50 Fun Facts About Austin

What was Austin called before being renamed in 1839?

President Mirabeau B. Lamar picked the site where the roads to San Antonio and Santa Fe crossed, over the objections of Sam Houston.

The city is named after Stephen F. Austin, known by what title?

He brought the Old Three Hundred families to Texas in the 1820s and died in 1836, before the city existed; he never visited the site.

What is Austin's official slogan?

Keep Austin Weird is the unofficial one, coined by librarian Red Wassenich in 2000 and later copied by Portland and Louisville.

Who coined the slogan Keep Austin Weird, printing bumper stickers from July 2000?

The Austin Independent Business Alliance adopted it to promote local shops; Portland borrowed it in 2003.

What was Austin's population at the 2020 census?

That made it the 12th-most populous US city and one of the fastest-growing large cities since 2010.

Which downtown crossing of Lady Bird Lake houses the world's largest urban bat colony?

Up to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats roost in its crevices from March; it was renamed for Governor Ann Richards in 2006.

What species of bat lives under Austin's downtown bridge?

Bat Conservation International estimates 750,000 to 1.5 million of them each summer.

Barton Springs Pool stays between roughly what temperatures year-round?

It is fed by Main Barton Spring, the fourth-largest spring in Texas, and Robert Redford learned to swim there.

Which endangered creature lives only in the city's famous spring-fed pool and its immediate surroundings?

Its discovery reshaped how the pool is cleaned and how the Edwards Aquifer above it is protected.

Barton Springs lies in which 350-acre green space named for the ice-maker who sold the city the land?

Andrew Jackson Zilker, who used the spring water for his ice business, sold the land to the city from 1917 and gave the proceeds to schools.

The downtown reservoir renamed for Lady Bird Johnson in 2007 was previously called what?

The city built it in 1960 as a cooling pond for a power plant; Lady Bird Johnson declined the renaming while she was alive.

What has been banned in Lady Bird Lake since 1964?

The fine can be up to $500; the 10-mile hike-and-bike trail around it is one of the city's most used amenities.

The Texas State Capitol, completed in 1888, is sheathed in what distinctive material?

The owners of Granite Mountain near Marble Falls donated the stone free of charge.

How does the height of the Texas Capitol compare with the US Capitol in Washington?

At 302.64 feet it is the sixth-tallest state capitol; a 1983 law protects 30 view corridors to it.

How was the construction of the Texas Capitol paid for?

The Capitol Syndicate turned the land into the XIT Ranch, then the largest cattle ranch in the world.

What statue stands atop the Capitol dome?

The original was lifted off by helicopter in 1985 and replaced with an aluminium replica.

Austin is the only city in the world still known to have what kind of 19th-century street lighting?

The 165-foot towers were installed in 1895 and appear in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused.

How tall are Austin's 1895 arc-lamp light towers?

Each originally carried six carbon arc lamps bright enough, it was said, to read a watch face 1,500 feet away.

In what year was the University of Texas at Austin founded?

It is the flagship of the UT System, with more than 50,000 students on the Forty Acres.

The UT Tower, part of the Beaux-Arts Main Building, is how tall?

Paul Philippe Cret designed it; it was the site of Charles Whitman's 1966 shooting.

UT's Harry Ransom Center holds one of only 21 complete copies of what?

It also owns the world's first permanent photograph, Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras.

Which pair of UT students wrote Bottle Rocket together on campus?

McConaughey is also a Longhorn and now teaches a class there.

How many national championships does Texas Longhorns football claim?

1963, 1969, 1970 and 2005, the last sealed by Vince Young's Rose Bowl win over USC.

Which two Longhorns have won the Heisman Trophy?

Campbell won in 1977 and Williams in 1998; Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium seats more than 100,000.

Which conference did Texas and Oklahoma leave the Big 12 to join?

They accepted invitations in July 2021 after 25 seasons in the Big 12.

South by Southwest was founded in which year?

Roland Swenson organised it with Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black and publisher Nick Barbaro.

Which social platform famously gained early traction at SXSW Interactive in 2007?

Foursquare launched there in 2009 and was called the breakout app of the event.

Which sitting US president gave a speech at SXSW Interactive in March 2016?

He called on the tech industry to help solve national problems, amid the FBI-Apple encryption dispute.

Which company, owner of Rolling Stone and Variety, bought a 50 percent stake in SXSW in April 2021?

The festival's 2019 economic impact was a record $356 million; the 2022 return brought $280 million.

Austin City Limits is the only television show to have received which honour?

It won in 2003; the show also has a Peabody and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.

Austin City Limits moved from KLRU's Studio 6A to which venue in 2011?

The show was created in 1974 and had taped in Studio 6A for its first 36 seasons.

Which venue was central to Austin's 1970s rise as a music city, alongside Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel?

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson also rose from the scene; the city later dubbed itself the Live Music Capital of the World.

Willie Nelson turned to outlaw country after signing with which label in 1973?

Shotgun Willie came that year, and Red Headed Stranger in 1975 made him a star; he co-founded Farm Aid in 1985.

Which grocery chain was founded in Austin in 1980 and sold to Amazon for $13.7 billion in 2017?

John Mackey and Renee Lawson had started with a vegetarian shop called SaferWay, a spoof of Safeway, in 1978.

What was the name of the small vegetarian store that preceded Whole Foods, opened in 1978?

The name spoofed Safeway; the first Whole Foods opened in 1980 after a merger with Clarksville Natural Grocery.

Which electric-vehicle maker moved its headquarters to Austin, into a plant employing over 20,000?

Gigafactory Texas sits on the city's southeast side; Dell, in nearby Round Rock, is another of the region's giants.

Which suburb has been Dell's headquarters since 1994?

Michael Dell started the company in his UT dorm room in 1984.

Which motor race does the Circuit of the Americas host?

The 3.427-mile track opened in 2012 and also hosts MotoGP and NASCAR.

Aaron Franklin's famous barbecue restaurant began in 2009 as what?

It has sold out of brisket every day since; President Obama visited in 2014 and bought lunch for those behind him in line.

Which food is Austin sometimes called the home of?

Kolaches are also common in Austin bakeries thanks to Texas's Czech and German heritage.

Under Austin's old tree-based street naming scheme, Sixth Street was originally named after which tree?

North-south streets are still named for Texas rivers; the Driskill Hotel of 1886 anchors the historic district.

Which cinema chain, founded in Austin in 1997, hosts the week-long Fantastic Fest?

Its South Lamar location is the festival's home.

Which president's library, complete with an Oval Office re-creation, sits on the UT Austin campus?

Lady Bird Johnson planted many of the bluebonnets along the city's roads.

Which nickname did Austin adopt in the 1990s for its tech boom?

Whole Foods, Dell and later Tesla and Oracle all planted flags in the area.

Austin sits on which river, dammed to form Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin and Lake Travis?

This is the Texas Colorado, not the one that carved the Grand Canyon; the Lower Colorado River Authority's dams form the Highland Lakes.

Which Republic of Texas vice president spotted the future capital site on a buffalo hunt in 1837-38?

Lamar's rival Sam Houston fought bitterly against putting the capital in such remote wilderness and tried to move it in 1841.

Which Major League Soccer club became the city's first major professional sports team in 2021?

Until then the biggest city in the US without a major-league franchise, Austin still has only the one.

Sam Houston's 1842 attempt to haul the government's records out of Austin became known as what?

Locals refused to let the wagons leave, and the papers, and the capital, stayed put.

Which surveyor drew Austin's original 14-block grid, with Congress Avenue running up to the Capitol?

One of the two creeks bounding the 640-acre site was later named Waller Creek in his honour, and his plan still underlies downtown.

Austin's main airport opened in 1999 on the site of what?

Bergstrom Air Force Base was shut in 1993 under Base Realignment and Closure; the old Robert Mueller Municipal Airport closed when ABIA took over.