40 Fun Facts about Austin Texas 

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1. Austin wasn't even originally called Austin. It was called "Waterloo", and the name was changed in order to honor Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas" and the republic's first secretary of state.

 

2. Humans have lived in the Austin area since 9200 BC.

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3. An average of 20 million people visit Austin every year. This is more than the annual visitors to Rome (4.2 million), Hawaii (8.3 million), and even London (17.4 million).

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4. The Circuit of Americas in Austin is first Formula One race track in the entire United States.

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5. Actress Sandra Bullock owned a restaurant in downtown Austin, Bess Bistro, for nine years. The restaurant closed in 2015.

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6. Until 66 million years ago, Austin was entirely underwater. It was also home to 10 underwater volcanoes called "explosion craters", which is why Austin's cliffs are made of white, crumbly rock known as "Austin Chalk."

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7. Whole Foods originally opened in Austin in 1978 when college dropout John Mackley and Rene Lawson Hardy borrowed $45,000 to open a small natural foods store. Amazon acquired the company for $13.4 billion in 2017.

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8. The Texas State Capitol building in Austin is the largest state capitol in the United States.

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9. Austin has been the filming location for various well-known movies such as Miss Congeniality, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, Spy Kids, and Kill Bill: Volume 1.

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10. U.S. News & World Report named Austin the best place to live in the U.S. in 2017.

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11. Austin is the only city in the world known to still operate a system of Moonlight Towers, 165-foot tall structures from the 19th century, to light up the city at night. "Party at the Moontower"!

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12. While the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the city's population at 947,890 in 2016, Forbes named Austin as the fastest growing big city in the United States.

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13. Austin is home to the largest bat colony in North America. Around 1.5 million bats emerge from under the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge just before sunset every day from March to October.

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14. In the late 1800s, a serial killer known as "The Servant Girl Annihilator" terrorized Austin. The killer has been compared to England's notorious Jack the Ripper. Some even speculate it was the very same man.

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15. More than 10 percent of Austinites are of German ancestry.

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16. In 2015, Austin ranked fifth on America's Drunkest Cities List, published in Men's Health magazine.

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17. The only legal nude beach in Texas is Hippie Hollow at Lake Travis. Austin is also the only city in the state that doesn't have legislation preventing ladies from "hanging it out" for all to see.

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18. Austin's unofficial slogan to "Keep Austin Weird" originated in 2000, when a local librarian, Red Wassenich, used the phrase on a local radio show.

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19. Austin is nearly the same size as New York City, over 280 square miles.

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20. Austin is considered the live music capital of the world because of its 200 live music venues and 2,000 bands and performing artists.

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21. There is a Lyndon B Johnson Library and Museum located on UT Austin's campus that holds documents and artifacts from the Johnson administration, including LBJ's limousine and even a re-creation of the Oval Office.

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22. Austin soaks up the sunshine pretty often, getting on average about 219 clear days a year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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23. Leslie Cochran, Austin's most famous homeless cross-dresser, ran for mayor three times -- most recently in 2003.

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24. After Cochran's death, former Mayor Lee Leffingwell declared March 8, 2012, and every March 8 forward “Leslie Day.”

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25. Austin City Limits, the country's longest-running live music TV show, began broadcasting on October 14, 1974. Willie Nelson was the featured performer.

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26. In addition to “Live Music Capital of the World,” Austin is known as the “Violet Crown City,” a reference to the purplish light cast over the hills on winter evenings.

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27. South by Southwest (SXSW) kicked off in 1986 after three staffers at The Austin Chronicle created the idea for a local festival to showcase Austin's musical talent.

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28. In 1989, Austinite Vince Hanneman started piling pieces of scrap like bicycle frames, bottles, CDs, air-conditioning vents and more. Today, the Cathedral of Junk is still standing and open to visitors.

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29. Austin is also nicknamed "Silicon Hills" due to the many tech firms that have moved here like IBM, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Dell, and more.

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30. Actor Matthew McConaughey was actually arrested on a drug-related charge in Austin in 1999 for dancing naked and playing the bongo drums.

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31. Austin is well known for its food truck scene, which started in the early '90s with a few family-owned taco carts on South Lamar Street. Now, there are close to 2,000 food trucks throughout the city.

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32. Since 1963, every last Saturday of April has been celebrated as Eeyore's birthday party. What started as a party for the Winnie-the-Pooh's depressed donkey friend, was originally a picnic for English Department students at UT Austin.

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33. Austin's population actually grew during the Great Depression. UT's enrollment almost doubled during this time.

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34. The Austin-Round Rock metro area has its very own Bigfoot - named Hairy Man, who allegedly lives on Hairy Man Road.

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35. Austin is ranked one of the most dog-friendly cities in the U.S. with its 12 off-leash parks, dog friendly restaurants, and hotels.

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36. Andy Roddick is the first Austin resident to have won a Grand Slam singles title in tennis, having defeated Juan Carlos Ferrero in the 2013 US Open.

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37. The father of notorious Texas outlaw and assassin, "Killin' Jim", was a stonemason. Legend has it, he was a part of the construction team that built the first capitol building in Austin.

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38. Singer Janis Joplin got her start in Austin at Threadgill's — a gas station and restaurant where bands played for rounds of beer.

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39. In 1861, most of Texas voted to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy— except for Travis County.

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40. Austin is the most populous city in the country without a pro sports team.

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Keep Austin Weird is the slogan adopted by the Austin Independent Business Alliance to promote small businesses in Austin, Texas. It is intended to promote local businesses and is inspired by comments made by Red Wassenich in 2000 while giving a pledge to an Austin radio station.

 

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Brief History of Austin

Austin hasn't always been the bustling city that it is today. This gentle bend in the Colorado River had many residents and visitors long before the first cornerstone was laid.

For hundreds of years, nomadic tribes of Tonkawas, Comanches, and Lipan Apaches camped and hunted along the creeks, including what is now known as Barton Springs. In the late 1700s, the Spanish set up temporary missions in the area. In the 1830s the first permanent Anglo settlers arrived and called their village Waterloo.

In 1839, tiny Waterloo was chosen to be the capital of the new Republic of Texas. A new city was built quickly in the wilderness, and was named after Stephen F. Austin, "the father of Texas." Judge Edwin Waller, who was later to become the city's first mayor, surveyed the site and laid out a street plan that has survived largely intact to this day. In October 1839, the entire government of the Republic arrived from Houston in oxcarts. By the next January, the town's population had swollen to 856 people. The new town plan included a hilltop site for a capitol building looking down toward the Colorado River from the head of a broad Congress Avenue. "The Avenue" and Pecan Street (now 6th Street) have remained Austin's principal business streets for the 150 years since. After Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845, it took two statewide elections to keep Austin the capital city.

By the 1880s, Austin was becoming a city. In 1888, a grand capitol building, advertised as the "7th largest building in the world," was completed on the site originally chosen in the 1839 plan. Funded by very creative financing involving the famous XIT Ranch, the building remains a central landmark on the Austin skyline. It has also, of course, remained the center of one of the city's most prominent industries: government. In September of 1881, the Austin City Public Schools admitted their first classes. In that same year, the Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute, predecessor of Huston-Tillotson College, opened its doors. Efforts to place the new University of Texas in Austin faced some opposition, however. Parents were warned that sending their sons to school so close to lawmakers would be a terrible influence on their morals.                                                                                                                                      

In 1893, the construction of the Great Granite Dam on the Colorado River was another milestone in the city's growth. The dam stabilized the river and provided hydraulic power to generate electricity, which in turn attracted manufacturers. By 1938, the dam had been replaced by a series of seven U.S. government-funded dams. One official who helped shape these public works was the young congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson, who got his start in government work in Austin.

As Austin emerged from the Depression, the seeds of the city's future as a center of high technology were being carefully planted. By the 1950s, several research laboratories and think tanks had been founded, and began to draw innovative thinkers and high-tech companies to the area--a trend that has continued to this day. As Austin's economy prospered, the area attracted even more modern amenities. Several movie theaters arrived, along with more public swimming pools, a branch library system, and a professional baseball team.

Rapid growth in the 1970s contributed to more political activity, this time at the local level. Strong neighborhood, environmental, and historic preservation communities sprang up, and remain an integral part of Austin's civic life today. In particular, concern about the purity of water flowing from Barton Springs has led to this landmark becoming an icon for many of the "Austin frame of mind."

Diverse cultural groups have been attracted to Austin throughout its history, including immigrants from Europe, Africa, Mexico, and, most recently, Asia. All of these groups have enriched Austin's civic and cultural life, including its recent development as a mecca for music fans. Austin's musical rebirth began in the 1970s, when artists such as David Rodriguez and Willie Nelson drew national attention--and more musicians--to the city. Now, on any given night, scores of artists can be heard playing countless musical styles in the city's nightclubs and concert halls.

Today, Austin is known as much for its cultural life and high-tech innovations as it is for the senators and schoolteachers who shaped its beginnings. The same success that has gained the city a national reputation has brought with it many difficult choices, as the city expands on a scale that might shock the early residents of Waterloo.

As a new century begins, and as Austin completes its transformation from town to city to metro area, the city and its people face decisions on how the city will preserve its past, and how we will allow that past to shape our future.