Austin Trivia: Who said: "You can go to hell. I'm going to Texas."

The township of Waterloo (Austin, Texas) was established along the Colorado River in the young Republic of Texas. Stephen F. Austin reportedly negotiated a boundary treaty with the local Native American Indians in the area, and was later given its name-sake by the second vice president of the young Republic--Mirabeau Lamar. Austin became the capitol of the Republic of Texas in the late 1830's.

Texas has a long and colorful history--but let's face it, all of our states have interesting stories. It is what made us and continues to shape us as a nation and a people--our history. Texas is no exception to the rule, and Austin is one place where much of our history is on display. Starting with our spectacular capitol building.

Designed and built in the 1880's by Elijah E. Myers in a Italian Renaissance Revival architectural style, this building bears a striking resemblance to our nation's capitol. The story goes something like this. The states founders wanted the capitol to be a little taller than the nation's capitol building. After all, Texas was the only state that was (and still is) allowed to fly its flag side-by-side with the US flag at the same height--why not build our capital building at the same height as well (or maybe just a bit taller?). It took at little extra effort and last minute innovation, but in the end, the Texas capitol building is said to measure more than 15 feet taller than the US capitol building. This due largely to the Goddess of Liberty that sits high on the top of the capitol building, measuring approximately 16 feet tall.

Another bit of information that escapes many of us, is the number of national flags that have flown over Texas. In and around the Capitol you will see flags from the six countries who possessed Texas at some point in her history: Spain, France, Mexico, The Republic of Texas, The Confederate States of America and The United States of America. Yes, Texas has history--lots of history.


Here is some local Texas trivia:

• It is illegal in Texas to paint graffiti on another man's cow... (clearly a reference to the days of branding and cattle rustling).
• One of the oldest living live oak trees on the planet is in Rockport, Texas--estimated to be between 1500-2000 years old. That's a really old tree.

• The state capitol building was constructed of pink granite from Marble Falls, and Lime Stone, from Austin's Oak Hill area. 
• Rudy's BBQ is the best and worst Bar-B-Q in Texas--read the sign (Memphis pulled pork BBQ is still my favorite--but we can't really get pulled pork in Central Texas--Rudy's is a very close second for the best BBQ on planet earth).

 

• Many celebrities, singers, actors, politicians, and movers and shakers of industry call Austin home today, not to mention presidents and influential persons who live in Texas today and in the past.
• Davy Crockett, after 3 terms as a Tennessee Congressman, was quoted as saying "You can go to hell. I am going to Texas."
• Texas has its own power grid. There are three power grids in the United States, East, West, and Texas.
• The King Ranch in Texas is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
• There are three presidential libraries in Texas--the LBJ Presidential library is in Austin. Both Bush Presidential libraries are also located in Texas.
• Dr Pepper was invented in Waco Texas in 1885.
• The 2010 population of the state of Texas was just over 25,000,000. This is a 20% increase in population during the past 10 years, and twice the growth rate of California during this same period of time (according the the US Census Bureau).
• The population of the Greater Austin/Round Rock MSA is just over 1.7M people. 
• Texas has ~96 persons per square mile (vs California, which has ~238 persons per square mile; now you know why Californians spend so much time sitting in traffic). 
• If you are staying in a hotel, you can not shoot a buffalo from a second story window (I wonder if shooting from the lobby is ok?).
• Ten of the streets in downtown Austin are named after Texas rivers, and are in the same order as the rivers line up in the state, starting with the Rio Grande and heading north to the Sabine (the Red River is out of order). 
• Folks in Athens, Texas lay claim to creating the all American Hamburger. 
• Austin is home base to some high tech mega forces such as Dell Computers and AMD and also home to large numbers of the most highly valuable people assets for some industry giants as IBM, Motorola, Intel, Legal Zoom, FaceBook, 3M, Samsung, and other high tech movers and shakers. Compaq Computers, now Hewlett Packard, was founded in Houston--one of HP's largest campus' today. 
•  Texas is a mix of deep Southern culture, West and South-Western cultures. It is not just one of these, but part of each (and a little Cajun thrown in for good measure).
• Legends of the Headless Horseman continue today in the South Texas Brush Country.
• The last battle of the Civil War was fought in May 1865 at Palmito Ranch in Texas. 
• Georgetown, Texas (Greater Austin area) is home to the Inner Space Caverns, discovered in 1963, where the remains of saber toothed cats, wooly mammoths and the Equus, a blind horse-like creature with shorter legs, were discovered. 
• One of the nation's first serial killers lived and worked in Austin in the 1880's, and many believe that he continued his killing spree and later became known as Jack the Ripper--in London, England. 
• Hyde Park was one of Austin's first master planned communities, complete with a local passenger rail to get to residents around the area.
• Austin's first damn on the Colorado River was destroyed by a 24 hour rain that brought havoc on the growing city. Several damns were built and destroyed by flooding along the Colorado, until the Mansfield Damn was built by the WPA and the newly formed Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) in the 1940's.
• Round Rock (a metropolitan suburb of Austin) got it's name from the large rock in Brushy Creek that the cattleman used to judge water depth and strength of current when moving cattle through the Old Settler's Pass. Even today, if we get several hours of continuous rain, the water running through Brushy Creek is fast and deep--too deep and fast to move cattle through the creek (or to drive a car over the bridge), but when the water was below the top of "the round rock",  the cowboys knew that they could move cattle safely through the water. The top of the rock is approximately the height of a long horn's shoulder. 

• The Eanes School started in 1872 as a one-room log cabin built on the Robert Eanes Ranch near Dry Creek. In 1874, William and Sophie Teague donated 2 acres of land to build a house to be used as a church house and also a school house. 
• Today, Eanes ISD has one of Top 100 High School's in the USA (Westlake High) as does Round Rock ISD (Westwood High). Both are numbered among the best of the best out of over 29,000 public high schools in the nation.

Texas has a lot of colorful history and Austin has always been in the center of things--so to speak.