Person
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.
Emmett Shelton, Sr. (1905–2000) is the central voice of this archive. A Travis County native, he practiced criminal-defense law in Austin for decades while accumulating land along Bee Cave Road and the western shore of the Colorado in the 1930s and 40s — the parcels that became some of the first residential subdivisions of West Lake Hills. His brother Polk Shelton was his frequent business partner; Cynthia Shelton, his daughter, recorded and curated the oral histories that became the Our Westlake podcast.
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