48 Fun Facts About Austin

What was Austin called before being renamed in 1839?

Waterloo. Scouts for a new capital found just four families living there in 1839; lawmakers named the chosen site Austin, and the hamlet's own name was dropped.

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

The Father of Texas. He led the first American colonists into Texas, lost the new republic's 1836 presidential election, and died that December, three years before the city named for him was founded.

What is Austin's official slogan?

The Live Music Capital of the World. In 1991 a blues musician pitched 'Music Capital of the USA', a council member countered with 'of the Universe', and the city settled on the World as a compromise.

Librarian Red Wassenich says he coined which slogan in 2000?

Keep Austin Weird. The phrase came to him while phoning a donation to a radio show; about two years later two local shops put it on bumper stickers in a fight that kept a big Borders bookstore from opening nearby.

Which downtown crossing of Lady Bird Lake houses North America's largest urban bat colony?

Congress Avenue Bridge. A 1980 renovation left inch-wide joints under the deck that made a perfect roost, and alarmed residents signed petitions to have the bats exterminated before the city came round.

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

Mexican free-tailed bat. Nearly all of them are females that fly up from Mexico each spring to give birth, one pup apiece, which is why the colony swells to about 1.5 million by late summer.

Barton Springs Pool stays near 70 °F all year because its water comes from which source?

The Edwards Aquifer. Its springs keep the pool at much the same temperature in every season, and Robert Redford, who learned to swim there as a child, later co-produced a documentary about the fight to protect them.

Two endangered species of which animal live in the waters of Austin's Barton Springs?

Salamander. The Barton Springs salamander and the Austin blind salamander both live in the pool, and since 1998 the city has needed a federal endangered-species permit just to clean and run it.

Barton Springs lies in which Austin park, named for the ice-maker who once owned the springs?

Zilker Park. Andrew Zilker used the spring water to make his ice, and when he handed the land over from 1917 he arranged for the deal to endow shop and home-economics classes in Austin's schools.

Austin's downtown reservoir, Lady Bird Lake, was known by what name until 2007?

Town Lake. Built in 1960 to cool a power plant, it had weedy, littered banks until the former First Lady championed the trail and plantings around it; the city renamed it for her weeks after her death.

What has been banned in Lady Bird Lake since 1964?

Swimming. Dirty water is not the reason: the council passed the ban 3 to 2 in an emergency vote, weeks after two young sisters were swept to their deaths there on Mother's Day 1964.

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

Sunset red granite. The plans called for local limestone, but it streaked with rust, so the owners of Granite Mountain near Marble Falls gave the state all the stone it needed for nothing.

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

It is taller. Modelled on the Capitol in Washington, the Texas dome nonetheless rises higher, though the tallest statehouse of all is Louisiana's 450-foot tower.

How was the construction of the Texas Capitol paid for?

With three million acres of Panhandle land. The Chicago syndicate that took the contract turned its payment into the XIT Ranch, a cattle empire spread across ten Panhandle counties.

Which statue stands atop the dome of the Texas Capitol?

The Goddess of Liberty. The zinc original was plucked off by helicopter in 1985 and retired to a museum, and an aluminium copy cast from her moulds took her place on the dome.

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

Moonlight towers. The 165-foot towers went up in 1894 and 1895 and found fresh fame a century later as the keg-party spot in Dazed and Confused, though the film had to build a mock-up.

A bronze statue of which Texas blues guitarist stands beside Lady Bird Lake in Austin?

Stevie Ray Vaughan. Killed in a 1990 helicopter crash, he is remembered beside the outdoor stage where he played many Austin shows: the figure stands at rest while his bronze shadow plays guitar.

What is the traditional nickname of UT Austin's campus?

The Forty Acres. That was the size of the College Hill plot set aside for a university when Austin became the capital, though the main campus has long since swallowed more than 400.

UT's Harry Ransom Center keeps one of the world's few complete copies of what on permanent display?

The Gutenberg Bible. Gutenberg's shop printed more than 150 copies in the 1450s, but only about twenty survive complete; Texas acquired this one in 1978 and has kept it on view ever since.

Which pair met as students at UT Austin and went on to write Bottle Rocket together?

Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson. They first shot Bottle Rocket in 1992 as a 13-minute black-and-white short, with Owen and his brother Luke as apprentice thieves, and its Sundance showing led to the 1996 feature.

Whose last-minute run won Texas the 2006 Rose Bowl?

Vince Young. He scored with 19 seconds left to win 41–38, ending USC's run of 34 straight victories and giving Texas its fourth national title and first in 35 years.

Which two Longhorns have won the Heisman Trophy?

Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams. Campbell, the 'Tyler Rose', won in 1977 after an unbeaten regular season, and Williams followed in 1998 by breaking Tony Dorsett's 22-year-old career rushing record.

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

The SEC. Invited in 2021, the two schools were so keen to go that they agreed to pay the Big 12 a combined $100 million to leave in 2024, a year ahead of schedule.

SXSW was planned in which publication's offices?

The Austin Chronicle. Staff of the alt-weekly and a booking agent swore one another to secrecy while planning it in 1986, then expected about 150 people at the first festival in 1987; 700 registered.

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

Twitter. The young service saw its traffic triple during the festival, from 20,000 messages a day to 60,000, and the company itself calls those days in Austin its tipping point.

Which US president appeared at SXSW Interactive while still in office?

Barack Obama. In a 2016 keynote interview, with the FBI fighting Apple over a locked iPhone, he told the tech crowd not to take an 'absolutist view' on encryption or to put their phones above every other value.

The media group that bought half of SXSW in 2021 also publishes which music magazine?

Rolling Stone. Its owners took a 50% stake after the pandemic forced SXSW to cancel its 2020 festival a week before opening; the festival's co-founder called the deal 'a true lifeline'.

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

The National Medal of Arts. The 2003 honour crowned a show that began as a one-off pilot for a PBS pledge drive: it raised so much money that the network ordered a series.

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

The Moody Theater. It was the show's first move in 36 seasons, out of a campus television studio and into a downtown concert hall built for it, with about 2,700 seats beneath a hotel tower.

Which converted armory was the hub of Austin's 1970s music boom, drawing hippies and cowboys to the same shows?

Armadillo World Headquarters. Its blend of country and rock was nicknamed 'cosmic cowboy' music; the hall closed with a New Year's Eve show in 1980 and was knocked down for an office block.

Which country star settled in Austin in 1972 after his Tennessee house burned down?

Willie Nelson. Tired of Nashville, he found a fresh following in Austin's hippie music scene, signed with Atlantic Records' new country division, and broke through with Red Headed Stranger in 1975.

Which grocery chain grew out of SaferWay, a tiny vegetarian shop opened in Austin in 1978?

Whole Foods Market. Its young founders were evicted for storing stock in their apartment, so they moved into the shop and washed with the hose from its dishwasher.

Which short-story writer worked as an Austin bank teller before being convicted of embezzling from the bank?

O. Henry. William Sydney Porter fled to Honduras rather than face trial, came home when his wife fell ill, and wrote his first famous stories under the pen name while serving his sentence.

Which carmaker moved its headquarters from California to Austin in 2021?

Tesla. Elon Musk announced the move at a shareholder meeting held in Austin, saying the Bay Area left the company no room to grow while its new Texas plant sat five minutes from the airport.

Which Austin suburb is home to Dell's headquarters?

Round Rock. Michael Dell started the company in 1984 as an 18-year-old UT freshman building PCs to order in his dorm room, and left college after one year to run it.

Which driver won the first Formula One race held at Austin's Circuit of the Americas, in 2012?

Lewis Hamilton. He hunted down Sebastian Vettel and passed him with 14 laps left, in the first United States Grand Prix since 2007 and his last win for McLaren before joining Mercedes.

Which Austin barbecue joint began in 2009 as a roadside trailer and now draws hours-long lines?

Franklin Barbecue. Aaron Franklin went from that roadside trailer to a James Beard award for Best Chef: Southwest in 2015; two years later an ember from one of his own pits set the smokehouse ablaze.

Which food is Austin sometimes called the home of?

The breakfast taco. The title is contested: when a 2016 article crowned Austin its home, a critic shot back that San Antonio never had to brag, because people there 'just call it breakfast'.

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

Pecan. The old name long outlived the change: for about fifty years the Pecan Street Festival filled Sixth Street twice a year, until the fair moved out to suburban Bee Cave in 2025.

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

Alamo Drafthouse. Its founders vowed from the start to throw out anyone who talks or texts, and in 2011 they turned one ejected customer's furious complaint into a pre-show warning that went viral.

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

Lyndon B. Johnson's. Dedicating it in 1971 as the first presidential library on a university campus, he promised 'the story of our time, with the bark off', mistakes and criticism included.

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

Silicon Hills. The name swaps Silicon Valley's valley for the hills west of town; the boom behind it had been building since IBM opened a typewriter plant in 1967 and two electronics research consortiums arrived in the 1980s.

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

The Colorado. It is no relation to the river of the Grand Canyon: this one rises and reaches the sea entirely inside Texas, and its Spanish name, 'red', is a puzzle, since the water has always run clear.

Which Republic of Texas vice president is said to have picked out the future capital site while hunting buffalo?

Mirabeau B. Lamar. Elected president soon afterwards, he sent his site commissioners straight to the spot, and the capital went up on the frontier over the protests of Sam Houston, who thought it too exposed to attack.

Which Major League Soccer club became Austin's first major-league professional team when it kicked off in 2021?

Austin FC. The club grew out of a failed relocation: its owner first tried to move the Columbus Crew to Texas, and when that team stayed in Ohio he was given a brand-new franchise instead.

Sam Houston's 1842 attempt to move the Texas government out of Austin for good sparked which confrontation?

The Archive War. Boarding-house keeper Angelina Eberly caught rangers loading the republic's papers into wagons and fired a cannon at them; citizens soon overtook the wagons and brought the records home.

Which downtown Austin creek is named for the man who laid out the city and became its first mayor?

Waller Creek. Edwin Waller raced to have the site surveyed, the lots auctioned and a temporary capitol standing before lawmakers met in November 1839, then served only months as mayor before resigning.

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

A closed Air Force base. Voters had already picked a brand-new airport site out near Manor in 1987; when Bergstrom landed on the federal base-closure list, the city dropped that plan and took over the ready-made runways.