Era
The Founding Years
From Republic-of-Texas land grants through the cattle-and-cedar economy, the West Lake area was settled by a few founding families on rocky bluffs above the Colorado River.
The hills west of Austin were settled slowly. The land was rocky, the soil thin, and water belonged to the Colorado River below — not the ridgelines above. For most of the nineteenth century the area we now call Westlake was cattle country and cedar-cutting country, dotted with a handful of ranches connected to town only by the steep hill from the low-water crossing at Bee Cave Road.
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