This begat all sorts of filler streets -- Cotton, Rosewood, and New York -- to flesh out the widening void. It was 1911 before the city found out that its streets were missing the mark as they radiated out. The city's engineering department sent surveying parties out to battle the problem, but as you can see, they didn't exactly win the war. They never figured out how the streets came to stray from the true line of the right angle.
1912
The chickens were penned up in Austin in 1912, and hundreds of city women sighed in relief. Local women's clubs and societies had campaigned for years to get the city's chickens cooped up. They were tired of having their flower beds and gardens ravaged by visiting foghorns and leghorns. With the fryers penned, one local paper was able to report that women of all the clubs and societies "are digging flowerbeds with a sense of security." Read the original article.
1913
The Texas Legislature has never enjoyed much of a reputation, but one thing we've always been able to count on is a legislature that is seldom able to agree on anything, save when to adjourn for lunch and for the day. In February 1913, though, both the House and Senate were of one mind.
They wanted to get the hell out of Austin as quickly as possible. Two of their colleagues had just died of meningitis, and they feared like fates. Officially the senators and representatives cut out with the blessings of their presiding officers, but it was noted that most came to that morning's session with overcoats and grips in hand. And only a few days earlier they had vowed to stay in Austin for months, if that's how long it was going to take to pass the legislation they had deemed necessary.
"Appalled by the spectre of threatened death," one reporter wrote with a tinge of scorn, "most of the lawmakers had but one desire -- to get away, and at once. Merger bills, constitutional amendments, road laws, factional differences, and 'crying needs' were forgotten. There was but one 'paramount issue' and no division. For once, the Legislature was a unit having one mind and that mind dominated by fear-a fear unreasoning and not to be removed." House Speaker Terrell and the two Travis County representatives stayed behind, to meet and adjoin for a few minutes each afternoon until March 5, when the solons were due to return.
The few who remained declared the flight "absurd and entirely uncalled for." Read the original article.
In the summer of 1913, the Austin school system hired its first woman janitor, just in time to get Austin High ready for the fall term. Superintendent A. N. McCallum hailed it as a great advancement, noting that a female in that position was going to be invaluable and that her services would be of much benefit to the school.
1914
(A contemporary account.-ed.) Even hogs, and wild ones, too, sometimes roam the streets of Austin. This is no fairy tale either, for last night about 10 o'clock people near East Third and Trinity Streets were in a panic for a short time when a wild javelina made his appearance on the street.
It seems that he had attempted to bite several people before the police could be notified. Motorcycle Policeman von Rosenberg answered the call and found the boar having as good a time as he could have had in the wildest jungle.
It was after a short chase that the stately hog was brought to the ground and had his frolic ended by the deadly aim of the copper's trusty fowling, or rather, hogging, piece. The people in that part of town were as much excited as they would have been had a lion suddenly appeared.
From the appearance and actions of the javelina, it is supposed that he had wandered from some distance and was probably unable to find his way back to his elements and had kept going until he entered the city.
1916
In 1916 the Travis County sheriff publicly dared Harry Houdini to escape from his jail. Houdini was on his way from San Antonio to Austin for a show at the Majestic.
While in San Antonio, Houdini had escaped from a pair of handcuffs while suspended seventy-five feet in the air. The sheriff sniffed at his feat, saying that any number of his inmates could wriggle free of such bonds given enough time. If Houdini wanted a real challenge, he would be glad to set the contortionist up and then set him straight
1917
You can complain about what little is left of the blue laws today if you must (liquor stores not open on Sundays), but just be glad you weren't here in 1917. That year the city and courts allowed only one gas station in town to be open on Sundays. Located at 4th and Brazos, the station was open to serve transients and only strict emergency cases of townspeople.
In 1917 champion shooter Ad "Dead-Eye Dick" Toepperwein came to Austin to teach aviation cadets at the U.S. School of Military Aeronautics how to use the shotgun in aerial combat. "The shotgun is rapidly becoming an intensely important weapon in modern warfare," Dead-Eye declared. "Not only is it used in the trenches for short range work in the field, but it is being used extensively from aeroplanes." Read the original article.
1918
Austin's first airport was in South Austin, just past St. Edward's University. Pilots don't much like the Austin airport now, and they didn't in 1918, either -- all of which prompted the Chamber of Commerce and newspapers to urge all patriotic Austinites to show up on a particular Sunday at 8 a.m., armed with lunch, rake, shovel, or grub-hoe and dressed in their best old clothes, in order to "help make this field the safest, the best, and most inviting in the country with our fliers."
The plea was in response to an incident wherein the propeller of a landing plane sucked a fist-sized limestone rock up through its tender canvas belly.
1920
Fearing an outbreak of the dreaded bubonic plague, the mayor and City Council approved a bounty system on rats during the summer of 1920. Beginning July 19, the city promised to pay a nickel for each rat delivered to City Hospital between 8 and 9:30 each morning. The bounty applied only to rats caught within the city limits, and all rats had to be tagged with the address and place caught
In closing his proclamation to the citizens of Austin, health officer C. H. Brownlee, M.D., noted, "Aside from aiding in a most worthy and humanitarian cause, all those delivering rats at the City Hospital will be earning a neat little sum of money."
1924
In 1924 local attorney I. L. Peeler was talking up a constitutional amendment that would convert Austin into another District of Columbia and would also deprive Austinites of their right to vote. One reason that Peeler gave was that Austin voters habitually voted against the man elected as governor by the rest of the state, and that furthermore no one from Austin had ever been elected governor.
This was inappropriate behavior on the part of a city constitutionally obligated to host the governor and his duly appointed hordes.
1926
Suffering from white-line fever, the 1926 edition of the Exchange Club of Austin petitioned the city to paint a white line down the middle of Congress Avenue. The club gravely noted that traffic would be facilitated greatly by marking the middle of the street and requiring passing cars to stay on the proper side of the line. The council acceded to their wishes and has been defacing the streets of Austin ever since.
1928
In 1928 the Hay Fever Committee of the Chamber of Commerce campaigned for a city ordinance requiring all male cedar trees within the Austin city limits to be cut down. The committee believed that this grandly scaled exorcism would go far in relieving the suffering of hay fever victims. The Hay Fever Committee ended its campaign when the Travis County Medical Society declined to endorse the proposed ordinance. Read the article that first explained cedar fever to suffering Austinites.
1929
Complaints of low-flying airplanes are nothing new in Austin. Several times during the summer of 1929, downtown Austin was attacked by marauding Army Air Corps student flyers from San Antonio's Kelly Field.
In one raid, a solo flier nosedived Lake Austin Boulevard, tearing down a rooftop radio aerial and an electric power line, then stripping a chinaberry tree of its leaves before winging his way home.
The day before, three more daredevils had skimmed downtown rooftops, "scaring people half to death," according to City Manager Adam Johnson. "With a roar that sounded like a tornado," the Statesman reported, "the big planes dipped low as they went toward the airport, and a lot of persons flinched, thinking that the roof was about to cave in on them, or that a fire truck was loose." Next they buzzed Manager Johnson's north Austin house. "I thought they were going to run over me," he told reporters. Johnson promptly telephoned the police and told them to arrest and fine the errant fliers. But when the responsibility could not be placed on anyone, the fliers were allowed to return to San Antonio with the promise that the incident would be reported to their commanding officers.
1838
"I have just returned from Waterloo, the contemplated new seat of government ... It is the most beautiful and sublime scene ... Rome itself with all its famous hills could not surpass the natural scenery of Waterloo."
1840
"The climate and soil of the Colorado we conceive to be as well, if not better, calculated for the cultivation of the vine and silk as any portion of the North American continent"
1840
"Like the ancient city of Rome, Austin is built upon seven hills, and it is impossible to conceive of a more beautiful and lovely situation."
1843
"It is difficult to give a full and just description of this spot with its surrounding scenery. If Rome was celebrated in song for her 'seven hills,' Austin may well boast of her 'thousand mounds.'"
1845
"As to beauty of location, I should prefer Austin to all other Texas inland cities, excepting New Braunfels and San Antonio." (He was plagued by bedbugs later that night, the first time he had encountered them in Texas.)
1847
"Austin is an inconsiderable village on the Colorado, with large expectations --not more than one or two passable buildings in the city -- gaming and drinking very abounding in all quarters."
1854
"Everything is very expensive here. I live at the krick and not in town and have to pay a monthly rent of $6 for a little house of room and a stable. But I prefer this to a dwelling for half the rent because it is only a few steps to the water and Wende is close to the Capitol. . . . In town, apart from the creek, nearly all the people have to buy water. The town stands on sandy soil but the environment is very fertile and the farms are better here."
1854
"Austin has a fine situation up on the left bank of the Colorado. Had it not been the Capitol of the state, and a sort of bourne to which we had looked forward for a temporary rest, it still would have struck us as the pleasantest place we had seen in Texas. It reminds one somewhat of Washington; Washington, en petit, seen through a reversed glass.
"There is a very remarkable number of drinking and gambling shops, but not one book store."
1855
"Austin is the most artificial city or town I have seen. I have not seen a bale of cotton, vegetables of any kind except a few Yankee onions that sell for 20 cents a pound. What few turnips and cabbage that was alive in the country have been swept dean by the grasshoppers and also what wheat that has been sowed. I don't see what inducement people have to move here and pay high prices for land."
1877
"Austin is justly noted for the culture and refinement of its society, the enterprise of its people, the beauty of its situation, the charm of its climate and the delightful natural scenery by which it is surrounded. Austin is a delightful place for winter residence for people from the North who suffer from pulmonary diseases and bronchial and catarrhal affections."
1887
"The city of Austin, Texas has been pronounced by tourists who have travelled extensively, to be one of the loveliest locations for an attractive city within their observation, a town resembling in miniature, Washington City, except that Austin is superior in picturesque scenery, healthfulness, and beauty of natural surroundings."
1884
"Town is fearfully dull, except for the frequent raids of the Servant Girl Annihilators, who make things lively during the dead hours of the night [see Mysteries and Fantasies]; if it were not for them, items of interest would be very scarce, as you may see by the Statesman."
1890s
"None who have ever seen and known, as was written of Florence, can forsake Austin."
1922
"Well, I think that Austin is unnecessarily dirty.
"Of course, you've got to have water and light and those things! I don't mean that: but what's the use of trying to make a thing ugly when it can be made beautiful. I think that beauty is a darn sight more important than the practical things. San Antonio is more of the ideal city."
1979
"Austin is what many a U.S. city longs to be -- compact and cultivated. It has style."
1988
"Austin has as much going for it as an armadillo in a cactus patch."
1990
"I don't worry about Austin. All signs point to a healthy future. It has survived its spate of overbuilding and will build again. It cares about its hills, its lakes, its parks- about preserving that special feeling that has endeared Austin to so many. Not really surprising for a city whose citizens rallied to a stricken tree, bringing prayers, flowers, get-well cards -- even cans of chicken soup."