Austin Timeline

Above: Six flags that have flown over Texas

1835 Jacob Harrell settles along Waller, Shoal, and Barton Creeks and calls the settlement Waterloo.
1838 Mirabeau B. Lamar, Vice President of the Republic of Texas, comes to Waterloo to hunt buffalo.
1839 France recognizes the Republic and sends Alphonse DuBois de Saligny to Austin as chargé d’affaires.
1839-44 Lamar struggles with President Sam Houston to establish Austin as the capital of the Republic.

1841 French Legation is built.
1844 New president Anson Jones declares Austin the capital of the Republic.
1845 The Republic of Texas joins the United States of America; Austin remains as capital of the new state of Texas.

1850 A voter referendum ensures Austin’s status as state capital.
1851 Texas State Cemetery is founded.
1852 A second referendum ensures Austin’s status as state capital.
1857 General land office is built (Austin’s oldest surviving office building).

1860 Population has grown from 856 to 3,494 citizens.
1861 City residents vote against secession from the Union.
1869 First Congress Avenue Bridge, a pontoon bridge, is built.

1871 The railroads arrive.
1873 First library is founded.
1875 Second Congress Avenue Bridge is completed.
1876 Huston-Tillotson College, a black institution, is founded.

1880 Austin citizens vote to establish a public school system.
1881 The University of Texas is founded.
1883 Construction is begun on present capitol building.
1885 St. Edward’s University is founded.
1886 The Driskill Hotel is built.
1888 The Capitol opens for business.
1889 St. Edward’s University is built.

1892 Elisabet Ney, Texas’ first eminent sculptor, builds her Hyde Park studio.
1893 Colorado River is dammed to generate electricity for street cars and Moonlight Towers.
1894 O. Henry (Sidney Porter) publishes humorous weekly The Rolling Stone.

1905 City streets are paved with brick—Congress Avenue is the first.
1910 Present Congress Avenue Bridge is completed.
1915 The Paramount Theater is constructed.
1918 Austin’s first airport is constructed on the south side of the city.

1924 City charter is written.
1930 Construction of seven dams along the Colorado River creates, among others, Town Lake.
1935 Year of the Great Flood.
1940 Tom Miller Dam is completed.
1948 Emma Long is the first woman elected to the City Council.

1952 Austin’s first television station, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson’s KTBC-TV, takes to the air.
High tech and real estate boom begins.
1966 Charles Whitman opens fire from the University of Texas’ bell tower, killing 14 people and wounding 31.
1967 Tracor Electronics Company arrives in Austin.
1970 Willie Nelson moves from Nashville to initiate the Austin music scene.
1973 Willie Nelson’s first Fourth of July picnic, now an Austin tradition, attracts more than 40,000 people.
1989 Treaty Oak is poisoned.
1992 The Austin Convention Center, a $69.4-million building, is dedicated.
1995 Capitol is rededicated after a six-year, $187-million restoration and expansion.

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