Stories
Essays and narratives drawn from the archive — people, places, events, and the connections between them.
Cedar Choppers and the Travis County Dog Wars
Before West Lake Hills was a city, the limestone ridges above the Colorado were cedar-cutting country. The families who lived there fought a long series of disputes with town hunters — the Dog Wars of 1902–1923 — that shaped the area's reputation in Austin for decades.
The Davenport Ranch and the Birth of Westlake
When James 'Buck' Davenport patented a thousand acres above the Colorado River in 1854, he could not have known that his land would one day become Westlake. This is the story of the ranch, the family, and the land that shaped a community.
The History of Rollingwood Park
Eleven acres of donated land, a non-profit Optimist Club, ballfields built from Bee Caves Road fill, and a 1978 community project championed by resident Hazel Maxwell — the story of how Rollingwood's central park came to be.
The Night Bee Cave Road Was Paved
In 1931 the Shelton brothers and the king pin of Austin gamblers turned an old hunting lodge eight miles out a dirt road into central Texas's most popular nightclub. The pavement of Bee Cave Road that same year is what made it possible.
Two Diamonds for the Dam
After running a tough congressional primary against Lyndon Johnson in 1937, Emmett Shelton received a tip from the new congressman about the WPA's plans for the broken Austin Dam. A handful of diamonds bought 200 acres of the western shore.