People
Biographies and family histories — the residents, ranchers, builders, teachers, and storytellers who made Westlake.
Bruce Marshall
Caretaker and historian of the Eanes-Marshall Cemetery in West Lake Hills. Photographs of Bruce Marshall at the cemetery — alone and with the historian Dorothy Depwe — are preserved in the Eanes History Center collection.
Charles Randolph Eanes
A member of the Eanes family of Travis County and a relative of Robert Eanes, the schoolhouse donor. A formal portrait of Charles R. Eanes — taken at the H. R. Marks studio in Austin and inscribed 1887 — is preserved in the Eanes History Center collection.
Dorothy Depwe
The principal interviewer of the Eanes History Center oral-history program. Across the 1970s and 80s she recorded conversations with Mary Mowinckle Johnson, James Short, Earl Short, Bruce Marshall, and many other long-time West Lake-area residents — the bedrock of the EHC's documentary holdings.
Emmett Shelton, Sr.
Original developer of Westlake Hills, criminal-defense lawyer, political operative, and recurring storyteller of the West Lake area's twentieth-century history. The Our Westlake podcast is built almost entirely on recordings of his recollections, made between the 1990s and his death in 2000.
Frank Johnson
Owner of the two-storey wooden Johnson House preserved in the EHC photographic collection, and (per the Westbank archives) husband of Gertrude Johnson — a founding member of the Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church.
Gertrude Johnson
Long-time Deep Eddy resident, teacher in the Eanes area, and a founding member of the Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church. Interviewed for the EHC collection on her work with the church and school — and on the 17.5-pound sweet potato she once grew.
James "Buck" Davenport
Early Texas rancher whose 1854 land grant on the bluffs above the Colorado River became one of the founding tracts of what would later be incorporated as West Lake Hills.
James Short
Long-time West Lake Hills resident and Eanes Elementary alumnus, interviewed by Dorothy Depwe about growing up in Westlake during the 1940s — the bus pranks, the road bonfires, the egg fights. His recollections appear in two transcripts in the Eanes History Center collection.
Mary Mowinckle Johnson
Teacher at the Eanes Rock Schoolhouse during a long stretch of its operation, and one of the most-cited voices in the Eanes History Center collection. Her letters to Camila and to Dorothy Depwe, along with several oral-history interviews, document the daily life of the school across multiple decades.
Polk Shelton
Travis County rancher and brother of Emmett Shelton Sr., a partner in the early business ventures along Bee Cave Road during the 1930s and a recurring figure in the Our Westlake oral history recordings.
Robert Eanes
Early settler and rancher whose family donated the land for the original Eanes schoolhouse in the 1870s. The Eanes Independent School District and the surrounding community still bear his family's name.