Austin
—  State Capital  —
City of Austin
Downtown skyline as seen from Lady Bird Lake
Official seal of Austin Seal
Nickname(s): Live Music Capital of the World, Silicon Hills[1]
Location in the state of Texas
Austin Location in the United States of America
Coordinates: 30°15′N 97°45′W / 30.25°N 97.75°W / 30.25; -97.75Coordinates: 30°15′N 97°45′W / 30.25°N 97.75°W / 30.25; -97.75
Country	United States
State	Texas
Counties	Travis Williamson Hays
Settled	1835
Incorporated	December 27, 1839
Government
• Type	Council–manager
• Mayor	Lee Leffingwell
• City Manager	Marc Ott
Area[2]
• State Capital	272 sq mi (704 km2)
• Land	297.90 sq mi (771.6 km2)
• Water	6.9 sq mi (17.9 km2)
• Metro	4,285.70 sq mi (11,099.91 km2)
Elevation	489 ft (149 m)
Population (2010)[2]
• State Capital	790,390 (14th)
• Density	2,653.2/sq mi (1,024.4/km2)
• Metro	1,716,291 (35th)
Time zone	CST (UTC-6)
• Summer (DST)	CDT (UTC-5)
ZIP code	78701-78705, 78708-78739, 78741-78742, 78744-78769
Area code(s)	512
FIPS code	48-05000[3]
GNIS feature ID	1384879[4]
Website	www.austintexas.gov

Austin (/ˈɒstɨn/ or /ˈɔːstɨn/) is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest,^[5] it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States.^[6] It was the third-fastest-growing large city in the nation from 2000 to 2006.^[7] Austin has a population of 790,390 (2010 U.S. Census).^[8] The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos metropolitan area, which had an estimated population 1,783,519 (2011 U.S. Census),^[9] making it the 34th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States.

In the 1830s, pioneers began to the settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River. After Republic of Texas Vice President Mirabeau B. Lamar visited the area during a buffalo-hunting expedition between 1837 and 1838, he proposed that the republic's capital then located in Houston, Texas, be relocated to the area situated on the north bank of the Colorado River near the present-day Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge. In 1839, the site was officially chosen as the republic's new capital (the republic's seventh and final location) and was incorporated under the name, Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas" and the republic's first secretary of state.

The city grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin.^[10] After a lull in growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its development into a major city in the 1980s and emerged as a center for technology and business.^[11] Austin is home to many companies, high-tech and otherwise: Fortune 500 corporation Whole Foods Market is headquartered in the city as well as Apple, AMD, Freescale Semiconductor, Google, IBM, Intel, National Instruments, Samsung, Texas Instruments, and 3M having either headquarters or prominent regional offices in Austin.^[12] Dell's worldwide headquarters is located in nearby Round Rock, a suburb of Austin.

Residents of Austin are known as "Austinites". They include a diverse mix of government employees (e.g., university faculty & staff, law enforcement, political staffers); foreign and domestic college students; musicians; high-tech workers; blue-collar workers and businesspeople.^[13] The city is home to development centers for many technology corporations; it adopted the "Silicon Hills" nickname in the 1990s. However, the current official slogan promotes Austin as "The Live Music Capital of the World", a reference to the many musicians and live music venues within the area, and the long-running PBS TV concert series Austin City Limits.^[1][14] In recent years, some Austinites have also adopted the unofficial slogan "Keep Austin Weird".^[15] This interpretation of the classic, "Texas-style" sense of independence refers to: the traditional and proudly eclectic, liberal lifestyles of many Austin residents; a desire to protect small, unique, local businesses from being overrun by large corporations; and, as a reaction to the perceived rise of conservative influences within the community.^[16] In the late 1800s, Austin also became known as the City of the "Violet Crown" for the wintertime violet glow of color across the hills just after sunset.^[17] Even today, many Austin businesses use the term "violet crown" in their name. Lastly, Austin is known as a "clean air city" for the city's stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, and all restaurants. ^[18]

History[link]

Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of human habitation since at least 9,200 BC. The earliest known inhabitants of the area lived during the late Pleistocene (Ice Age), and are linked to the Clovis culture around 9,200 BC (11,200 years ago) based on evidence found throughout the area and documented at the much-studied Gault Site, midway between Georgetown and Fort Hood.^[19]

When settlers first arrived from Europe, the area was inhabited by the Tonkawa tribe, and the Comanches and Lipan Apaches were known to travel through the area as well.^[20] Spanish explorers, including the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area for centuries, though few permanent settlements were created for some time.^[21] In 1730, three missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in this area for only about seven months, and then was moved to San Antonio de Béxar and split into three missions.^[22] In the mid-18th century, the San Xavier missions were located along the Colorado River, in what is now western Milam County, to facilitate exploration.^[23]

Early in the 19th century, Spanish forts were established in what are now Bastrop and San Marcos.^[21][24] Following the independence of Mexico, new settlements were established in Central Texas, but growth in the region was stagnant because of conflicts with the regional Native Americans.^[24][25][26]

In 1835–1836, Texans fought and won independence from Mexico. Texas thus became its own independent country with its own president, congress and monetary system. In 1839, the Texas Congress formed a commission to seek a site for a new capital to be named for Stephen F. Austin.^[27] Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the newly formed Republic of Texas, advised the commissioners to investigate the area named Waterloo, noting the area's hills, waterways, and pleasant surroundings.^[28] Waterloo was selected and the name Austin was chosen as the town's new name.^[29] The name Austin is considered to be derived from Augustine, a variant of Augustus. The location was seen as a convenient crossroads for trade routes between Santa Fe and Galveston Bay, as well as routes between northern Mexico and the Red River.^[30] Austin is also the site where the southern leg of the Chisholm Trail leads to the Colorado River.^[31]

An 1873 illustration of Edwin Waller's layout for Austin

Edwin Waller was picked by Lamar to survey the village and draft a plan laying out the new capital.^[27] The original site was narrowed to 640 acres (259 ha) that fronted the Colorado River between two creeks, Shoal Creek and Waller Creek, which was later named in his honor. The 14-block grid plan was bisected by a broad north-south thoroughfare, Congress Avenue, running up from the river to Capital Square, where the new Texas State Capitol was to be constructed. A temporary one-story capitol was erected on the corner of Colorado and 8th Streets. On August 1, 1839, the first auction of 217 out of 306 lots total was held.^[27][30] The grid plan Waller designed and surveyed now forms the basis of downtown Austin.

In 1840, a series of conflicts between the Texas Rangers and the Comanches, known as the Council House Fight and the Battle of Plum Creek, finally pushed the Comanches westward, mostly ending conflicts in Central Texas.^[32] Settlement in the area began to expand quickly. Travis County was established in 1840, and the surrounding counties were mostly established within the next two decades.^[26]

Initially, the new capital thrived. But Lamar's political enemy, Sam Houston, used two Mexican army incursions to San Antonio as an excuse to move the government. Sam Houston fought bitterly against Lamar’s decision to establish the capital in such a remote wilderness. The men and women who traveled mainly from Houston to conduct government business were intensely disappointed as well. By 1840 the population had risen to 856 of whom nearly half fled from Austin when Congress recessed.^[33] The resident Black population listed in January of this same year was 176.^[34] The fear of Austin’s proximity to the Indians and Mexico, which still considered Texas a part of their land, created an immense motive for Sam Houston, the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, to relocate the capital once again in 1841. Upon threats of Mexican troops in Texas, Houston raided the Land Office to transfer all official documents to Houston for safe keeping in what was later known as the Archive War, but the people of Austin would not allow this unaccompanied decision to be executed. The documents stayed, but the capital would temporarily move from Austin to Houston to Washington-on-the-Brazos. Without the governmental body, Austin’s population declined to an alarming low of only a few hundred people throughout the early 1840s. The voting by the fourth President of the Republic, Anson Jones, and Congress, who reconvened in Austin in 1845, settled the issue to keep Austin the seat of government as well as annex the Republic of Texas into the United States.

In 1860, 38% of Travis County residents were slaves.^[35] In 1861, with the outbreak of the American Civil War, voters in Austin and other Central Texas communities voted against secession.^[24][27] However, as the war progressed and fears of attack by Union forces increased, Austin contributed hundreds of men to the Confederate forces. The African American population of Austin swelled dramatically after the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas by Union General Gordon Granger at Galveston in an event commemorated as Juneteenth. Black communities such as Wheatville, Pleasant Hill, and Clarksville were established with Clarksville being the oldest surviving freedomtown ‒ the original post-Civil War settlements founded by former African-American slaves ‒ west of the Mississippi River.^[27] In 1870, blacks made up 36.5% of Austin's population.^[36] The postwar period saw dramatic population and economic growth. The opening of the Houston and Texas Central Railway (H&TC) in 1871,^[37] turned Austin into the major trading center for the region with the ability to transport both cotton and cattle. The Missouri, Kansas, and Texas (MKT) line followed close behind.^[38] Austin was also the terminus of the southernmost leg of the Chisholm Trail and "drovers" pushed cattle north to the railroad.^[39] Cotton was one of the few crops produced locally for export and a cotton gin engine was located downtown near the trains for "ginning" cotton of its seeds and turning the product into bales for shipment.^[40] As other new railroads were built through the region in 1870s, however, Austin began to lose its primacy in trade to the surrounding communities.^[27] In addition, the areas east of Austin took over cattle and cotton production from Austin, especially in towns like Hutto and Taylor that sit over the blackland prairie, with its deep, rich soils for producing cotton and hay.^[41][42]

In September 1881, Austin public schools held their first classes. The same year, Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute (now part of Huston-Tillotson University) opened its doors. The University of Texas at Austin held its first classes in 1883, although classes had been held in the original wooden state Capitol for four years before.^[43]

During the 1880s, Austin gained new prominence as the state capitol building was completed in 1888, and claimed as the seventh largest building in the world.^[27] In the late 19th century, Austin expanded its city limits to more than three times its former area, and the first granite dam was built on the Colorado River to power a new street car line and the new "moon towers".^[27] Unfortunately the first dam washed away in a flood on April 6, 1909.^[44] It was finally replaced in 1940 by a hollow concrete dam^[45] that formed Lake McDonald (now called Lake Austin) and which has withstood all floods since. In addition, the much larger Mansfield Dam was built by the LCRA upstream of Austin to form the flood-control lake, Lake Travis.^[46] In the early 20th century, the Texas Oil Boom took hold, creating tremendous economic opportunities in Southeast Texas and North Texas. The growth generated by this boom largely passed by Austin at first, with the city slipping from fourth largest to 10th largest in Texas between 1880 and 1920.^[27]

Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, Austin launched a series of civic development and beautification projects that created much of the city's infrastructure and parks. In addition, the state legislature established the Lower Colorado River Authority that, along with the City of Austin, created the system of dams along the Colorado River to form the Highland Lakes. These projects were enabled in large part because Austin received more Depression era relief funds than any other Texas city.^[27]

After the mid-20th century, Austin became established as one of Texas' major metropolitan centers. In 1970, the Census Bureau reported Austin's population as 14.5% Hispanic, 11.9% black, and 73.4% non-Hispanic white.^[36] In the late 20th century, Austin emerged as an important high tech center for semiconductors and software. The University of Texas at Austin emerged as a major university.^[47]

The 1970s also saw Austin's emergence in the national music scene, with local artists such as Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, and Stevie Ray Vaughan and iconic music venues such as the Armadillo World Headquarters. The long-running television program Austin City Limits and the annual South by Southwest musical festival and the Austin City Limits Festival helped to solidify the city's place in the music industry.^[11]

Geography[link]

City limits of Austin

Austin is located in Central Texas, along the Balcones Escarpment and Interstate 35, northwest of Houston. It is also 80 miles northeast of its neighboring city, San Antonio. Its elevation varies from 425 feet (130 m) to approximately 1,000 feet (305 m) above sea level.^[48] As of 2010, the city occupies a total area of 271.8 square miles (704 km²).^[49] Approximately 6.9 square miles (18 km²) of this area is water.^[50]

Austin is situated on the Colorado River, with three man-made (artificial) lakes within the city limits: Lady Bird Lake (formerly known as Town Lake), Lake Austin (both created by dams along the Colorado River), and Lake Walter E. Long that is partly used for cooling water for the Decker Power Plant. Additionally, the foot of Lake Travis, including Mansfield Dam, is located within the city's limits.^[51] Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin, and Lake Travis are each on the Colorado River.^[27] As a result of its straddling the Balcones Fault, the eastern part of the city is flat, with heavy clay and loam soils, whereas, the western part and western suburbs consist of rolling hills on the edge of the Texas Hill Country.^[52] Because the hills to the west are primarily limestone rock with a thin covering of topsoil, portions of the city are frequently subjected to flash floods from the runoff caused by thunderstorms.^[53][54] To help control this runoff and to generate hydroelectric power, the Lower Colorado River Authority operates a series of dams that form the Texas Highland Lakes. The lakes also provide venues for boating, swimming, and other forms of recreation within several parks on the lake shores.^[55]

Austin is located at the intersection of four major ecological regions, and is consequently a temperate-to-hot green oasis with a highly variable climate having some characteristics of the desert, the tropics, and a wetter climate.^[56] The area is very diverse ecologically and biologically, and is home to a variety of animals and plants.^[57] Notably, the area is home to many types of wildflowers that blossom throughout the year but especially in the spring, including the popular bluebonnets, some planted in an effort by "Lady Bird" Johnson, wife of former President Lyndon Johnson.^[58]

A popular point of prominence in Austin is Mount Bonnell. At about 780 feet (238 m) above sea level, it is a natural limestone formation overlooking Lake Austin on the Colorado River, with an observation deck about 200 feet (61 m) below its summit. From the observation deck, many homes are visible.

The soils of Austin range from shallow, gravelly clay loams over limestone in the western outskirts to deep, fine sandy loams, silty clay loams, silty clays or clays in the city's eastern part. Some of the clays have pronounced shrink-swell properties and are difficult to work under most moisture conditions. Many of Austin's soils, especially the clay-rich types, are slightly to moderately alkaline and have free calcium carbonate.^[59]

Climate[link]

Austin has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), characterized by hot summers with prevailing humid winds from the Gulf of Mexico and mild winters. On average, Austin receives 33.6 inches (853.4 mm) of rain per year, with most of the precipitation in the spring, and a secondary maximum in the fall.^{[citation needed]} During springtime, severe thunderstorms sometimes occur, though tornadoes are rare in the city. Austin is usually at least partially sunny, receiving nearly 2650 hours, or 60.3% of the possible total, of bright sunshine per year.^[60]

Austin summers are usually hot, with average July and August highs in the high-90s °F (34–36 °C). Highs exceed 90 °F (32.2 °C) on 109 days per year, and 100 °F (37.8 °C) on 12.^{[citation needed]} The highest recorded temperature was 112 °F (44 °C) occurring on September 5, 2000^[61][62]

Winters in Austin are mild and relatively dry. For the entire year, Austin averages 88 days below 45 °F (7.2 °C) and 18 days when the minimum temperature falls below freezing. The lowest recorded temperature was −2 °F (−19 °C) on January 31, 1949.^[63] About every two years or so, Austin experiences an ice storm that freezes roads over and affects much of the city for 24 to 48 hours.^[63] Snowfall is rare in Austin; a 3-inch (7.6 cm) snowstorm brought the city to a near standstill in 1985.^[64]

Monthly averages for Austin's weather data are shown in a graphical format to the right, and in a more detailed tabular format below.

Table Note: All temperature and precipitation normals were recorded at Camp Mabry from 1971–2000, and sunshine data were recorded from 1961–1990. Extremes are from Camp Mabry and previous stations, with the record spanning 1897 to present.^[60][62]

2011 drought[link]