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.Barkley, Mary Starr. History of Travis County and AustinKerr, Jeff. Seat of Empire: The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas.Terrell, Alex W. The City of Austin from 1839 to 1865, The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 14, July 1910 - April, 1911, pp. 113-128.
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 (decade) 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.Native Americans in Austin from Austin History Center Newcomb, W.W. Jr. The Indians of Texas: From Prehistoric to Modern Times. University of Texas Press, 1961.
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.Brown, Frank. Annals of Travis County and of the City of Austin: From the Earliest Times to the Close of 1875. Frank Brown (1833–1913) came to Texas as a boy and lived in Austin working for Travis County for much of his adult life. Brown’s Annals are one of the best contemporary sources of early Austin history. Written in 1900, they were never published formally but typed paper transcripts are on file at the Austin History Center, Texas State Library, and University of Texas' Briscoe Center for American History. Brown’s Annals are available online at The Portal to Texas History via partnership with the Travis County Historical Commission and Travis County Archives. References here are Portal’s volumes and page numbers: 2:109, 9:36, 3:67.Terrell, Alex W. The City of Austin from 1839 to 1865, The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 14, July 1910 - April, 1911, pp. 113-128.Kerr, Jeff. Seat of Empire: The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas. pp. 8, 65-66. Texas Tech University Press, 2013.
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 (Washington-on-the-Brazos, Harrisburg, Galveston, Velasco and Columbia), 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 (incorporated Jan, 1839) he called Waterloo, and adjacent lands.Terrell, Alex W. The City of Austin from 1839 to 1865, The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 14, July 1910 - April, 1911, pp. 113-128.
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. But as the Daughters of the Republic of Texas pointed out as early as 1925, Stephen F. Austin died in 1836 before either Waterloo or Austin were founded and "[he] never held any conferences with Indians as far west as Austin."The Austin Statesman, "Treaty Oak" Loses Precious Legend, May 8, 1925, p.10 In 1936 the Texas Centennial Historical Commission concluded the story was "unfounded romance ... without historical foundation". The Commission also concluded the "tradition probably grew out of a treaty made by Carita, Tonkawa Indian chief, and Stephen F. Austin in 1824, by which the Indians agreed to keep out of the colony."The Austin American. Treaty Oak Story Just Tradition. March 1, 1936, p.9 The colony referenced is San Felipe de Austin in today's Austin County, Texas which was conflated with the current City of Austin, Travis County. 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 (which was named for him) 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 (paralleling Congress) 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. (They were eventually changed to numbers in 1884.) The city's perimeters stretched north to south from the river at 1st Street to 15th Street, and from East Avenue (now Interstate 35) 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.Handbook of Texas, Mexican Invasions of 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