Eanes: Portrait of a Community

Book history of the Eanes community area — geology, Native American history, the founding of the community in the mid-1800s, and development through 1986.

Transcribed text (first 80 of 132 pages)

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EANES: PORTRAIT OF A COMMUNITY Linda Vance Dorothy M. Depwe Eon.. S choolRond

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To the citizens of the Eanes Independent School District FRM TRCU S A

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Table of Contents 1. The Land and Its First Inhabitants .............................................................................7 II. Civilization Comes to Eanes...................................................................................17 Ill. Life in Eanes Prior to the 1930s ..............................................................................38 IV. Eanes Joins the Modern Age..................................................................................79 Chapter Notes.............................................................................................................118 Printed By: Taylor Publishing Company George L. Southern, Publishing Consultant

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A special thanks to the following individuals who generously shared their time, knowledge and memories.

Joyce and Emmett Shelton, Sr. George and Jann Phenix Stanley Putnam Kathryn Respess Mr. and Mrs. Ross Patterson Lt. Colin Jordan, A.P.D. Tiny Teague Roberts Edna Bulian Benton and Ruth Beard Hubert Lee Cecil Johnson, Jr. Rev. A.D. Eberhart Willie Pribble Harrel Hough

Teresa and Charles Dellana, Jr. Bonnie Skaar George Joe Spaulding Don Fisher Alice Patterson Oestrick Della Edwards Graham Joe Goeth Edna Patterson Pierce Lavonne Rogers Roy Kovar Bill Bullard Cecil Johnson, Sr. Beverly Laws, A.P.D., retired Mike Cox Harry West Doris Walcutt

The following benefactors have generously supported this endeavor

Henry Wetzel Doris Walcutt Dr. Doug Rankin West Lake Beach A.S. Tony Levatino Les Paull Thomas Scott Sheley City of West Lake Hills In Memory of Edna J. McRae Travis County Sesquicentennial Committee

Laura Mings Williams Westlake Picayune Toody Byrd Dr. Ted Edwards Franklin Savings Emmett Shelton Pam Reed City of Rollingwood

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When Dorothy Depwe, chairman of Eanes' Sesquicentennial Committee and author of the first book about the area, Eanes: A History of the School and Community, called me in September of 1985 to tell me that I had been selected to write a new, updated history of the area, which the committee wished to publish in celebration of Texas' 150th anniversa- ry, I was not only flattered to be so honored but pleased to know that I was to be involved in giving such a personal birth- day gift to the community and to the state. For several months after Dorothy's telephone call my days were spent interviewing residents and sifting through, read- ing over, listening to, digesting and interpreting the mounds of newspaper items, books, magazine articles, genealogies, maps, tapes and photographs pertaining to the area, which Dorothy had collected over the years. Not only was I amazed and satisfied to find that such a large and diverse amount of research material existed, but, during the subsequent weeks my fascination grew as I learned that Eanes' history was not only extensive but was filled with colorful people and events. I found that Eanes was, and still is, a product of its environment, and is tied closely to the land. From the beginning of its history the land, the physical environment, has dictated the way of life and helped form the attitudes held by its inhabitants. Through the years disparate groups have been attracted to the Eanes area. Early there had been the Indi- ans, Spanish, and the Mexicans, but these had been displaced. The modern owners of the land had come with Anglo settlement in the 1860s and '70s - farmers, ranchers, cedar choppers, lime and charcoal makers who lived tenuously and sparingly off the land. They had been followed years later by city folks who worked in Austin and elsewhere, but, who, for esthetic reasons, chose to live in Eanes' hills. The natural beauty of the land, the vistas and the rustic, peaceful soli- tude of the place had drawn them. Finally, in the last two decades there had come to Eanes those who saw the area as a "diamond-in-the-rough," a place with pristine, desirable land near burgeoning Austin, land which could be developed and urbanized. In the wake of the land developers had come the hundreds of families which found Eanes a pleasant com- munity in which to raise and educate their children. These families now make up the bulk of the area's inhabitants. Because each of the above groups came to Eanes for different reasons they developed their own mental attachments to the land. During my research I also became aware of forces which ran like a thread through Eanes' history and which worked to make Eanes unique. I found a spirit of independent-mindedness which from the beginning ran deep. This indepen- dentness also could be traced to the land, for even before Eanes had become a modern community its hills had been a place of escape and hideout, whether the escapees were Indians retreating from forays down on the plains, whites flee- ing Civil War conscription, moonshiners fleeing revenuers, or retirees seeking solitude, they all used the hills as a place of refuge. I found that this desire to be independent and left alone continues among many of Eanes' inhabitants up to this day. For most of its history Eanes was a rural community, isolated geographically, and to some extent culturally, which stood outside of and almost untouched by the mainstream of Austin and Travis County events, so close and yet so far away, which swirled around it. This vantage point of aloofness and independentism came about not only because the terrain of Eanes differed so markedly from that on which nearby Austin was built, but, also because the people who set- tled Eanes seem to have been just plain different from Austin folks. They weren't city dwellers, but by choice preferred the rural way of life. They liked the freedom and independent ways of the hills. Not only were they individualists in the main and hardy survivors in the extreme, living off the hills' meagre, hardscrabble handouts, but through the years, again and again, they deliberately chose to maintain their separateness, even when logic said they should do otherwise. Many distrusted and resisted domination from the larger government entities around them and chose at critical times to incor- porate themselves into their own villages, water districts, school district, etc., rather than consolidate and risk absorption into the larger, more modern community nearby. Some even moved away rather than be urbanized and Austinized. This sense of independence still can be found in Eanes today, in its citizens' resistance to annexation pressures which contin- ue to come from Austin, and in talk about going-it-alone and creating still more organizations with which to resist Finally, I found that it was economic forces which wrought the profoundest changes in Eanes. The real story, or at least the most important modern Eanes story, lies in the fact that in less than one generation the area has gone from being a small community with one of the state's lowest per capita incomes to a rapidly growing community with one of the state's highest. Along with the change in income status has come a like change in educational status. Thus, in less than twenty-five years Eanes has changed from a rural community of goat and cattle ranchers and cedar choppers, inter- spersed with a few professionals and retirees seeking peace and quiet, to one of the most dynamic, affluent, highly edu- cated, profession-oriented communities in Texas. This has also meant that Eanes has changed from a community which not so long ago had a broad range of cultural, ethnic and economic groups living side-by-side, into a community which

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is almost 100% homogeneous. Thus, while affluence has brought a superior school system and thriving cultural institu- tions like churches, service clubs and libraries, it has also meant loss of cultural diversity. It is my hope that this book, along with Dorothy's, will record for present and future generations, some of that past cultural diversity and show just how much Eanes has changed through the years. And now for a few final thoughts. While I was working on this book I had several people ask me why I was writing such a history. One friend even questioned the relevancy of any kind of history to today's world. Well, all I can say is that I believe that the history of Eanes is worthy of our attention, not only because it is rich and interesting in the telling, but because it seems to me that we are all creatures of our historical environment, and are shaped by it to some extent, whether we're old-timers or newcomers to an area. It also seems important to know about one's community's cultural, educational, religious and civic heritage, because a community gives one a sense of shared belonging, an identity, if you will, and, an identity is an important thing to have in this modern, impersonal, mass society world in which we live. A sense of community acts as a counterpoint to the rootlessness which we see all around us today. Finally, it seems to me that to know about one's community, its past, as well as its present, helps us to understand why the community has taken one road and not another, why its voters have chosen some things and rejected others, why there have been conflicts over such things as school consolidation, urbanization, environmental protection, bond issues and taxation, and why some changes have been enthusiastically endorsed while others have been vigorously resisted. Knowledge of the past helps give perspective, and perspective helps create understanding, and understand- ing, while offtimes elusive, is still a very valuable thing to have. If this book adds to understanding then it has fulfilled its Linda Vance

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The Land and Its First Inhabitants The Eanes area, sometimes referred to as the Westbank, comprises all of the land in western Travis County which falls within the jurisdiction of the Eanes Independent School District. It is 32 square miles in size and is bordered on the east and north by the Colorado River and on the south and west by Barton Creek. Within Eanes' borders lie four different gov- ernmental entities - the cities of West Lake Hills and Rollingwood, a portion of the City of Austin and a part of Travis County. Water districts #10, #18 and #20, Lost Creek and Davenport Municipal Utility Districts, and, Fire Districts #1 and #10 also lie within Eanes' borders. The area is transected by two major roadways, Ranch Road 2244 (Bee Cave Road) and Loop 360 (Capital of Texas Highway). Eanes has 13 churches, 6 banks, 2 gasoline stations, 3 convenience food stores, 2 grocery stores, 1 communi- ty library, 1 post office, 1 two-hundred acre nature preserve, 1 private country club, and, 1 large, covered shopping mall. In 1985 Eanes had seventeen residential subdivisions, 8,143 households, 4,510 students enrolled in the EISD and a total population of about 25,000. The average median income was $33,247.1 But, Eanes was not always so. The Geology of Eanes In the beginning there was just the land, pristine, untouched, beautiful, bordered by the clean, green waters of the Col- orado River and Barton Creek. Eanes lies on the eastern edge of the hill country of central Texas, a country noted for its purple-hued hills, its sweeping vistas, jagged, limestone canyons, dense cedar brakes, and clear springs and creeks which bubble forth out of the underground aquifer. The hill country is semi-arid, with an average rainfall of around 30.00 inches per year and a mean annual temperature of 67.4 degrees. Geologists tell us that this country, a vast uplift known as the Edwards Plateau, was once a large inland sea.2 The underlying bedrock of the plateau is a mixture of ancient intrusive igneous and metamorphic rocks, overlaid with progres- sively younger paleozoic formations (approximately 270 million years old) which are primarily sedimentary in structure. These younger rocks are the limestones and dolomites which are common throughout the hill country. In the latter part of upper cretaceous time (approximately 135 million years ago) the broad area of central Texas, on which great layers of limestone had been deposited, was broken by faults which shifted the older rocks to higher eleva- tions than the younger rocks. One of the most prominent ruptures is known as the Balcones Fault or Escarpment. The formation was named "Los Balcones" (the balconies) by the Spaniard Bernardo de Miranda in 1756. The fault starts near Waco and bears southwestward through Austin, San Marcos, New Braunfels and Bexar County. Eanes, particularly its cities of West Lake Hills and Rollingwood, sits squarely upon this fault line. The Balcones Fault is responsible for the hills in the Eanes area. The fault has a displacement of over 700 feet and it crosses the Colorado River diagonally, extending from a point just below Tom Miller Dam to up river to just below Mount Bonnell. The upthrow side of the fault is to the west and the downthrow side is to the east. As a result, the rocks on the western side (the Eanes side) are older and deeper than those on the eastern side. These older rocks, known as Glen Rose limestone, are prominently displayed throughout Eanes, but are particularly evident on the cliffs that one sees going westward from Low Water Bridge on Red Bud Trail up toward the city of West Lake Hills. Since there is no evidence of any seismic movement along the Balcones Escarpment within recorded time Eanes is considered to be in an area of geological stability.3 The Glen Rose consists of hard limestones which are interbedded with clays. Where the limestone beds are best developed they are frequently found exposed in steep canyon walls, like those along some parts of Barton Creek and the Colorado. The alternating beds of hard limestone and much softer clays are responsible for the terraces and "table tops" which are so characteristic of the land surface in Eanes. These terraces are particularly evident in and around Wild Basin Preserve and the Rob Roy subdivision where much of the cedar has been removed. Invertebrate fossils are fairly common in the various beds of the Glen Rose. Fossil snails and clams are commonly found. Elsewhere, outside of Eanes, the Glen Rose is famous for fossil dinosaur tracks and mastodon bones. Some of the dinosaur tracks are exceptionally large. Those along the Sabinal River, west of Travis County, suggest that the ani- mals that made them were so immense that they could easily have looked into the third story window of a building. No such tracks are known to exist in Eanes, but in 1985 one of the most significant archeological finds in recent history was uncovered in downtown Austin barely five miles away. The bones of four mastodons, a mammoth, a groundsloth and a

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prehistoric horse were found in strata about 12,000 years old. Thus, it is not improbable that similar creatures wandered in Eanes along the early Colorado, Bee and Barton Creek stream beds.4 Eanes has an abundance of present-day.wildlife. Deer, opossums, squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, snakes, birds of all kinds and fish in the streams are common. The soil formed by the erosion of the Glen Rose limestones is notably unfertile and hard to till (old-timers refer to it as hardscrabble), and, it is highly alkaline. Oaks, junipers (cedars) and various succu- lent plants are the most common natural vegetation of Eanes and cottonwood, pecan, cypress and sycamore trees thrive along the banks of the Colorado and Barton Creek. In the spring months the Eanes hills are colored and perfumed by beautiful Indian blankets, bluebonnets, winecups, mountain laurel and other sense-pleasing flowers and plants. The water that feeds the rivers and creeks of the Edwards Plateau is forced to the surface through the porous lime- stone by artesian pressure and comes from the Edwards Aquifer, a great underground lake which lies below much of the plateau. The water is very hard and requires treatment in order to make it ready for modern domestic use. One of the most attractive features of the Balcones Fault is the springs which issue from fissures along the fault planes. Barton Springs, in Zilker Park, is a prime example. Its average flow is twenty-seven million gallons daily and the water tempera- ture averages 70 degrees year round. There are similar springs in San Marcos and New Braunfels and there are smaller springs throughout Eanes. They include springs that feed Barton Creek (one of which is located near the main building of the Lost Creek Country Club), a spring located on private property near the intersection of Bee Cave Road and Loop 360, which feeds Smith (Dry) Creek, and intermittent springs found on Bee Creek and in Devil's Gorge near St. Stephen's School. Walker Springs, Brewton Springs and Watson Springs are also located in the Eanes area. Hamilton's Pool and West Cave Preserve are only a few minutes away. The presence of springs, especially the larger ones which provided a supply of potable water, had a lot to do with attracting the first human inhabitants to the Eanes area. The First Human Inhabitants Because of the streams and springs which dot the Edwards Plateau and because of numerous archeological remains found near these watering sites, prehistoric hunters and gatherers must have found central Texas a good place to live for they called it home for more than 11,000 years - from the last ice age to the coming of the Anglo-Americans. Archeol- ogists have constructed a prehistoric Texas cultural sequence which is based upon the changes which have occurred in the styles of projectile points. Three broad prehistoric periods have been identified. They are the Paleo-ndian (ancient to 7000 B.C.) during which nomadic man hunted very large animals; the Archaic period (7000 B.C. to 800 A.D.) during which man gathered food and hunted smaller animals; and, the Neo-American period (800 A.D. to 1800 A.D.) during which man began to use the bow and arrow, cultivate crops and later acquired the horse, metal and firearms from the early Europeans. Scientists are not sure exactly when man first entered central Texas but relics from a culture designated as "the Llano Complex", from the Paleo-Indian period, have been dated back to approximately 12,000 years ago. The "Leanderthal Lady" skeleton which was uncovered northwest of Austin in 1983 by a highway excavation crew belonged to this time period.5 On the Edwards Plateau archeologists have found approximately twenty-seven different types of dart points, scrapers, knives, choppers, etc., some dating back to about 6,500 B.C., to the "Archaic." Arrowheads and other projec- tile points have been found throughout the Eanes area. The town of San Marcos is known to sit on one of the oldest contin- uously inhabited sites in North America, dating to 9,200 B.C. Archeologists have unearthed hundreds of cooking pits and camping sites belonging to the "Clovis" culture. Thousands of projectile points and stone objects have been found at these sites.6 During the latter part of the Neo-American period, from approximately 1400 A.D. to 1800 A.D., three major tribes roamed the Edwards Plateau; the Apaches, who lived farther west but who raided into central Texas; the Tonkawas, who were indigenous to the area and who could trace their association with the land back many thousands of years; and, the Comanches, newcomers to Texas, who displaced both the Apaches and Tonkawas as the dominant tribe in central Tex- as.7 All three tribes depended upon the buffalo (the American bison) which ranged over the great central basin of the North American continent as far south as Mexico. In addition to the buffalo, central Texas provided other kinds of game. Deer, bear (the American Black Bear), opossums, raccoons, foxes, wolves and coyotes, ringtails, bobcats and cougars, otters and beavers, prairie dogs, rabbits, squirrels and armadillos and pronghorn and bighorn sheep were all abundant on the Edwards Plateau prior to the coming of the white man. When the Spaniards came to Texas the Apache Indians controlled the western half of the state. Apaches were recent arrivals from the west and they used the Edwards Plateau as their staging area for attacks on San Antonio and the mis- sions which the Spanish attempted to establish. Apache attacks continued until well into the 19th century. Despite the Apaches' presence it was the Tonkawas and the Comanches that the Spanish and Anglo-Texans came to know best. The first white men to make close contact with the Tonkawas were members of Alonso de Leon's expedition which trekked through Texas in 1690.

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Just when the Tonkawan people entered central Texas is unknown but ancient Tonkawa remnants have been found at sites all along the Balcones Escarpment, including some in the Eanes area. Where St. Stephen's School is now located there was once a large Indian campground. Archeologists also know that many of the caves in Eanes were once used by Indians. One such cave, Bandit Cave, on the old Dellana ranch, now present-day Rollingwood, was used by Indians for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Human bones found in the cave were carbon dated to about 500 A.D. Scientists also found a bear skeleton in the cave. Several Indian mounds were also on the old Dellana ranch. Charlie Dellana, Jr., remembers that when he and his brother were children they found so many arrowheads that they sold cigar boxes full of them for 35 a box. Dellana also recalls that archeologists from the University of Texas inspected many sites on the ranch. Cecil Johnson, Sr., who also grew up in Eanes, owns a collection of arrowheads and dart points which he found on the Marshall ranch and along the banks of Smith (Dry) Creek. George Nalle, Ill, who grew up in Eanes in the 1940s and 50s, recalls that even then there were plenty of arrowheads to be found. He amassed quite a collection. In December, 1984, the skeletal remains of an Indian woman were unearthed by a utility construction crew working on Westlake Drive. The bones were sent to the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory for analysis.8 Arrowhead Coection. found nthe Cecl Jhnsn rrohea Clletio. ll tem fundin heEanes area. Smith Creek was apparently a favorite Indian campsite and the Indians made arrowheads from flint rock which lies along the creek's banks. The Indians no doubt used the springs which lie on the old Marshall ranch and form the headwa- ters of the creek. Also, on the premises of present-day Eanes Elementary School the Indians used to camp. There was at that site a large concave rock which they used to grind acorns into meal. This same rock was used by the later Anglo pioneers who settled in the area. Unfortunately, the rock was destroyed when the school building was built. The Tonkawas have left not only their physical marks on the land but their spiritual marks on the area as well. The Tonkawas were a fascinating tribe. They hunted, fished and gathered herbs, roots, fruits, berries and acorns. Their main- stay was the buffalo, but the deer was also hunted and ranked next to the buffalo in economic importance. Tipis, clothing, weapons, ropes, utensils, tools and food all came from these animals. They used deerskins as a medium of exchange. "The dressed skins were in great demand among the white settlers ... a certain trader received 1,000 deerskins from the Tonkawas in one year . .. The wolf [and coyote] were not hunted, for the Tonkawa believed that they had been brought into the world by these animals or were even descended from them ... They believed that if they killed a coyote or a wolf they would become ill and also would be unable to track down their enemies."9 The wolf and coyote were seen as quick and clever and helpful to man. One of the most important Tonkawa myths states: "The wolf went to the sun to borrow fire. A frog was watching the fire. The wolf talked to him in a friendly manner, then picked up a handful of ashes and threw it into the frog's face and eyes. The wolf ran through the fire and, still ablaze, went down to earth as fast as he could go. He jumped into the water; however, a little spark remained on his tail when he got out of the water. He blew on it until the tail again was ablaze. The wolf then struck the Yucca plant saying 'This shall have fire from now on, and the flint-rock, too.' The sun, pursuing the exhausted wolf, sent rain after him to drown him."10 And thus did man get fire and water. Besides buffalo and deer the Tonkawa also hunted many smaller animals. In addition the tribe collected acorns and pecans in large numbers. Venison and buffalo meat were dried and pounded with pecan and acorn meal to make pemmi- can, their principal food when on the trail. Pecan and acorn meal was also mixed with other foods and sometimes was eaten alone. Prior to the 19th century, the Tonkawas practiced cannibalism, eating the flesh of their enemies. They believed that to do so avenged the death of slain comrades and deprived the enemy of living a second life.

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Tonkawa Brave (Natl. Anthropological Archives. Chief Placido (From Thrall's Pictorial History of Smithsonian.) Texas.) One white settler described a victory celebration at which Tonkawas feasted on thirteen captured Indians, who after being killed and scalped, were carried back to camp by the warriors. "The women dug a number of pits in the ground over which to cook the meat. The bodies were cut into pieces which were placed on sticks and roasted over the fire. While the meat was being prepared, the groups held a special ceremony; after this, everyone ate some of the cooked flesh and the men participated in a scalp dance. The meat which was not eaten was kept for future use as a delicacy . .. One observer states he saw Placido, a well known Tonkawa leader (who fought at the Battle of Plum Creek in 1840), eating the ribs of a Comanche chief and removing the hands and feet [for] his wives and children."'1 Since the Tonkawas were nomads their shelters were almost always temporary. They used small tipis, brush arbors and rock caves. All members of the tribe wore buckskins clothing, some elaborately beaded. In addition they wore ear- rings and necklaces of bones, shell and feathers. They wore their hair long and parted in the middle and they sometimes braided it with colorful strips of cloth or with fur. In Tonkawan society women did all of the work. The men only hunted and made war. The women prepared hides and skins for use, they made the clothes, wove baskets and grass mats, fired pots of clay, gathered herbs, berries and nuts, prepared all food and looked after the children. The Tonkawa had many ceremonies, including the wolf dance commemorating the creation of the tribe, the buffalo dance simulating a hunting expedition, the deer dance, the wild hog dance and the wild turkey dance. During these dances drums, rattles and sticks kept a syncopated beat. The Indians also smoked pipes filled with the hallucinogen, peyote, which made them, like their brethren in Mexico, see visions and apparitions. The Tonkawas were divided into separate bands, each composed of clans with names like bear, wolf, snake, and so on. Clan membership was matrilineal, that is, inherited from the mother, and when a warrior died his property was given to his sister's children. When a Tonkawa died he was immediately buried in the ground with many of his personal posses- sions, including enemy scalps and sometimes even his favorite horse and dog. The body was always laid with its head pointing toward the west for all spirits supposedly traveled in that direction. No markings or mounds were ever left at the site for the Tonkawas believed that their enemies would desecrate the grave if they found it. Thus few Tonkawa burial sites have been located in modern times. Even though nomadic in lifestyle each Tonkawa band inhabited a specific area of central Texas. Since they were some- what less belligerent than either Apaches or Comanches the Spanish attempted to establish missions among the Tonkawas during the 18th century, but the tribe's numbers dwindled so rapidly because of diseases brought by the white man and because of attacks and encroachment from Comanches, that they ceased to be a major threat by the time Anglos entered the state. Early Texans remembered the Tonkawas as a tribe which lingered near white settlements and which expressed great curiosity about the white settlers' way of life. During the last Indian wars in Texas the Tonkawas served as scouts with the military. Of all the Indians which the white man faced on the Texas frontier it was the Comanches who were both feared and respected the most. "From the beginnings of Anglo-American Texas until 1875 the Comanches were the principal and most stubborn adversaries the Texans had. Until the 1870s they raided through much of the state, to say nothing of

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Mexico, and killed or captured men, women and children, carried off what loot they could, and burned the rest. Not only did Comanches valiantly battle Spaniards, Mexicans, Texans and Americans but they conquered the other Indian resi- dents - the Apaches and Tonkawas."12 For two hundred years the Comanches swept down off the Balcones Escarpment, pillaged and plundered the white settlements on the plains below and then just as quickly retreated back to where they had come from and disappeared into the hills and canyons of the Edwards Plateau. Since Barton Springs and the Colorado River were well known way stations and campsites used by Comanches, Eanes was most assuredly a staging area and a crossroads used by them as they prepared for or retreated from raids against the settlements east of the Escarpment. A mounted, well-equipped, powerful people, the Comanches were named by the Spanish. Comanche comes from "Komantcia", which was adopted from the Ute word meaning "enemy." The Comanches, who spoke Shoshone and were related to that tribe, were never a cohesive nation but were an amalgam of loose bands, the largest and best-known being the Panatekas or "Honey Eaters" who roamed between the Colorado and Brazos rivers in Central Texas. It was the Panatekas who inflicted the most damage upon the inhabitants of the little village of Waterloo (Austin), which was established on the banks of the Colorado in the 1830s. One Texas pioneer described the Comanches as being "without exception large, fine-looking men, displaying to the very best advantage their erect, graceful, well-knit frames and finely proportioned figures ... They had keen black eyes without lashes [which they plucked out], and long plaits of coarse black hair hanging from bare heads down to the very ground behind them."13 The Comanches usually wore only breechclouts, leggings and moccasins. In winter they added buffalo robes and buckskin shirts. For festive occasions and battle they painted their faces, wore headdresses and ornamented them- selves with necklaces, bracelets and earrings made of beads, bones, shells, feathers and other decorative materials. They even decorated their horses. John Jenkins, who fought at the Battle of Plum Creek in 1840, near present-day Lock- hart, remembered the Comanches "had attached red ribbons to their horses' tails; many wore headdresses of buffalo horns and deer antlers, one wore a headdress made of a large white crane with red eyes and others wore all sorts of loot- ed plunder. One huge warrior wore a stovepipe hat and another a fine pigeon-tailed cloth coat, buttoned up behind."14 One even carried an opened parasol during the battle. The Comanches, the finest horsemen on the American plains, rode small, hardy and fast mustangs and could cover great distances in what seemed to the whites amazing speed. Their familiarity with the territory, their fighting prowess (they were rarely captured, preferring to die in battle rather than face capture), and their warfare based on hit-and-run tactics made them a very formidable opponent. In addition, their stress upon individual independence and freedom of action and their lack of an autonomous governmental organization meant that each clan, if not each individual warrior, was unaccountable to anyone but themselves. Their whole lives were oriented around warfare and for their duration in Texas they were at war, first with the Apaches, then the Tonkawas, and finally, with the white men. It was their clash with the latter, and the white man's decimation of the buffalo herds, which finally led to the end of the Comanches in Texas and to their final banishment to Indian territory north of the Red River in 1875. Spanish Texas In 1519, the same year that Hernan Cortes entered Mexico to conquer that country and its rich Aztec empire, the first Spaniard stepped on Texas soil. He was Alonso Alvarez de Pineda and he mapped the state's coastal waters, spending forty days at the mouth of the Rio Grande. From that time until 1680, when Franciscan fathers established the state's first permanent settlement (mission Corpus Christi de la Isleta) near present-day El Paso, the Spanish sponsored entra- das (expeditions) into the vast territory which surrounded it. It is not known just how many of these entradas actually crossed the Edwards Plateau, but both Francisco Coronado and Luis de Moscoso de Alvarado reported meeting Indians which resided on the plateau. The most significant result of these dangerous and often foolhardy ventures is the fact that the explorers found no gold or silver, no "cities of Cibola, "like they had found in Mexico and Peru, and as a consequence for over 150 years the Spanish considered Texas of too little value to warrant major attention. From 1669 until 1763 the government of New Spain undertook to secure its claim to Texas by establishing missions among the Indians, the first in the west near New Mexico and El Paso and then in the far eastern part of the state which bordered Louisiana. The latter to block French expansion. Probably the first recorded Spanish crossing of present-day Travis County was in 1691 when Domingo Teran de los Rio skirted the southeastern corner of the county as he pro- ceeded on an inspection tour to east Texas. In 1709 Captain Pedro de Aquierre and his troops escorted Fathers Isidro de Espinosa and Antonio de San Beneventura Olivares on a goodwill expedition to meet Indians who lived along the Colo- rado near present-day Austin. In 1716 Domingo Ramon, on his way to establish more missions in east Texas, crossed the southeastern edge of the county. The trail which he blazed between San Antonio and East Texas became known as El Camino Real (the King's Highway). In 1720 Marquis de Aquayo crossed Travis County on the Camino Real to visit the East Texas missions.15 The early padres who traveled across present-day Travis County wrote not only of the Indians they met but also reported on the abundance of buffalo and wild game which they saw and the thousands of wild mus-

tangs which ran free.

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The most important settlements to result from this first period of mission building were Villa de Bexar (San Antonio) and its mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo), which were established in 1718, mission La Bahia established at Goliad in 1749, and mission Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de los Nacogdoches established near present-day Nacogdo- ches in 1716. During this period the Spanish also established several missions and presidios in central Texas among the Tonkawan nation, a tribe which they referred to as Rancheria Grande. In 1730 the missions of San Francisco de los Neches, Nuestra Senora de la Purisma Concepcion de los Hainia and San Jose de los Nazones were located on the banks of the Colorado River where it is joined by Barton Creek. During the first decade of the 20th century Condido Dellana, who owned a ranch which covered much of present-day Zilker Park and Rollingwood, found on his property a 150 pound bell which had belonged to one of the missions. The bell was used by the old Eanes' school for a while and then Dellana gave it to the Austin Catholic Diocese.16 In 1732 Juan Antonio Bustillo de Zevallos pursued Apaches across Travis County, and in the 1740s two more missions were established in the area. They were San Xavier, located on the San Gabriel River north of Travis County, and San Saba located west in present-day Menard County. In 1754 Pedro de Rabago y Teran crossed Travis County on his way to Indian territory. And finally, Spanish records tell of the Spaniards rounding-up wild mustangs in the vicinity of present- day Austin, breaking them in at a campsite near Barton Springs, and trailing them to San Antonio for sale. This occurred Thus present-day Travis County and the Eanes hills were not unknown to the Spanish padres and soldiers who criss- crossed the area many times in their wanderings and attempts to bring Christianity to Texas' Indians. Unfortunately, the Texas frontier proved too hazardous and most of the missions failed. Harrassment from Apaches and Comanches, drought, isolation, disease and other hardships overwhelmed the settlements causing most of them to be abandoned within a few years of their establishment. In 1763 Spain acquired Louisiana and this event launched the second Spanish Texas period, 1763 to 1821. Soon after the acquisition of Louisiana the governor of the northern province, Marques de Rubi, crisscrossed the Edwards Plateau during a 7,000 mile tour to inspect all of the missions, presidios and pueblos on Mexico's vast frontier. Discouraged by what he saw, his report established a new policy. All lesser missions and presidios, including those in central Texas, were abandoned, Bexar and La Bahia were strengthened, the most docile Indians were pacified, and the Apaches and Comanches were pursued in a vigorous war of extermination. With this new policy Spain "cut her losses" and launched a second attempt to consolidate her hold on Texas. San Antonio became the seat of government in 1773, the number of troops was increased, and special inducements were offered Spanish citizens to settle the frontier. But still Spain was unable to consolidate her hold upon Texas. By 1810 only San Antonio, Goliad and Nacogdoches remained as viable settlements, there being no outposts north of San Anto- nio, and in all of the future state of Texas there were only 4,000 citizens, including 1,000 soldiers. After the establishment of the United States, and its acquisition of Louisiana, pressure from land hungry Anglos increased along Texas' eastern border. This pressure resulted in a number of Anglo-led filibustering expeditions (quasi- military adventures) into the state. These destabilizing ventures together with increased unrest and political instability within New Spain itself led to the final breakdown of Spanish power. In 1821 Mexico declared its independence from Spain and for the next fifteen years Texas was ruled by a new order. Mexican Texas and the First Anglo Settlers Mexico, determined to succeed where Spain had failed, developed its own plan for Texas. It included joining Texas with the state of Coahuila, colonizing the vast and vacant middle territory between San Antonio and Nacogdoches, and introducing the empresario system to Texas, a system which had proven its usefulness elsewhere in the Spanish em- The first Anglo empresario grant was to Moses Austin and was made originally by the Spanish government in 1820, but was not implemented until 1821 by his son Stephen F. Austin. The Austin colony was located in the lower Brazos and Colorado river basins between present-day Victoria and Liberty counties. Each family was entitled to a sitio, a league of land approximately 4,000 acres in size, if they ranched, and a labor of 177 acres if they farmed. The capital of the colony was established at San Felipe and each colonist was required to embrace the Catholic faith, become a citizen of Mexico and agree to live on the land. Eventually there were more than a dozen Anglo empresarios who by 1836 had issued nearly 3,500 land titles. Eanes never was part of any empresario grant, for the Balcones Escarpment was the demarcation line between Indian territory - the unfertile, dry and rocky Edwards Plateau with its cedar brakes, prickly pear and clumps of burro grass - and the coveted blackland prairie region to the east, with its miles of rich virgin soil lush with buffalo, bent and blu- estem grasses. In 1827 Stephen F. Austin was issued a second empresario grant. Known as "The Little Colony", it was located on the east side of the Colorado River above his original colony and included much of present-day eastern Travis County. Its

headquarters was located at Mina, later called Bastrop, and its western boundary was the Colorado River. Eanes lay

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adjacent to this new colony. Within the decade Mexico would grant a few parcels of land in Eanes. Two who received such grants were Henry P. Hill and Wilkinson Sparks. Both acquired land in the eastern portion of Eanes in 1835. Henry Hill was a colonist introduced by the empresario Benjamin R. Milam. The Milam colony was in north Texas along the Red River but it was never settled and many of its colonists claimed tracts of land elsewhere in Texas. Hill chose Eanes. (Apparently Milam's relative, B. Burris Milam later received his own headright, for land in western Eanes was registered in that name after the Texas Revolution.) Henry Hill's deed was recorded in Spanish at Mina in July, 1835, and was apparently surveyed by Bartlett Sims, one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists. Hill's land covered acreage that is now occupied by Barton Creek Mall, Treemont and Zilker Park. Wilkinson Sparks' grant covered much of present-day West Lake Hills. Neither Hill nor Sparks ever settled on their land, however, and Eanes remained the home of remnant bands of Tonkawas and warring Comanches for many years. The Establishment of Texas, Austin and Travis County The trickle of immigration that began with Austin's first colony soon became a flood. Within fifteen years empresarios had brought 25,000 settlers to the state, three-fourths of which were Anglos. Few were true Catholics, most were Bap- tists or Methodists and the majority came from the southern and trans-Appalachian United States. This great influx of people who were alien to the Mexican culture eventually led to disagreements with the government. In addition to this animosity Mexico itself was the victim of internal political strife during this period. Between 1821 and 1836 not a single administration in Mexico City served out its full term. As the irreconcilable differences between the settlers and the Mexi- cans increased a split between the two sides became inevitable. By the time that the Texians declared their Indepen- dence in 1836 the establishment of a new nation was a fait accompli, the victory at San Jacinto merely settled the matter While Anglos entered present-day Travis County as early as 1815 - the William Cannon family operated an Indian trading post on Onion Creek in the 1820s - the first individual to settle where Austin now is was Jacob Harrell, who, in 1835, pitched a tent on the north bank of the Colorado River at a low water crossing near the present-day Congress Ave- nue bridge.18 In 1837 William "Uncle Billie" Barton moved to the springs on Spring Creek on the south side of the river. The springs, originally named Parthenia and Eliza for Barton's daughters, became known as Barton Springs and Spring Creek became Barton Creek.19 Barton, a colorful figure and somewhat of a showman, once kept two tamed baby buffa- loes at his place which attracted sightseers to the south side of the river despite the isolated location and the ever pres- ent danger of Indian attacks. During 1838 three other families located near Harrell on the north bank of the river. The small community was named Waterloo.20 In the fall of 1838 Mirabeau B. Lamar visited Waterloo during a buffalo hunt. Impressed with the beauty of the place he suggested it as the site of the capital of the new Republic. As president of the Republic his influence was great and Waterloo was chosen. In the site committee's report the future Eanes' area was noted as follows: "[Waterloo] is ... in full view of the Mountains or breaks of the Table Lands which, judging by the eye, are of about three hundred feet elevation. They are of Limestone formation and are covered with Live Oak and Dwarf Cedar to their summits ... the imagination of even the romantic will not be disappointed on viewing the Valley of the Colorado ... [and] the green romantic mountains [to the west].''21 After Waterloo was chosen as the capital in 1839 its name was changed to Austin and several crude government build- ings were constructed. The capitol, a one-story frame building, was surrounded by an eight foot stockade to protect it from Indians which periodically swept down off Eanes' nearby hills to harrass the little village. Noah Smithwick, who was postmaster at Webber's Prairie and who wrote the classic, Recollections of Old Texas Days, about the Indian depreda- tions, also wrote about the fledgling capital city. He wryly noted that: "Though there had not been a tree felled anywhere in the vicinity of the city of Austin prior to the location of the capital there, as soon as the seat of government was established in the new log cabins provided for its recep- tion, people began to gather about it; by far the larger portion . . . being lawyers and gamblers."22 And thus it is that lawyers and gamblers remain in large numbers in Austin to this day. In 1840 Travis County was created out of Bastrop County. Named for William Barret Travis the county was originally 40,000 square miles in size, there being less than 900 souls in the whole of it, including sixty-one women.23 Eventually fourteen separate counties were carved from this vast area. Today Travis is only 1,015 square miles in size. One early Texas citizen was Thomas Jefferson Chambers who had moved to Mexico in 1826 and had served the state of Coahuila y Texas as surveyor general, state attorney and chief justice. For his services Mexico gave him more than 136,000 acres of land. While Eanes was not included in this 136,000 acres, the large grant led in an indirect way to Cam- bers acquiring Eanes land. When the Texas revolution started in 1836 he put up his 136,000 acres as collateral to raise money to pay for soldiers and arms.24 In payment for his support of the Texas cause the new Republic later issued Cham-

bers Bounty Certificate #41, Survey #504, for 1,280 acres. This 1,280 acres lay squarely within Eanes. Even though

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Chambers became one of the "Westbank's" first landowners, like Hill and Sparks before him, he too never settled on his Eanes land. In the 1840s Chambers sued the new Republic for confiscating and not returning to him the 136,000 acres which he had received from Mexico. Texas had kept the land and used much of it for sites for state office buildings, including the capitol building. The lawsuit dragged on for years and in 1925 the state finally settled it once and for all by returning some of the land and paying Chambers' heirs $20,000 for the acreage on which the capitol building sits. After the 1836 war numerous other individuals received bounty certificates and headrights for land. Many chose land in Eanes.25 However, few of these individuals settled on the land either, preferring to sell their claims for 100 to 20 on the dollar. Permanent settlement of the Eanes' area was not to occur for some years, until the 1860s. The most immediate concern to Austin and county residents during the 1830s and 1840s was their own security. Thou- sands of citizens who lived in the blackland prairie region were subject to Indian attacks. In Austin the problem was par- ticularly acute because the Indians were so near. Indians were often seen along the ridges of the hills west of the river. Numerous Austin residents were murdered by the redmen, including two of Dr. Edwin Waller's survey crew as they laid out the town's first streets. "For decades the city did not expand beyond its boundaries of Shoal Creek on the west, Wal- ler Creek on the east, the Colorado River on the south and 15th Street on the north."26 The land west of present-day Lamar Boulevard was deemed too dangerous for settlement. Numerous citizens were attacked near there while grazing their cows, picking berries and fishing along the banks of the river. Treaty Oak on present-day Baylor Street was the demarcation line between civilization and Indian territory. At one time Texas' Indian frontier, 1,200 miles long, stretched from Mexico on the south to Wyoming on the north. Much of Austin's Indian threat was resolved by the Battle of Plum Creek which occurred in 1840 near present-day Lock- hart. After several months of killing, stealing and plundering a large Comanche band, down from the Edwards Plateau, was confronted by a Texian army composed of volunteers and Texas Rangers. The Comanches were defeated at the battle and in 1844 Travis County was provided its own company of Rangers under the command of John C. Hays, whose responsibility it was to subdue any Indians who remained in the area. Eventually the Comanches were pushed northwest- ward into the farthest reaches of Texas and by 1860 Indian raids against residents living in and around Austin had become a rarity. From its founding Travis County was governed by a commissioner's court. In 1840 Precinct #4 was established "on the west side of the river above the lower line of Travis County and below (the City of Austin).27 In 1846 boundaries were changed and Precinct #5 was estabished. It included "all that district west of the Colorado River and within bounds of Travis County, to be known as San Marcos precinct. . ."28 Eanes lay within this large district. Through the years precincts were added and rearranged and today Eanes lies within Travis County Precinct #3. In 1846 a group of Mormons from Missouri settled below Mount Bonnell along the riverbank, across from Eanes. They were led by Lyman Wight who purchased 160 acres "for the price of one Spanish pony."29 At the site Wight built a grist mill which prospered until it was damaged in a flood a few years later. During their years at the Mount Bonnell site the Mormons cut a trail through the cedar brakes on the west side of the river. This trail ran from about where the present-day Rob Roy subdivision is, through what was later called Davenport Ranch, along Bee Creek basin to the river about where West Lake Beach is today. Wight's son, Levi, who was twelve years old when the grist mill was built, later reminisced about the old Mormon settlement. He recalled that: "... we reached the bank of the Colerado river about 4 miles above Austin, at the foot of Mt. Bernel. A number of buffalow was kiled by our people. We was sometimes hardly out of sight of buffalow for a whole day ... for a few years Indans were peosable and [there was] plenty of game ... [we] caught every time we went to the river just as much cat fish as we could cary home ... A little expearance with an insane woman happened about this time ... [her family kept her] but for several days she could not be found. At last an old hermit catiered her and brought her in. On the river's west side she had hid in an extencive cedar brake ..."30 One wonders, does the spirit of the crazy woman, and the old hermit's, too, still roam Eanes' cedar brakes today? After a flood destroyed the grist mill Wight sold the Mount Bonnell riverfront land to Jonas Dancer for the tidy profit of 300 cattle and moved west to Burnet County. In 1858 after another devastating flood the old grist mill was finally aban- doned for good, although a stone quarry was operated at the site in the 1860s. Levi remembered that while the Wights lived on the "perdenals [river].. . friendly Indans would ocationly bring bear meat of which [there] was plenty ... The Comanches savag tribe came near us at different times and the Tonkaways too for a few years was quite friendly ... They wanted something all the time and was not slow to make their wants known. If their wifes did something to disples them they whiped them."''31 In the 1850s Austin underwent an economic boom and prosperity came to the city. Many of the town's most beautiful ante-bellum homes were built during this time and within the decade the city had a thriving population of 4,000. In 1857 the town counted two newspapers, the State Gazette, a Democratic paper, and the State Times, an organ of the Know- Nothing party. (The American-Statesman began as the Democratic Statesman in 1871.) Austin also had a small but pros- perous business community which included R.D. Carr's Gentleman's Store, Moke Brothers Dry Goods, Swenson and

Swisher, bankers, and F.W. Chandler and T.B. Calhoun, Counsellors at Law. In addition the town had an over supply of

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saloonkeepers, speculators and land agents. Among the latter were J.A. Black, C. DeNormandie, P. De Cordova and J. Douglass Brown.32 In the mid-1850s a census showed that Travis County had approximately 6,000 white citizens, 2,063 Negro slaves, 3,745 horses and 17,906 head of cattle. The average price of an acre of land was $1.28 and the county generated $345.50 in poll taxes, $5,366.85 in state taxes and $6,805.41 in county taxes.33 Eanes, still isolated by the river, there were no bridges, and by its own rugged terrain, continued to lie outside the con- fines of civilization, although here and there a stranger passed through it or a brave vaquero dared to run a few cows in among its cedar brakes and limestone canyons. During those years Eanes became known as a hideout for renegades and others who lived on the fringes of the law. Even the law itself took to the hills on occasion. Ben Thompson, the flam- boyant and notorious gambler who served as Austin's city marshal, frequently escaped to Eanes' hills to wait for personal problems to "blow over". In the 1950s Emmett Shelton, Sr., who was building roads in the City of West Lake Hills, found an 1852 gold piece near present-day Terrace Mountain Drive. Shelton speculates that perhaps Thompson lost the coin during one of his "disappearances" into the hills.' In 1875 the notorious gunman John Wesley Hardin hid out in the hills west of Austin. Both Thompson and Hardin died violent deaths, Thompson in a gun battle in 1884 in San Antonio's Vaude- ville Theatre and Hardin in 1895 in El Paso in a run-in with the local constable. Legend has it that Bandit's Cave, an ancient Indian cave in present-day Rollingwood, was well known to outlaws. One story relates that about 1860 the state treasury was robbed of $17,000 and that the robbers made fast tracks over to Eanes and hid out in the cave, hence its name, Bandit.35 Spelunkers think the cave is connected in some way with Austin Cavern, which is located across the river, near Scenic Drive. If this is true then the connecting tunnel would have to by- pass the aquifer somehow, because the underground river is very close to the streambed of the Colorado River. Regard- less, it still makes entertaining speculation to think that early-day outlaws carried on their mischief in Austin and then went underground, only to reappear safe and sound, out in Eanes' hills. In addition to Thompson and Hardin, other more notable figures lived in Austin at one time, including the writer O. Hen- ry and the soldiers George Armstrong Custer and Robert E. Lee. During the 1850s Lee served under Albert Sidney John- son and commanded the 2nd U.S. Cavalry in Texas. On several occasions Lee and his troops camped at Barton Springs on their marches from San Antonio to the Edwards Plateau in pursuit of Indians. The road Lee and the cavalry used, which lies just east of the Springs, still bears Lee's name. Custer came to Austin after the Civil War as part of the army of occupa- While no great or crucial battles, on the scale of Gettysburg, were fought in Texas during the Civil War the state never- theless was affected by the conflict. Texas, with a population of more than 500,000 had approximately 115,000 black slaves within its borders. During the war more than 60,000 Texans wore uniforms, the majority donning the "Gray". Ter- ry's Texas Rangers and Rip Ford's 2nd Texas Cavalry fought bravely in the war, and the last soldier of either army was Texas Confederate Walter William who died in Houston in 1959 at the ripe age of 117. Confederate troops camped at Shoal Creek and Barton Springs as did later Union troops. Travis County, a center of Unionist sentiment in the state, voted 450 for and 750 against secession. Because of this, "Red Hots" (radical Confederates), viewed Austin as a "damn Yankee town" and an "abolition hole."'36 Locals who held Unionist views had to be particularly discreet during the war. John Lohman, of Lohman's Crossing in present-day Lakeway, was nearly hung from an Austin lamp post after a confrontation with southern sympathizers who resented his Unionist views. Only the quick action of friends saved Lohman from the rope.37 Because of such occurrences many Union sympathizers left the state entirely during the war, most spending the war years in Mexico. With the onset of the Civil War, Eanes, still wild country, beyond the fringes of society, continued to serve as a place of escape, for when war began county Unionists who couldn't afford to flee to Mexico, took to its isolated hills to escape Confederate conscription. These Unionists, known as the "Mounted Eagles", once again turned many of Eanes' caves into hideouts, concealing not only themselves but guns and supplies which they smuggled from Mexico during the It is known that during the war the Confederacy manufactured gunpowder in the Eanes' area. Lead, which was mined from veins of red iron ore found along Barton Creek's cliffs, was combined with nitrate, which was leached out of bat quano found in Eanes' bat caves. One site where the quano-nitrate-iron mixture was processed was about where Barton Creek Mall is now located.39 It is fun to contemplate that Rebs and Yanks kept wary eyes open and on the lookout for each other as they went about their separate businesses in the hills. Despite Eanes periodic use by hermits, outlaws, gunrunners, powder manufacturers, and assorted other types of ren- egades, it still had no permanent settlers. But that changed once the Civil War was over.

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Thomas J. Chambers (Barker Texas History Center.)

Alexander Eanes (Depwe Coll.)

John Marshall, Publisher, Texas State Gazette. (Courtesy Bruce Marshall)

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Civilization Comes to Eanes The First Settlers Except for Houston, Galveston, San Antonio and Austin, Texas was still frontier territory in the 1850s and '60s. Trans- portation, primitive and slow, was either by foot, ox- or mule-drawn wagon or horse-drawn coach. (Railroads didn't become common until the 1870s.) The state's roads, rutted and bone-jarring, were so bad that all but the most essential travel was avoided. One early pioneer remembered that, "[roads] were just paths cut through the trees and worn through the sand, muddy bogs in rainy weather, rocky, dusty and rough in dry times."1Another wrote that, "we trembled and shook ... over stumps and boulders. On these roads one needs nerves like the ropes on an oxen harness."2 Finally, one young pioneer recalled that, "we went so slowly that my stepmother sat [in the wagon] beside my father and knit- Yet thousands of newcomers streamed into the state. Settlers who came at this time entered the state one of two ways. They either landed at Galveston, sailing from Europe, a three month sea journey, or from another American port, such as New York, Charleston or New Orleans; or, they came overland on one of the trails which crossed through Arkan- sas or Louisiana. Both modes of entry were not without their discomforts, mishaps and hardships. When settlers reached their destination they usually put up at a boarding house or stayed with friends if they settled in a town. If they staked out a claim on land in the wilderness then they had to "make-do" with what was at hand and secure shelter as best they could. But game was plentiful and for most of the year the weather was mild. But life on the frontier was not without its hazards. The diaries and letters of early pioneers who settled in central Texas are full of accounts and confrontations with Indians, run-ins with snakes and cougars, bouts with sand fleas and mosquitoes, visits by Old Man Death in the form of smallpox and measle epidemics and challenges from the Texas weather. One central Texas settler from Europe wrote that, "we had a thunderstorm about eight days ago, such as in Germany would be called a severe one, but which here is considered insignificant ... The sudden changes in weather are remarkable."4 Another stated that, "... . wind, much wind, Texas is the windiest country."5 Another pioneer recalled that weekly she and her dogs killed rattlesnakes that ventured too close to the family's home. The first shelter was almost always the wagon the settlers had come in. Sometimes a makeshift tent served as a tem- porary home while a cabin was being "raised" for the family. Mary Crownover Rabb, who came to Texas with her family in the 1820s, and who with her husband John settled on Barton Creek in 1860, left a delightfully quaint but accurate account of life on the Texas frontier. She remembered that when her family reached the lower Colorado River, "there was no house thare then nore nothing but a wilderness not eaven a tree cut down to mark the plais . . . so Pa [her husband John] bilt a hous in a weeak the house was made of logs ... and then I was in my first Texas house ... then Pa went in the rich land in the collerado bottum to clair land to make a fieald ... thare was a drove bufelow come and crosst over the river a bout one hundred yards above ouer hous ... about ten days I was left alone with my little Babe and nights was so long I could hear the Indians walking around the hous ... Now lonely as I was after riseing early in the morning I kept my new spining wheel whisling all day and a good part of the night for while the wheel was rowering it would keep me from hearing the Indians walking around hunting Because of Indian hostilities the Rabbs were forced to move several times prior to settling permanently on Barton Creek. Her description of one particular move gives a good idea what travel in early Texas could be like. She states, "Well we made quick hast and got redy to pack up and start we put all ouer ramont and things on the old horse Flucus so after the most delicate part of the pack was put on first then ouer pervishon - then ouer little kittle which was hardley large enofe to cook a boild dinner for three persons then the skillet and led was put on top then my spining wheel was put on top all but the bench we had a small yoak of oxen which had a necking stick on and the wheel bench was tyd on to that, then we had our few little cattle and our sow and pigs all put to gether me on Tormentor your Pa on Nickety Poly and your uncle John [Crownover] on his horse called The log cabin which the Rabb's and the early settlers in Eanes built, was a simple, one room construction of unhewn oak or cedar logs. The logs, stacked horizontally one atop another, were fitted at the corners with notches or dove- tails.8 A sand and lime mortar was then used to "chink" the cracks between the logs. The floors consisted of either packed dirt, large flat stones, puncheon boards or planks. Most cabins had doors fitted with leather hinges and a few had shuttered windows, not glass. The roofs were shaked or shingled and most of the cabins had fireplaces with rough fieldstone chimneys which stood 6" out from the cabin's exterior wall. Although only about a fourth of the cabins in Travis

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County had "dog-runs' almost all faced south for protection from "northers" which whistled down from Canada in win- ter. One settler remembered that, "[the cabin] was very warm, and in the winter when the north wind howled ... it was very cozy within.'"9 In the early days all of the outbuildings - barns, corncribs, smokehouses - were constructed like the cabins. Some families lived in their cabins for years, but most replaced them with a more substantial frame or rock house as soon as they could. Sometimes the old cabin was torn down or converted to a barn, but often it was merely rocked or framed over. In the 1980s it is not uncommon for a cabin, built generations earlier, to be uncovered when the house built around it is either torn down or renovated. [As late as the 1970s several early-day cabins were still standing in Eanes. One was at Lost Creek Country Club and the other at Resaca Ranch off Commons Ford Road. Some probably still exist as interior framework of old houses.]

Early forms of Eanes transportation. (Courtesy Della Edwars Graham)

Cabin once located on Lost Creek Country Club premises. (Depwe By the late 1850s and early 60s Austin began to inch its way across the Colorado. A few stores and houses sprang up south of the river and settlers established Cedar Valley, Oak Hill, Manchaca and Dripping Springs. Soon settlers began to move west, past Barton Springs, out into the Eanes hills. Prior to this time the Eanes area had been mostly by- passed or leap-frogged, for German settlers had already established communities west of Travis County in Burnet, Gil- lespie and Blanco Counties. In 1855 the small town of Llano, northwest of Austin, was established. It was to become a ranching center. As trade between Austin and Llano increased an old Indian trace which started at Barton Springs and cut through Eanes and had been used by whitemen first as a cattle trail and then as a wagon road, became known as the Austin-Llano Road. Eventu- ally, in 1871, Will, Tom and Wiley Johnson would establish a trading post on the route twelve miles west of Barton Springs at a site near a cave which had a large beehive inside. At this post, an overnight stopping place between Austin and Lla- no, would be built pens and barns for cattle trailed to market. The trading post would form the nucleus of the little commu- nity which was later named Bee Cave.10 The section of the Austin-Llano Road which went through Eanes and terminated at the soon-to-be trading post was to become known as Bee Cave Road. It was to remain a one-lane, rocky, winding, unpaved wagon road for more than eighty years. Old-timers remember that well into the 20th century the old caliche road was so narrow and rutted that a wagon was brushed on either side by oak and cedar tree branches as it weaved, rattled and wound its way down through the hills. All along the route, which crisscrossed Smith Creek many times and which went around the hills rather than through them, as it does today, there were stopping places where travelers watered their teams. One such stopping place was known as Six Mile Hole, located near the present-day Hills Physical Fitness Center. Too, most of the more prominent hills along Bee Cave Road had names. As one travels west some of the known hill names are Bankie Hill, now

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known as Spiller Hill, Roy Hill, named for the Roy family. Past Roy Hill the road skirted a steep canyon. That stretch was known as The Narrows. The Narrows was so named because the ridge on which the road ran was so narrow and treacher- ous at this point that only one wagon, and later one car, at a time could navigate through it. Once passed The Narrows the traveler would come to Moore Hill. Beyond Moore Hill was Rattlesnake Hill, and then came Turkey Foot Hill. Turkey Foot was named for the fork in the road where Commons Ford Road joins with Bee Cave Road. Beyond Turkey Foot there was Thurman Hill. Ross Patterson, who grew up in the west Bee Cave Road area, remembers that the last few miles of the road, before it reached the Johnsons' trading post, was called "the cedar brake road" because of the denseness of the cedar trees it went through. The section of Bee Cave Road that passes in front of the present-day Tom Thumb Shopping Center was known as "hell's half acre" until the 1930s when it was finally paved by a WPA-funded road crew. "Hell's half acre's" ruts and mud holes were legendary. Some citizens in 1985 would say that "hell's half acre" is a name that still fits that section of the road because of all the traffic which jams up there at certain times of the day. But no matter what Bee Cave Road was called as Eanes' first, and, for many years, only artery it ended the area's isolation for all time and lured to the "West- bank" its first permanent homebuilders. The Eanes family, one of the first to settle along the Bee Cave Road, is important not only because they gave their name to the area but their descendants still live in Eanes today. In 1845 Alexander Eanes, who had been born in South Carolina in 1806, moved from Monroe County, Mississippi, to Austin with his family and slaves. During the next twenty years he bought, sold and traded tracts of land in and around the city. One tract included acreage he acquired from the John Swesey heirs in 1857.11 That land, located near the present-day intersection of Bee Cave Road and Highway 360, became known as the Eanes Ranch, even though the Eanes family continued to live in a large home on Sabine Street in Austin. During the 1860s Alexander Eanes became the city's sexton and continued in that capacity, managing and overseeing Austin's cemeteries, until 1874. In 1872, Robert Eanes, Alexander's brother, and newly arrived from Mississippi, bought and moved his family onto the Eanes Ranch. Robert was married to Eliza Howell, who was the sister-in-law of Jefferson Davis, ex-president of the Con- federacy. On the Eanes Ranch Robert began to raise cattle and goats. The Eanes ranch house is still used by one of Rob- Eliza Howell Eanes (Depwe Coll.) Robert Eanes (Depwe Coll.) Viola Eanes (Depwe Coll.) ert Eanes' descendants.12 L. Bruce Marshall, modern-day western artist, is a fourth generation descendant of Eanes. Marshall's grandmother, Viola, daughter of Robert Eanes, married Hudson Boatner Marshall who purchased the Eanes Ranch in 1883. H.B. Marshall was the son of John F. Marshall, who had been a prominent Democrat and had published and edited the Texas State Gazette, Austin's first and largest Democratic newspaper. John F. Marshall, who commanded a company of Hood's Texas Brigade, was killed during the Civil War. H.B. Marshall, who was a printer by trade, and his wife, Viola, raised six children on the ranch, including their colorful and eccentric son John, who died there in 1966. But more about him later. The Eanes-Marshall ranch house, which originally sat where the Espey-Huston building is now, was moved to its present location next to a fresh water spring after the ranch was purchased by H.B. Marshall. Today the old house has been restored and serves as Bruce Marshall's studio. The transition from southern gentleman to Texas hardscrabble rancher must have been a difficult one for prior to the Civil War Robert Eanes had been a prosperous merchant and civic leader in Aberdeen, Mississippi.13 But the war destroyed the South's economy and ante-bellum culture, and thus, at the age of sixty-seven Robert Eanes came to Texas

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seeking a new start in life. Part of the legacy of that new life was the lending of his name to the little community which developed around his homestead. When Robert Eanes settled in Eanes he found several other families living on or farming land nearby. They included the Norvells, Teagues, Carlsons, Browns and Johnsons. Charles A. Johnson, born in Sweden, had settled in Austin in 1854. Industrious and ambitious, he soon became an important Travis County businessman. He operated a rock quarry, a lime kiln and a floating grist mill at the mouth of Shoal Creek on the Colorado River. In addition, he owned a prosperous freight business which hauled goods between Galveston, Austin and Mexico. Johnson was also instrumental in bringing hundreds of Swedes to central Texas. He and Sir Swante Palm, an Austin resident and vice-counsel of the Swedish gov- ernment, paid for the passages and helped the immigrants once they arrived in Texas. In 1857 Johnson married Emelia Loeschman, who had been born in Germany. In 1858 Swedish rockmasons built the Johnsons a large, handsome two-story, hand-hewn stone house which had walls 18" thick. The house, west of the then city limits, was located on the north bank of the Colorado River at McGill's river crossing near present-day Deep Eddy. There the Johnsons raised thirteen children. The house still stands in 1986, is owned by the city of Austin, and can be seen from the Mopac Freeway, which passes next to it. For years the Johnson home served as post headquarters of the local American Legion. Charles A. Johnson Johnson House, ca. 1860. (all 3 picts. from Depwe Coll.) Emelia Loeschman Johnson Johnson, who knew most of the state's officials, became Sam Houston's good friend. When the state's citizens voted to join the Confederacy, Houston, a Unionist, was deposed as governor and retired to his Huntsville farm. Johnson, a peace-loving man who never carried a gun, and who was also a Unionist, remained Houston's loyal friend and moved the ex-governor and his family back to their east Texas farm. During the war Johnson, who could not fight for a principle he didn't believe in, returned to Sweden. While he was abroad his brothers continued to operate his freight business, hauling goods for the Confederacy. When the Johnsons purchased the land for their Austin house in 1858 they also acquired 124 acres in Eanes for ranch- ing and for firewood. The practice of combining land in town or east of the river along with land in the hills west of the river for firewood and cedar posts became a common practice. It explains why so many early Austin families acquired acreage in Eanes, although most never lived on it. It also explains why such rough, obvious ranching country was broken up into so many small tracts, some less than 10 or 20 acres in size. Even farm families in far eastern Travis County owned hill country acreage. (The Jourdan-Bachmann family, of Austin's Pioneer Farm, lived on extensive blackland holdings northeast of the city but owned more than a hundred acres of cedared land west of Austin.) During the 1860s the Johnsons began to make use of their Eanes land. Their property, located south of present-day Eanes Elementary School, included the land on which Westlake High School now sits, as well as acreage on both sides of present-day Highway 360 where it intersects with Westlake High Drive. (The Woods-of-Westlake subdivision sits squarely on the old Johnson Ranch.) The Johnsons ran cattle, built pens and fences and used the land for hunting. The family had two registered cattle brands: one shaped like a pothook "- ", the other shaped like a crescent-w " ".14 The Johnsons, who probably had some kind of cabin on their property, did not build a permanent ranch house on the premises until 1881 when Henry,

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Charles' son, moved to the ranch to live.15 Here he and his wife, Emma Blandine from Sweden, raised eleven children. In 1881 when Texas' third capitol building burned, Henry brought tin from the burned capitol's roof and used it to build a barn. During the 20th century, Henry's son, Frank, and his wife, Gertrude Jung, lived on the ranch and raised their fami- ly, as did Frank's son, Randolph, and his wife Myrtle. In 1986 the old Johnson ranch house, vacant and in disrepair, but still standing, is located next to the Republic Bank building on Loop 360. In 1868 William and Sophia Teague settled on 500 acres of land near the Eanes Ranch. William Teague had come to Texas from Arkansas in 1860. Sophia Teague, nee Sophia Artelia Rhyehag, born into a prominent family in Pryse, Poland, emigrated to Texas with her father when she was fifteen. Separated from him when the ship landed at Galveston Sophia

Henry Johnson family (all picts. from Depwe Coll.)

Johnson Ranch barn with tin from burned capitol building.

Johnson Ranch house

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walked to Austin with a group of immigrants. The walk, which took a month, must have been a grueling one. Pioneers who faced a similar plight recalled that, ". . . there was constant travel [on the road from Houston to Austin], and immi- grants passed along it daily ... there were a great number of single people ... many fell sick and died on the way ... Most of them had some kind of fever or scurvy from poor food ... It rained all the time, and that made the road "muddy" and the rivers high. Another remembered the mosquitoes and flies which pestered the immigrants. But a few, despite the hardships, remembered most of all the "flower-covered meadows with birds, butterflies and bees" which they passed through on the trek.16 When Sophia arrived in Austin she secured work as a maid. In 1859, this enterprising and hardy woman, who was remembered by her neighbors as industrious, generous and regal in appearance, married John Anderson, a Swede, who ranched on land along Barton Creek. Anderson was killed during the Civil War and Sophia, a widow with four young chil- dren, married William Teague in 1868, whom she bore five additional children. All of the Teague children were raised in Eanes. In the 1890s William and Sophia moved into Austin to operate a general store, the J.P. Schneider Store, at 401 East 2nd Street.17

William and Sophia Teague who gave land for Eanes School. (Depwe Coll.)

John Hudson Milam and Dorothy Tennessee Heffington Milam and daughters. (courtesy Dorothy Lain)

John Hendrick Carlson, of Sweden, immigrated to Texas in the late 1840s. In 1876, after the death of his first wife, he remarried. The Carlsons, who moved to Eanes, at one time owned 627 acres of land in the community, most of it where present-day Rolling Hills West subdivision is located. In 1902 they paid a total of $8.20 in taxes on that amount of land. The Carlson's and their sons, Oscar Carl born in 1878 and Gustave Victor born in 1889, lived in a log cabin on their place. Though the Carlsons eventually built themselves a more substantial rock house to live in, the old cabin stood on the prop- erty for many years. Eventually it was disassembled and given to the state, which reconstructed it in one of the state's parks. Old-timers remember that the cabin was similar to the Swedish cabin which now stands in Zilker Park. In addition to the Eanes, Johnson, Carlson and Teague families, George R. and Mary Norvell lived in the area but little is known about them. Others who moved to Eanes prior to 1900 were the Jasper N. Brown family, Phillip H. Commons, the Riley family, the Payton Pattersons, the Herbert Allens, the Milams, the Hutsons, the Heffingtons, the Moores, the McNeills, the Bohls, the Thurmans and the Cal Roys, all of whom lived in the western end of Eanes between modern-day Highway 360 and the community of Bee Cave on Highway 71. Commons owned land at a low water crossing on the Colo- rado River around 1860. The site became known as Commons Ford, but little else is known about the site or the man for whom it was named.

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Marshall Family front row: Litten, H.B., Viola, Dan back row: John, Mildred, William, Clara (both pictures courtesy Bruce Marshall)

Marshall Ranch house ca. 1920 Of the Herbert Allen ranch, originally 2,000 acres in size, 215 acres remain intact today. From 1953 to 1983 the property was owned by the Baldwin family who named the place Resaca Ranch. In 1983 the City of Austin purchased the remain- ing acreage from the Baldwins, renamed it Commons Ford Ranch, and made it into a public park. A log cabin on the site which is well over 100 years old was recently restored by the city. The Japser N. Brown family at one time owned more than 4,000 acres of land in Eanes where present-day Knollwood and Camelot are now located. The Browns' cattle brand was registered in 1888 as ',B". Because of failure to pay taxes on the land through the years, most of it was lost, but Brown descendants continued to live in the area until the 1950s, some of them living along Tucker Lane (Walsh-Tarleton Lane) and others living on Brown Lane (Castle Ridge Road). A Brown family cemetery is still located in the Knollwood area but it is poorly maintained. Payton Patterson, who married Katie Riley, of the pioneer Riley family which settled out west Bee Cave Road along Barton Creek, at one time owned a thousand acres where present-day Patterson Lane is located. Patterson descendants still live on land in the area. In 1984 the E.I.S.D. bought some of the Pattersons' land and built a middle school on the site.

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Prior to the 1870s Wilson McNeill and his wife, Catherine Linn McNeill, moved from San Saba to land along Eanes Creek. (Eanes Creek, despite its name, is not located near the Eanes-Marshall ranch, but, in the western Eanes area off River Hills Road.) The McNeills had seven children. One, Mary Elizabeth, married William Carrol Heffington, son of Ste- phen Decator Heffington, an original land owner in the western Eanes area and a county tax assessor. The McNeills, along with their neighbors, the Allens, donated land for the McNeill-Allen cemetery, which is located near the present intersection of River Hills and Cuernavaca Roads.18 The Wiley Hudson family settled on the Colorado River at Hudson Bend in the 1850s. Wiley Hudson's sister, Basheba Rebecca, married B. Burris Milam, who had acquired one of the earliest headrights in western Eanes. The Milams, who were related to the Texas patriot Benjamin R. Milam, are thought to have operated a general store during the 1880s on their property off Commons Ford Road. Their son, John Hudson Milam, married Dorothy Tennessee Heffington, of the Heffington family previously mentioned. Two of Wiley Hudson's brothers, John and Edward, were Presbyterian ministers who served as chaplains in the Confederate Army. Both preached at various churches in Williamson and Travis counties. It is known that John Hudson preached often at the old Watson Springs Baptist Church that was located on west Bee Cave Road. One wonders, did he ever preach at Eanes Community Church before he died in 1914.19 One of the last ranching families to move to Eanes prior to 1900 was the Roy family. In the early 1850s, Fielding and Jane Roy, both natives of Arkansas, moved to central Texas. They had eleven children. Fielding Roy, a rockmason, built Roy Ranch house (both pictures from Depwe Coll.) Winnie and Edward Johnson many of the stone houses in Hays and Travis Counties, including the old Johnson Institute, located off of Ben McCulloch Road, and now known as Friday Mountain Camp. In 1877, the Roy's second son, William Carrol "Cal" Roy, married Sarah Annie Stanley. Of this union three children were born, Rob in 1878, Addie in 1881, and Jessie in 1883. In 1891 the Cal Roy family moved from Dripping Springs to Austin so that the children could go to the city's schools. All three Roy children attended the University of Texas. In 1895 Cal Roy purchased 1,200 acres out of the old Isaac Perkins survey in Eanes. Eventually the Roys owned more than 3,000 acres, stretching from Barton Creek on the south to the Colorado River on the north. Bee Cave Road ran through the middle of the ranch. While the family's primary residence remained in Austin until 1916, they used the ranch during weekends and summers and raised cattle and goats on the property. After Cal Roy died in 1916 the ranch passed to the children, Rob, Addie and Jessie. It was during this time that the name Rob Roy Ranch came into use.20 When the Roys first purchased their land in 1895 Cal Roy built a one room log cabin on the premises to serve as tempo- rary shelter. He soon rocked over this cabin with limestone and in 1912 he built a second story which was reached by an outside stairway. Through the years other additions were made to the Roy house until it had eight rooms. During the years that the Roys lived there the house was furnished with magnificent oak, burl and marble-topped antiques which had come from Governor E.J. Davis' estate. Davis had been a Union Officer who served as governor in Texas' hated

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Jessie Roy Rob Roy Addie Roy (all three pictures from Depwe Coll.) Reconstruction government. The Roys had acquired the furniture as partial payment when they sold some Llano County land to a man who had known the former governor. In 1986 the Roy house, which is located in the 7900 block of Bee Cave Road and has a panoramic view of the hills, still serves as a private residence. It is surrounded by a lovely old wrought iron fence which the Roys acquired from the Covert house when it was demolished. In addition the Roy house is still shaded by large and handsome trees which the family planted more than eighty years ago. In addition to the above families, there came to the Eanes area after the Civil War, families from that poor-white pioneer stock of independent-minded and high-spirited individualists known as hillbillies or cedar choppers. Originally from the hills and hollows of Appalachia, they were lured to Texas by the promise of free land and the promise of "gold" which resided in central Texas' juniper trees. Some of the families who, at one time or another, made their living by chopping cedar, included the Shorts, Tarletons, Youngs, Thurmans, Tuckers, Rhymes, Browns, Simpsons, Smalls, Reeses, Pierces and Teagues. Indeed, it seemed that until just a few decades ago almost three-quarters of Eanes population was cedar choppers. Among the chopper families there were gradations of education, financial worth and status within the community. Not all lived as nomadic and rough a life as the archetype did. While some of the chopper families once owned large tracts of land in Eanes, most of the families moved frequently, preferring to squat on land down in the hollows and creek bottoms, land which almost invariably was owned by others. Nevertheless, in the beginning many of the choppers did receive headrights and gained title to land, even though most of them lost it over the years because of failure to pay taxes on it. It must also be remembered that most of the cedar chop- pers could not read or write and therefore were vulnerable to slick businessmen and land dealers who came along later. Many of the cedar choppers had no regular homes but lived out of their wagons and tents, or in makeshift lean-tos and shacks constructed out of wood, tarpaper and tin. Some, however, did eventually build themselves small, sturdy rock or frame houses. Hard times were the cedar choppers' lot, although when they did work no people ever worked longer hours or at a more backbreaking and exhaustive trade. Few in the early generations, however, ever broke out of the cycle of poverty and illiteracy in which they lived. In fact, there are a few descendants of choppers in Eanes to this day who still live much as their parents and grandparents lived, in shacks down in the creek bottoms. In the early days one of the favorite campsites of choppers, and other transient families, was on the Eanes-Marshall ranch next to the large oak tree that stood near the fresh water spring on the ranch. The spring was called Monkey Springs by the choppers. The Marshalls allowed the families to camp there because many of them had nowhere else to go, and usually their stay was only temporary. Viola Marshall often helped the families acquire proper clothing and she also attended to their medical needs. While some of the hillbilly families lived out off western Bee Cave Road, the majority lived down Brown Lane (Castle Ridge) and Tucker Lane (Walsh-Tarelton Lane). Tucker Lane was derisively referred to as "Tobacco Road", by latter-day city slickers who moved out to Eanes in the 1930s and 40s, because of the large cedar chopper community which was located in the woods along that dirt lane. (It will be recalled that "Tobacco Road" was the name of Erskine Caldwell's famous 1932 novel about poor, illiterate southern hillbillies.)

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Despite their tin shack, snuff-dipping, poverty-stricken lifestyle, the cedar choppers came to central Texas for just as legitimate reasons as any other 19th century settler - for land and new opportunities. During the 1870s the state of Tex- as succumbed to "railroad fever," and more than 3,000 miles of track were laid prior to 1880. Ten thousand more miles were laid by 1890. The first railroad to reach Austin arrived in 1871. The International and Great Northern was built via Manchaca and in 1885, a railroad was built from Austin to Marble Falls to bring the pink granite for the new, grand capitol building that was being constructed. A railroad from Austin to Oak Hill was also constructed and used to haul large blocks of limestone, cut by convicts, that was also used in building the capitol. During these years cedar cutters swarmed to the area to cut the logs that were needed by the railroads and the building boom. As the cedar was cut, the logs were hauled into Austin by ox and wagon or were floated down the Colorado River to the city. The demand for cedar ties and fence posts during these decades rose so dramatically that central Texas' first cedar choppers were hard pressed to meet the rising, albeit, lucrative demand, for cedar. Eanes, lush with untouched cedar brakes and close to both the Colorado River and Austin, quickly became a cedar cutting center. It also fell quick victim to a series of hill country skirmishes which became known as the "cedar wars" which occurred on and off between 1870 These commotions, confrontations over territorial claims, pitted rival cedar chopping clans against one another. On occasion the involved parties became so violent that the law had to ride in and restore order. What was at stake in these "wars" can best be appreciated when one learns that in the single year of 1875 thirty thousand cedar logs were shipped through Austin. Down on Walnut Creek in eastern Travis County one farmer brought in enough cedar from the hills west of Austin to "rail fence an entire section of land - 640 acres or one square mile "21 P.C. Taylor timbered all of the land north of Bee Creek in Eanes, whether it belonged to him or not. He carted the cut wood across the river at Taylor's Slough (named for him), and made a tidy profit selling to Austin residents. In addition to the need for railroad ties and fence posts, the demand for untimbered farmland for sowing and tilling also increased as settlers continued to move into the state. Too, ranchers considered cedar a nuisance and wanted it cleared out to make way for pasture land. "Men like Malcolm Reed and F.W. King in Burnet County set up cedar yards, along the Colorado River. They bought cedar rights on hundreds of acres of land and contracted with cedar choppers to clear them. Prices and grades of fence posts were set by the cedar yards.' '22 At one time there was large yard near present-day Bulian Lane. There was also alarge cedar yard on Barton Springs Road, just about 100 yards east of Barton Creek. Here the cedar was stacked according to size, and residents of Austin would buy posts for fences, firewood and even for foundations for their houses. Sometimes the yards would catch on fire and the fires would often blaze for days. Indeed there are stories of great cedar fires which swept the Edwards Pla- teau in the 1 880s. The cedar choppers heyday lasted until well into the 20th century, but, eventually the demand for logs tapered off, the days of cedar's glory were over, but the cedarcutters, who liked the isolated and independent way of life they found in the hills, lingered.

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A few black families moved to Eanes in the 1870s. The Jacksons and Woods came from families whose roots went back to Travis County's earliest Negro slaves.23 In 1870 Frank Swisher, who owned land on the north side of Bee Cave Road, across from the present-day West Woods Shopping Center, sold fifty-six acres to the Jacksons and Woods. By 1900 the little black community, known as Belle Hill, had its own store, bar, blacksmith shop and livery stable. "Aunt" Cindy and "Uncle" Milt Jackson are remembered fondly by many of Eanes' old-timers. Only one black man, Joseph Smith, remained at the old black community in 1932 when Fred Bulian bought the land for a dairy. In 1984 an overgrown cemetery belonging to the Belle Hill community was uncovered. It has at least 46 graves, many containing the remains of blacks and Mexican nationals who died during a smallpox epidemic in 1916.24 In addition to the Belle Hill community there was at one time a group of blacks who lived at Walker Springs, on Barton Creek near where the South Mopac Bridge now crosses over the creek. Walker Springs derived its name from a black man named Walker who lived there. But little else is known about him or those who lived near him. Another group to move to Eanes in the 1860s and 70s was Hispanic. In 1868 Alexander Eanes sold 17 acres of his land to one M. Raphael for the price of "one yellow horse." Between 1878 and 1883 Clato Martinez bought 195 acres from Eanes. He paid $725.00 for the land. Clato Martinez, who had been born in 1843 and had married a woman named Anna in 1876, paid off his mortgage "in wood and work." Records show that in 1886 he was still paying on his debt, for one payment that year consisted of "71/ cords of wood equalling $17.50, one hog worth $9.50, and one turkey valued at $1.00." for a total payment of $23.00.25 Martinez raised crops and livestock like his Anglo neighbors. His property was located between present-day Eanes Elementary School and the Ben Hur Shrine Temple. While living there Martinez constructed a "substantial fence capable of turning cattle, completely enclosing [his] property except on the west side where there [were] natural barriers in the form of ravines, gulleys and dense underbrush.''26 Part of the fence which Martinez built, which was out of native stone and constructed in the Mexican manner, was eight feet high in places and can still be seen bordering the 300 block of Eanes School Road. In addition to the rock fence, remnants of two small rock houses, a rock well and a rock dam across a small creek remain on the property. In 1907 Martinez died and in 1910 his second wife, Elena, married Julian Lopez. Lopez raised horses on the property until the 1920s. Some accused Lopez of stealing horses in Travis County and selling them in Mexico, and likewise, steal- ing horses in Mexico and selling them in Eanes. Whatever, when Lopez died the Martinez land passed to Clato Martinez' children. At one time, in 1925, one of these heirs, Martha Martinez Ramirez, put up a portion of the land as collateral for a $389 loan to buy a Chevrolet truck from Capitol Chevrolet in Austin. In 1929 all of the Martinez property was sold to J.A. Ayers for $1700.00. Other Hispanics lived in Eanes, too. In 1872 the widow of T.J. Chambers sold some of her land to Leonard Hartson, who at that time was developing lots in Austin. Hartson used the Chambers land to add, as an inducement to lot buyers, a ten acre "firewood" tract west of the river. A.J. Hamilton, a former Reconstruction governor of Texas who had been appointed by Abraham Lincoln, owned one of the ten acre tracts. The same year that Hartson bought the Chambers land he sold one of the tracts to [Manuel] Navarro. Navarro's acreage, located near present-day Red Bud Trail and Limrick Lane, became a small Mexican enclave. The Pedro Estados family moved there in 1878. Perhaps these two Hispanic fam- ilies tended the land and cut the firewood for the Austinites who bought lots and ten acre tracts from Hartson.27 The two families remained in Eanes until the turn of the century. When Emmett Shelton, Sr., bought the Navarro land in 1936 he found remnants of the old Hispanic settlement. They included a sizable rock fence, an old well, the foundation of a small rock house and thriving fig and pomegranate trees. It is not known how the settlement was reached for in 1936 there were no roads to it, although Shelton found evidence of an old footpath leading down to Bee Cave Road. Shelton put in roads, subdivided the land and called it Old Stone- hedge for the rock fence which he had found there.28 Shelton tore down the rock fence and hauled the rock down to a site on the river where later was built the old Lake Austin Inn. One final family belongs to the group of old time area residents, even though they didn't move to Eanes until after the turn of the century. It is the Dellana family. In the 1880s Condido Dellana immigrated from Italy to America. He worked his way across the country to Austin where he worked as a stonemason on the new capitol building, which was complet- ed in 1888. (His grandson, Charlie Dellana, Jr., still has the hammers which Condido used at the capitol.) He married Rosa Bruno, from New Orleans, and they bought land in Creedmore and operated a small store and tavern. In 1904 Condido purchased 1,800 acres of land out of the old Henry P. Hill survey. The Dellana ranch stretched from Barton Creek on the south to the Colorado River on the north and included the land on which Rollingwood, Treemont, Barton Creek Mall and Mopac Freeway now sit. Dellana, an enterprising and hardworking young man, paid for his ranch by selling hundreds of pounds of bat quano which he harvested out of caves located on his property. One of the largest caves was in a cliff on the south bank of the Colorado River. Dellana, ever resourceful, first built a floating barge and then a wooden-framed trough from the cave's mouth down to the water's edge. He shoveled the quano into tow sacks, slid them down the trough, loaded them onto

the barge and then floated the nitrate-rich fertilizer down the river to Montopolis where he sold it to nurserymen who had large fields in that area.2

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Condido Dellana Rosa Dellana (both pictures courtesy Charles Dellana, Jr.) In addition, the industrious Condido, and his wife Rosa, operated, from 1904 to 1914, a small, one-room store and tav- ern out of their house. Here they sold a few grocery supplies, candy, beer, tobacco and cigars. The house was originally located where the Girl Scout center is now in Zilker Park. The Dellanas, who were Catholic, sent their children to school at St. Mary's Academy in downtown Austin. Today, Charles Dellana, Jr., a third generation descendant of Condido Del- lana, still lives in Eanes on the remaining acreage of the old Dellana ranch. His brother, Jerry Dellana, is County Judge of the 201st District. Thus between the Civil War and the turn of the century Eanes was formed. The community which stretched along Bee Cave Road for nearly fifteen miles, from present-day Zilker Park to the trading post at Bee Cave, had less than thirty fami- lies in the whole of it; families from widely varying ethnic and social backgrounds - high born and low, literate and illiter- ate, American and foreign born, white, brown, and black, rancher, farmer and hillbilly. And while in this seemingly vast area there developed two distinct centers, one near the present Eanes School and one west, near Commons Ford Road, Eanes was still a community, for whether one lived east or west, he knew everyone else in the area. The little community of sparsely scattered cabins and houses, however, remained remote from Austin because there were no bridges across the Colorado River until the late 1880s, although an arched stone bridge was built over Barton Creek in 1871. (An unstable pontoon bridge had spanned the Colorado at the foot of Congress Avenue in 1869 but it had been washed out soon after it was constructed. A more substantial bridge which replaced it washed out, too. The pres- ent Congress Avenue bridge was built in 1910.) Thus, when people first began to move to Eanes the Colorado still had to be forded at a low water crossing or had to be crossed on one of the ferries which operated near downtown Austin. The most popular fords were at Bull Creek, Tay- lor's Slough and McGill's Crossing, with the latter getting the most traffic. However, if the water was especially low a wag- on could ford at many other locations as well. In fact, during droughts one could "walk" across the river at many sites. Emmett Shelton, Sr., remembers people who regularly forded the river at Commons Ford, Moore's Crossing near pres- ent-day City Park, and Bull Creek, as late as 1918. Charlie Dellana, Jr., remembers "walking" across the river during a drought in the 1930s. Prior to 1886, when a steel and stone toll bridge was constructed at the foot of Congress Avenue, the river had to be crossed by ferry. The first ferry in Austin was at the foot of Colorado Street in 1847 and was operated by Capt. John J. Grumbles. In 1854 Capt. James G. Swisher began operating a ferry at the foot of East Avenue (present-day 1-35). And in 1855 a ferry was established near the foot of Congress Avenue by Hugh Tinnin. In 1869 a temporary pontoon bridge replaced Tinnin's ferry. During the 1870s Dohme's ferry operated at McGill's Crossing near present-day Zilker Park. When the toll bridge was finally opened in 1886 it charged the same as the ferries had charged: $1.00 per wagon, 50 per horse with rider and 250 and 100, respectively, for an adult or child on foot. In 1925 Tinnin's daughter recalled her father's ferry. "It was built of native wood and was about sixty feet long and could carry a wagon with two yoke of oxen or two one-horse buggies. When it was launched it was celebrated with music by violin and tamborine and dancing." But in the early days fords, ferries and even bridges operated at the whim of nature. A trip into Austin from Eanes was not only slow and arduous, over rocky, narrow and winding Bee Cave Road, but it could be hazardous as well, especially if the river was at flood stage. Even after the toll bridge opened there were dangers. By 1903 the bridge was showing severe wear and tear, for too many wagons heavily loaded with stones had passed over it and "it rattled fearsomely as horse and buggy crossed it."

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Ferry across the Colorado River, Ca. 1860 Stone bridge across Barton Creek, Ca. 1880 The little Eanes community, thus isolated by distance, terrain and to some extent, preference, of necessity became self-reliant. Until better transportation facilities were forthcoming sending children to Austin for schooling, a half-day's journey away, was impractical, therefore shortly after the first settlers moved to Eanes the area acquired its own schools. Eanes School The public school system in Texas can trace its roots back to 1839 when the Republic passed a law giving each county three leagues of land for schools. Despite additional legislation in the 1 840s arnd 1 850s, it was not until after the Civil War and the adoption of the Constitution of 1869 that Texas' school system got its true start. In 1871 a state board of public education was established and a permanent state school fund was created. The fund consisted of monies received from public lands, poll taxes and state taxes. In addition, the law commanded each county to appoint a school supervisor. Chil- dren between the ages of six and eighteen were required to attend school at least four months each year. Black and white students were formally segregated by law in the Constitution of 1876. Travis County became State School District #27 with Judge Sebron G. Sneed chosen its first supervisor. (Sneed, a Secession Convention delegate and a provost marshal for the Confederacy, had fled to Mexico after the defeat of the South but on his return after Reconstruction he was appointed to several posts. His mansion, which still stands in south Austin, was built by the architect Abner Cook.) The office of county school superintendent was not established until 1887. Travis County's first superintendent was Carl Hardeman, its second one was John E. Shelton, father of present-day West Lake Hills resident, Emmett Shelton, Sr. In 1872 Judge Sneed appointed trustees throughout the county and charged them with the responsibility of building schools in their localities. About fifty schools were organized in Travis County in the 1870s. By 1882 there were ninety school communities in the county, teaching 3,497 children.30 In 1872 Sneed appointed Robert Eanes trustee for the Eanes area. The Eanes community was later designated Travis County School District #48. With only a handful of white families in the area in 1872 it is doubtful if the school age population numbered more than twenty. Robert Eanes wasted no time in building a school, however, for that same year he and his neighbor, George Norvell, constructed the community's first schoolhouse. It was a small, one-room log cabin which they built on the eastern edge of Eanes' ranch near Smith (Dry) Creek in the vicinity of present-day Eanes Elementary School. No pictures or descrip- tions of this first school exist, but it is known that the little log school was furnished with benches of split logs fitted with wooden pegs in auger holes and that it had a puncheon floor. It probably had a stone fireplace, too. Log cabin similar to Eanes' first schoolhouse (all pictures from Austin .Public Library)

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Eanes School, 1896-1937 Interior of the school (both picts. form Depwe Col.) Apparently the cabin was meant to serve as a temporary schoolhouse for two years later, in 1874, William and Sophia Teague donated two acres of their land, in the old Sundberg survey, to Judge Sneed. In the deed of conveyance they stated that they were giving the acreage, "for the purpose of erecting a house to be used as a church house and also a school house, for the use and benefit of the population of the particular locality of said house ..,. in consideration of the interest they [felt] in the education and moral training of the youths of the community."31 On these two acres, which were adjacent to the log school which Eanes and Norvell had built, a one-room, frame school- house was constructed. This frame building served as Eanes School until 1892 when it was destroyed by fire. After the fire school was held, from 1892 to 1896, in a second log cabin one-half mile east of the burned-out school- house (perhaps the Carlson cabin). In 1896 the community, led by Henry Johnson, J.H. Carlson and H.B. Marshall, school trustees, rebuilt the schoolhouse on the original Teague site. Helping with the construction were Oscar Carlson, John Marshall and Frank Johnson, sons of the trustees. This second frame building, which was 24' X 30' and of board-and- batten design, housed the school until 1937. Thus, prior to 1937, Eanes School was housed in two separate log cabins (1872-1874 and 1892-1896) and in two separate frame buildings (1874-1892 and 1896-1937). During this sixty-five year period the school remained a one-room, one-teacher school.

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Interior of school with students. k !F _,(Depwe Coll.) For years the school term, just four months in length, was held between November and March so as not to conflict with the planting and harvesting seasons, which in nineteen century Texas were deemed more important than "book learnin' " for children. (A nine month school term was not officially mandated by Texas law until 1945.) For many of Eanes' students the few weeks of teaching they received each year were all they ever got. And for some there was no real school at all, for during the term they came and went at will, there being no compulsory attendance laws or truancy officers in those days. When Charlie Brown, who grew up in Eanes on Tucker Lane, was asked if he ever went to school he replied, "yes, I went in the front door and went out the back window.'"32 Completion of the elementary grades usually ended the formal education of most students. Few records pertaining to Eanes School's earliest years exist but it is known that each year the teacher was chosen and paid by the county with the concurrence of the local school trustees and parents. "At this time the typical rural teach- er was a person [usually young] who was either a rural school graduate or a high school graduate. [There were few teach- ers' colleges in those days.] To be appointed to a teaching position required passing an examination set by a superinten- dent of schools. Few other qualifications were necessary.3 Most of the teachers were women for teaching was one of the few genteel vocations offered to a young woman. Wom- en not only worked for one-half the salary of a man but they were considered to have superior moral qualifications. How- ever, if a woman teacher got married she almost always quit teaching because in those days parents and school officials didn't approve of married female teachers. In the 19th century all students walked to school unless they were fortunate enough to have their own horse or mule to ride. The school day usually started at 9:00 a.m. after the ringing of the school bell. Eanes School was typical of most rural one-room schools of that day. It was furnished with hard, homemade wooden benches and tables for the students, slates with hill country limestone chalk for "markin' and cipherin' ", a sturdy but plain teacher's desk, a world globe, a map of the United States, a dictionary, a picture of George Washington, a state and national flag and, that progressive, new-fangled invention, "a blackboard." The classroom also had a free-standing, iron, pot-bellied stove, which required plenty of wood and attention to keep it going. There was a wood box next to it. Coal oil or kerosene lanterns provided light and on a hook on the wall, next to the teacher's desk, hung a cedar switch; strict discipline, corporal punishment and a "spare-the-rod, spoil-the-child" phi- losophy being adhered to in those days. The curriculum at Eanes School was similar to that in most early day rural schools. It was simple and emphasized the basics - "the three R's: readin', 'ritin' and 'rithmetic." In the one-room school students of all ages, grades and abilities were taught side-by-side, the courses being divided into primary, intermediate and upper levels. The typical school day began with a prayer or the reading of a verse from the Bible (the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem were not adopted until the late 1890s.) This was followed by lessons from McGuffey's Eclectic Reader, which consisted of read- ings, recitations and dramatizations of stories and poems which had pious and patriotic themes. Spelling bees were held weekly. Arithmetic lessons, both the written and "mental figurin" kind, were taken from the The Common School Arith- metic, a popular textbook of the day. During history and geography lessons, students were expected to learn the rudiments of American history, the names of the presidents and of the states and the state capitols. (In 1876 there were only thirty-eight states.) While students were exposed to science, music and art, these courses were not considered necessary to a basic education. Report cards were common after 1870 and students were graded upon achievement, conduct and attendance much as they

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are today. Students also received certificates for good work and attendance. Oscar Carlson, received such a certificate "It appears upon examination of Teacher's Register for Public Free School District No. 48, Travis County, for term A.D. 1896 and 1897, that Oscar Carlson attended said school without having been absent but one day during said term ... Therefore, I do issue to said pupil this Certificate of Honor, in Testimony Whereof, I have hereunto signed my name and caused the seal of the office of County Superintendent of Public Instruction to be affixed, this the 14th day of April, 1897. Signed, John E. Shelton, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Travis Not all of the time at school was spent in the classroom working on lessons. Recess, taken twice a day, was a vital part of the school curriculum, offering as it did a respite from "book learnin' ". When weather permitted, the children at Eanes School always spent recess outdoors where they played anty-over, marbles, blind-man's-bluff, hide-n-seek, skin-the-cat, mumble peg, baseball or played along the banks of Smith Creek catching tadpoles to put in glass jars. During recess the students also visited one of the two little privies or "johnnies" which stood on the back edge of the school's property. Mumble Peg Draw a circle in the dirt. Take a two-bladed pocket knife. Open it and flip it off your arm and try to make it stick in the ground inside the circle. You get three tries. If the knife lands upright with large blade sticking in the ground it is 10 points. If the small blade ends in ground it is 5 points. One with most points wins. Skin-the-Cat Go to a limb that is a little over your head and grab hold with both hands and then hang on and swing your legs up through the space between your arms and come on over your head and see if you can touch the ground behind you and then get back through the way you were without turning loose of the limb. It's pretty hard. Anty-Over Played outside. Divide into teams and half go to one side of the school house and half to the other. One team would have the ball. The team that didn't have it would yell "Anty," and the one that had it would yell "Over." Then the ball would be thrown over the roof and if anybody on the other side caught it he would run around the house and throw it and try to get somebody out. They would go till everybody was out, then change sides.35 Lunch, also taken outdoors in fair weather, was strictly a homemade affair in those days. (Eanes School did not get a lunch program until the 1930s.) In the early days a student's lunch consisted of whatever he brought in his lunch pail. The most common items were baked sweet potatoes, cornbread, biscuits and jam, pieces of cold fried chicken, sau- sages and fried pies. Eanes students also had to bring their own jugs of water each day because the school had no well and free-roaming cattle and horses polluted the water in Smith Creek and made it unfit to drink.

Eanes School students, ca. 1930 (Depwe

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Little is known about teachers who taught at Eanes School prior to 1892 except that in 1877 Sara Jane Carlisle Eanes, daughter-in-law of Robert Eanes, taught at the school. Sadie Moore taught at the school in 1892 and Will Burdett, appar- ently Eanes' first male teacher, taught there in 1902. A picture of Mr. Burdett with his class shows a tall, thin, solemn- faced young man, standing in a stiffly-starched, high-collared pose. He is surrounded by twenty-four equally solemn- faced, well-scrubbed students decked out in their "Sunday Best."Most days the boys wore coveralls and the girls, plain, homemade gingham dresses. In warm weather almost all of the students went barefooted. However, picture-taking day was special. One time Mary Carlson refused to allow her sons, Oscar and Gustave, to attend school for it was picture- taking day and she did not want her boys in the same class. picture with some of the hillbillies who attended the Will Johnson, one of Henry's sons, remembered Mr. Burdett as follows: "Mr. Burdett was a very mean man, and he whipped the kids with a limb if they got out of hand. But, of course, they had to get a man teacher because the kids were so mean. Mr. Burdett came to school in a buggy every day. He put a bell on his horse when he got to school. Then he would turn the horse out to pasture all day long, and after school was dismissed, we would have to find the horse, which sometimes took hours.'37 It is not known where in the community Burdett lived while he taught at Eanes.

Will Burdett (teacher) and Eanes School class of 1902. (Depwe Coll.) His successor, Mary Ellen Mowinckle, who taught at the school in 1903-04, boarded with the Henry Johnson family. It will be remembered that Johnson moved to his family's ranch in 1881, married and raised eleven children on the place. Miss Mowinckle, who was just eighteen years old in 1903 was herself a recent graduate of Thomas Springs School in south Travis County. Years later she remembered how she had acquired her first job. "At the close of school in May, 1903, several of the pupils were advised to take examinations to secure certifi- cates to teach school. This I did. On my 18th birthday I was awarded a certificate good for two years. Eanes school needed a teacher. My father took me to the home of Henry Johnson where I met the other trustees, Mr. [J.H.] Carlson and H.B. Marshall. I was elected."38 Miss Mowinckle earned $30 per month in salary and she gave the Johnsons $6 a month for her room-and-board. Since she was so close in age to many of her pupils and to Henry Johnson's older children she shared many good times with the family, singing, playing parlor games such as Snap, sewing, and attending church and other socials with the Johnson girls. She also recalled the many visits to Henry's father's house in Austin at Deep Eddy. On one such visit, to attend a Halloween party, she met her future husband. He was Julius Frederick Johnson, Henry's younger brother, who courted

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her in a new, rubber-tire buggy. They were married in 1905. Mary Mowinckle Johnson went on to raise a family, teach at other schools and earn a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas when she was forty-one. She also authored a book about her forebearers called Oak Hill-Cedar Valley Pioneers. Years later, in 1976, Mrs. Johnson attended the ceremony dedicating the State Historical Marker which was placed at the site of the old Eanes School. At that time she reminisced about her teaching days at the school. She remembered that at one time she had trouble with some of the boys who liked to fight. The school trustees told her to take away the boys' pocket knives so that they would not injure one another. This she did and then she told the "warring gladiators" that she would switch anyone who was caught fighting. And she did, recalling that most of the boys were larger than she.

Sarah Jane Carlisle Eanes, ca. 1890. (Depwe Coll.)

Mary Mowinckle, ca. 1903 (Depwe Coll.)

Mrs. Johnson also recalled that while teaching an epidemic of measles broke out in the community. For several days only Henry and Will Johnson went to school, everyone else stayed home. With only two students to teach she and the boys lolled their time away making bird traps and catching quail which nested in meadows near the schoolhouse.39 Finally, she remembered the children of the cedar chopper families who attended the school. She especially remem- bered their poverty and how some of them were mistreated at home. Two boys who were particularly abused, were Tom Young, Jr., and Rufus Young. Their father, Tom, Sr., had many "run-ins" with the law and was later hanged for murder. But more about that in the next chapter. Another of the early teachers at Eanes School was G.T. Rabb, who grew up in a house located next to Barton Springs and the old, arched, stone bridge which spanned the creek from 1871 to 1900. Rabb's grandparents, John and Mary Crownover Rabb, had moved to the east side of the springs in 1860. In 1886, their son, Gail Texas Rabb built a flour mill just below the springs. He also operat- ed an ice factory at the springs. For many years the Rabb family sold ice to Austin residents. (In 1955 the City of Austin purchased 29 acres of the Rabb tract, - including 10 overlooking Barton Springs pool and 19 acres along both banks of Barton Creek).

Barton Springs, ca. 1900 (Austin Public Library)

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The only known list of teachers who taught at Eanes School prior to 1937 includes the following individuals: 1877-78 Sarah Jane Eanes 1918-19 Miss Eula Crow 1892-93 Sadie Moore 1919-21 Miss Beatrice Beyers 1902-03 Will Burdett 1921-22 Miss Ada Hamilton 1903-04 Mary Mowinckle 1922-23 Mrs. Ousley Mrs. Myrtle Forrester 1923-24 Miss Annie Johnson Mr. G.T. Rabb 1924-25 Miss Inez Petmecky Miss Jennie Faulkner 1925-26 Mrs. Anderson Mrs. Coups 1926-29 Mrs. Allie Lee Brown Miss Stella Noble 1929-30 Miss Eva Mae Hoffman Miss Jessie Lanscott 1930-31 Mrs. James Knight Miss Folson 1931-32 Mrs. J.D. Loftis Miss Maude Stanby 1932-36 Mrs. Leslie Touchstone Mr. Harper 1936 Mrs. Vester Lander Miss Geneve Dugav 1936 Miss Nellibel Klunkert40 Miss Pearl Lee House Miss Lucille Piper Most of these teachers came from Austin and Travis County. Winnie George, who married Edward Johnson in 1915, knew many of them. Like Mary Mowinckle, some roomed with the Johnsons, including Eula Crow and Beatrice Beyers. Beyers later married Travis Johnson, Henry Johnson's youngest son. Annie Johnson, who taught at Eanes in 1923, was another member of the large and prolific Johnson clan. Many of the early Westbank residents left stories about their days at Eanes School. Frank Johnson, Henry Johnson's oldest son, recalled that when he was seven and started attending the school, in the 1890s, he was so small that he would get lost walking through the fields and cedar brakes on his way to the schoolhouse because the weeds were so tall and the cedar trees so thick they blocked his line of sight. To solve this problem he marked out a path for himself by laying rocks along the ground, at easy-to-find intervals, creating his own "yellow brick road."41 In 1905 a census counted 125 citizens in the Eanes area. Through the years Henry Johnson, H.B. Marshall and John Carlson, trustees, continued to oversee the running and maintenance of the little school. Records for 1912 show that they expended $12.35 for repairs to the building, including $1.90 for a gallon of paint, 25 for one quart of oil, 25 for two door hinges and 254 for a door lock.42 In 1913 another census listed 53 school age children in the Eanes area. Of course, not all of them attended school at the same time since the cedar chopper children came and went at will, but during some sessions enough students showed up that some had to sit on the floor. Brewton Springs School In 1879 another school, Brewton Springs School, was established in the Eanes area. It was located off of west Bee Cave Road, within the bounds of the present-day E.I.S.D., in what was designated at that time as County School District #50. Brewton Springs School was a completely autonomous county school and was not connected with Eanes School, which remained in District #48. Children from the Allen, McNeill, Patterson, Riley, Thurman, Teague, Roberts, Simpson, Hutson, Milam, Bohls, Heffington, Fowler, Grace, Oestrick and Oertli families, who lived in western Eanes, attended the school. Brewton Springs School was sometimes called "Snuff Box" school by the locals because so many of its students chewed tobacco and dipped snuff. During its earliest years, Pate Patterson, Herbert Allen and Joe Hutson served as the school's trustees. On occasion when tax funds ran low and there was not enough money to pay a teacher, the children from Brewton Springs School were sent to Bee Cave to its school. (Bee Cave School, built at Bee Cave in 1882, was another autonomous county com- mon school. It was located in a small one-room rock building near the Johnson's trading post. Children from the Beck, Spillman, Buass, Cawlfield, Ivey, Pecht, Heffington and Johnson families attended this school.) In 1936 Herbert H. Allen, of the old Allen Ranch off Commons Ford Road, penned the following short history about Brewton Springs School. "The first School taught in what is now District #50 was taught in 1879 in an old picket house on the old Allen farm by Miss Annie Gambee. She sat in a home-made chair. The children sat on benches made of split elm logs

dressed smooth. Auger holes were bored in the rough side and stakes driven into them for legs. Each bench furnished seats for five or six pupils.

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Brewton Springs School, ca. 1930. (courtesy Della Edwards Graham) About 1881 the first school house in this district built for school purposes alone was located on the Jim Brew- ton farm, hence the name Brewton Springs. Then the north side of the Colorado River was in District #50. This was the most centrally located and several good terms were taught there. Will Harmon, Mr. Caldwell and Jim Finley were among our teachers in the 'eighties'. Then came a split caused by a shift in scholastics and a small house was built at Walnut Springs on the old Hugh Allen place in the west end of the district. As years passed the two houses in one district proved too many, and the term was taught half at one house and half at the other. Finally the Walnut Springs house burned. About 1896 the Brewton Springs house was moved to a point on the Thomas Riley place near the present school house. In 1904 it was again moved to Brewton Springs, remodeled and seated. This caused trouble and four or five years later enough of the lumber was used to build the present house as it is today. In the 'eighties' forty to fifty pupils attended school at Brewton Springs. Since that time we have never had that number, but for ten years our enrollment has grown until now it is thirty-four scholastics. Since 1902 my wife and I have furnished a home at our place for fourteen teachers throughout the term. They are as follows: Miss Mattie Morgan, Miss Estell Hin- kell, Miss Bernice Bolton, Miss Katie Clark, Miss Leona Hill, Miss Bernice McCowen, Miss Nettie Joyce, Miss Eartie Caldwell, Miss Hattie Robinson, Miss Gertrude Sloan, Miss Irene Hardin and Mrs. Reed. I was a school kid for ten years and a trustee for thirty or more years in this district."43 As can be seen by Allen's remarks Brewton Springs School was moved several times during its history. The last move took place after Allen wrote his history. In 1937 the school house was torn down and rebuilt on John Teague's property on Bee Cave Road. Teague, a widower, had three sons, Homer, John Jr., and Jim, all of whom attended the school. Alice Patterson Oestrick, who like her father Ross before her, attended Brewton Springs School, remembers that while the school was being moved onto the Teague property in 1937 classes were held in the old Watson Springs Baptist Church, a single-room frame church located on Bee Cave Road just west of the school. John Hudson, of the family from Hudson Bend, and a Reverend Clark, preached at the church on occasion. This church, like the school, was renamed by the locals, too. They called it "Snuff Box Church" because members of the congregation used to spit tobacco juice out of the windows during services. Brewton Springs School, Students, 1936 Tennie Roberts Ruby Hutson Oscar Hughes Leola Landlin Idonion Hutson Jim Small Bill Oestrick Melvin Roberts George Oestrick Annie Mae Small Vernie Roberts Dorothy Hutson Coris Roberts Ruby Roberts Wilfred Hutson Alex Small Mary Katherine Roberts Verdie Puryear, teacher"

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Alice Oestrick recalls that when she started attending "Snuff Box" school in the 1930s Bee Cave Road was still unpaved. She and her friends used to put their ears down on the road when they walked to school to see if they could pick up the vibrations of an oncoming car, for an automobile on Bee Cave road was still an event out in western Eanes in those days. When a car did pass by the children would all yell and wave their arms as though watching a parade. She also remembers that during school hours when a car passed by all of the children, and the teacher, too, would rush to the front door of the little school to wave their greetings to the passing motorist. Oestrick says that sometimes while walking to school if the children saw a car coming down Bee Cave Road they would dare one another to run back and forth across the road in front of the approaching car. One day, her ten year old cousin, Arthur Grace, mis-timed his run and was struck by a car as it chugged along. Its wheels passed completely over Grace's body, but he survived even though he was pretty well banged up and badly bruised. Oestrick remembers, too, that that episode ended for all time the children playing their game of "chicken" with approaching cars.45 Oestrick also remembers that the children had a "play city" in the woods behind the school. The "city" had miniature streets, houses, a hospital, a fire station, etc., built out of castoff crates, lumber, broken dishes, chairs and other junk which the children had collected. The "city" eventually became so rambling and reached so far back in the woods that the children couldn't hear the teacher calling them when recess was over. As a result they had to dismantle their "city" and thereafter play more conventional games closer to the school house. Both of the last two Brewton Springs School houses were one-room frame buildings, constructed much like Eanes' School, that is of board-n-batten design. The interiors must have been much the same, too, for Alice Oestrick recalls that it had a large wood-burning heater which the larger boys in the class had to keep fired-up during cold weather. She remembers that they had to chop lots of wood, but that they took turns doing the chore. Apparently, unlike Eanes School, Brewton Springs School contained grades 1 through 12 from the time of its inception until it was closed down. From the 1920s on Eanes School did not go beyond the 7th grade. Students at Eanes who wished to continue beyond that grade had to go into Austin and attend Allan Junior and Austin Senior High Schools. When the county closed Brewton Springs School in 1949 its students were transferred to Bee Cave School for one year, but apparently that did not work out well, for in 1950 Eanes School began to take the pupils that formerly had gone to Brewton Springs School. (Bee Cave School was eventually closed, too. Its students were sent to Dripping Springs Four women known to have taught at Brewton Springs School during its last years were Dorothy Downs, Verdie Pur- year, Mildred Stanford and Mrs. Clinton Hampe. Mrs. Hampe, who still lives at Bee Cave, not only taught at Brewton Springs, but also had the distinction of teaching at St. Elmo, Bee Cave and Eanes School as well. Apparently, teaching at "Snuff Box" and Eanes School was not without its challenges and excitements. Ross Patter- son remembers one teacher who carried a revolver in her purse and let it be known that she would shoot on the spot a particularly large and rowdy cedar chopper boy who continued to harrass her and his classmates. Fortunately, the schoolmarm did not have to use her pistol, but it is well documented that confrontations between hill country teachers and their hillbilly students could sometimes get lively.46 Tiny Teague Roberts, who was born down on Barton Creek and attended Eanes School in the late 1920s, states that she "never larned nothin' " at the school, but she remembers that "old lady Brown" (Mrs. Allie Lee Brown) used to rap her knuckles with a pencil whenever she couldn't get her lessons right, which was most of the time. Tiny also recalls that during recess the children used to play anty-over and drop-the-handkerchief.47 Cecil Johnson, Sr., who attended Eanes School, recalls one instance when a teacher and a hill country girl got into a free-for-all in the classroom during which the girl threw every book and heavy object at the teacher which she could lay her hands on. He also recalls a number of hair-pulling incidents which got out of hand and turned into nasty fist fights between students and sometimes students and the teacher. Finally, Johnson remembers one particular episode which pretty well sums up hill country humor. It seems that a cedar chopper girl, who had had several run-ins with her teacher, declared a truce. Not long after, the girl brought a "mess of fried rabbit" to school in her lunch pail and shared it with the teacher. Only after the teacher had eaten her fill of the meat did the girl reveal that in truth it was fried rattlesnake which had just been consumed. It seems that the girl's father regu- larly killed, skinned and cooked snakes to feed his family. Johnson remembers that all of the students got a big laugh out of such "creative hoodwinking" of the teacher.48 Regardless of the extraordinary confrontations between students and teachers, most of the time spent as Eanes and Brewton Springs schools was devoted to education and quiet learning. Too, most Eanes citizens were respectful of and held in high regard the teachers who taught in their community. More good memories exist of early school days in Eanes than contrary ones.

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Chapter III Life in Eanes Prior to the 1930s For more than sixty years, 1870s to 1930s, the small, sparsely settled community which developed along Bee Cave Road remained much the same. Like some fabled Brigadoon, time in Eanes seemed to stand still. While Austin was grow- ing and modernizing - the city had a population of 22,250 in 1900 and 53,120 in 1930 - people in Eanes continued to live much as their parents and grandparents had lived. Life in the hills was tied to the land and was governed by the weather and the seasons. It was also harder and slower paced than elsewhere and many of Eanes' citizens worked just enough to get by and didn't expect too much more from life. Because of the usually impassable condition of Bee Cave Road many of Eanes' residents continued to travel by wag- on, buggy or two-wheeled gig long after the introduction of the "horseless carriage." Tiny Teague Roberts recalls driving into Austin in a wagon as late as 1932, as does Edna Pierce. Too, most of the families could not afford to own a car, for there was little money in Eanes in those days. Even those families who had a little cash did not get a car right away. The Dellanas bought their first automobile in 1922. And, of course, the lack of electricity and water and sewer lines meant that until the late 1930s most families continued to cook on wood burning stoves, heat their homes with fireplaces, use kerosene and coal oil lanterns, haul water, take baths in tin tubs and use outdoor privies. In most Eanes families several generations lived under the same roof for the elderly were never put in rest homes or "sanitariums" as they are now. And, young people did not leave home then like they do today; people tended to stay put. Three generations of the Dellanas lived together as did Johnsons. First, Frank and Gertrude Johnson stayed and cared for Henry and Emma as they grew old. They were followed in turn by Randolph and Myrtle who lived on the farm and cared for Frank and Gertrude. The Roys, Rob, Addie and Jessie, who never married, lived out their days together on their ranch caring for one another. Also in the early days most families tended to be large, with ten to fifteen children not uncommon. The hillbilly families intermarried to a fearful degree and tended to live in congregations or enclaves close to one another. In fact their clannishness meant that they stayed pretty much to themselves, viewing outsiders with sus- picion. A large group of them lived in cabins, tar paper shacks and tin shantys down on Tucker Lane (Walsh-Tarleton). Another group lived along Brown Lane (Castle Ridge) and others were scattered throughout western Eanes. A 1912 "Voters Roll for Eanes School House, Voting Box #31" lists the following names. It will be remembered that women could not vote until 1920. Eanes Voters - 19121 Brown, Jasper Marshall, H.B. Brust, Albert McCulloch, M.B. Carlson, G.V. Patterson, R.P. Carlson, O.C. Plumley, J.A. Delaney (Dellana), C. Ringstaff, R. Finley, A.F. Short, D.S. Friar, J.A. Shugart, J.B. Gault, T.S. Simpson, R.H. Hutson, Green Tarleton, Adolph Hutson, Josiah Tarleton, J.O. Johnson, C.A. Taylor, F.L. Johnson, Edward Teague, J.F. Jones, M.J. Teague, J.H. King, J.H. Thurman, J.O. Longely, M.G. Thurman, P.J. Lawrence, S.A. Walsh, C.D. Leal, R.H. Walsh, Dennis R. Marshall, John Williams, J.J. The Roys, who had a house in town, continued to vote in Austin until 1916. As will be noted there is nothing known about some of the men on the list. Apparently, they moved away from the area. It will also be noted, too, that some families, such as the Tuckers, Roberts, Milams and AlIens are missing from the rolls, even though they are known to have lived

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Dennis Walsh home, built 1911. Demolished 1970s. (courtesy Joe Goeth)

in the area at this time. Perhaps they too voted in Austin, or at Oak Hill or Bee Cave. Dennis Walsh, whose name appears on the roll, was Eanes first professional man. He was an architect who had an office in Austin. In 1911 he built an imposing frame house on property where present-day West Woods Shopping Center now is (on the Goeth property). Walsh- Tarleton Lane took part of its name from him. The other half of the road's name came from the Tarleton family which lived down on what was then Tucker Lane. It will be noted that Tarleton is spelled with an "e". The first precinct chairman for Eanes was apparently Robert Eanes. Records show that he was followed in turn by H.B. Marshall, who served until about 1930, then by Charles Dellana, Sr., who was followed by Emmett Shelton, Jr. Early resi- dents recall that each election day John Marshall used to set up a refreshment stand out on Bee Cave Road next to his ranch's entrance. Voters would congregate there and partake of refreshments, pitch horseshoes, sit under the trees and whittle and talk and while-away their time.2 Election days were always a time for neighbor to visit with neighbor. Between 1900 and 1930 new families moved to the Eanes area. They included the Ganos, Lewrights, McCullochs, McNamaras, Oertlis, Graceys, Deisons, Oestricks, Robinsons, Lawrences, Cosleys and Fowlers. Despite its slow, plodding and provincial ways, life in Eanes in the early days had its rewards, for, in spite of the widely differing backgrounds of its people, and the constant struggle to make a living, Eanes became a self-reliant little commu- nity, in which most of the citizens generously came to each other's aid in time of adversity. It was during these years that the community developed its own distinct personality and identity. As far as can be determined the people who lived in Eanes never perceived themselves, either mentally or physically, as Austinites, as part of the large and modern city which lay only a few miles down the road, but they remained aloof and independent in thought and action from it. Because of this isolation there developed in Eanes over the years, a rich, unique history, one dominated by hillbillies and hill country eccentrics as well as by salt-of-the-earth, hardworking farm- ers who determinedly eked out a living off Eanes' hardscrabble and went quietly about their business overcoming or rejoicing in whatever life's fortunes brought their way. Making A Living While life in Eanes' hills was simpler than city life it certainly was not easier. There was only one way to make a living in the hills in the early days and that was off the land, and it took relentless backbreaking labor, unending perserverance and good ole down-home faith. Some said a good dose of cussedness and orneriness helped, too, If you weren't self- sufficient then you didn't last long in the hills. Eanes residents built their own houses, dug their own wells, erected fences, pens, barns and smokehouses, raised livestock for food and for sale, cleared pastures of rocks and stumps, tilled fields, planted and harvested crops and grew, canned and preserved their own vegetables. Until well into the twentieth century many of the families continued to build their own furniture, wagons and farm equipment, such as rakes, hoes, churns, barrels and tubs. Most of them, however, when they had the cash, bought their staples and supplies from Austin mer- chants, from Johnson's trading post at Bee Cave, or from John Wende who operated a store on the southeast corner of Evergreen (South Lamar Boulevard) and Barton Springs Road. Wende's emporium also served as the local post office for many years for there was no postal service out Bee Cave Road until the 1920s. [There was a post office at the commu-

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nity of Bee Cave but it was closed down in 1915.] Old timers remember that Wende's not only handled letters but also kept packages for residents who might have ordered something special from a Sears or Wards catalog. After the tele- phone arrived in Austin in 1881, Wende's was one of the first businesses south of the river to acquire the new-fangled Since most families in Eanes were large there was also plenty of work to be done. Children were kept busy both before and after school with farm chores. Idleness was seldom tolerated in those days. Among their many chores children were expected to feed the animals, milk the cows, chop and carry in firewood for cooking, draw and haul water, gather eggs from the henhouse and help weed and tend the gardens. Girls in particular were expected to become efficient homemak- ers and were taught how to can and preserve food, how to make butter, bread and lye soap, and to knit and sew. Edna Patterson Pierce, longtime Eanes resident, remembers that her mother, Katie Riley Patterson, made all the clothes for her family of eight children "on a pedal sewing machine."4 She also milked the cow and made butter to sell, in addition to all of her other chores. Shirts, skirts, dresses and underpants were commonly made out of feed and flour sacks and out of simple, lightweight calicos and ginghams. One early Texas woman recalled that she did not own a store bought dress until she was grown and married. Cooking in the early days was no easy thing, for before 1900 when the woodburning cook stove became common, women had to cook all the meals in the fireplace. Now cooking over a fireplace may sound simple, but in fact it requires a great deal more time and effort than using a stove. Cooks had to use heavy, iron pots suspended over the fire for heat- ing soup and stews, boiling meat and vegetables and heating water. Bread, cornpone and biscuits were baked in a 'dutch-oven', which was set on the fireplace hearth and covered with ashes and coals. One central Texas mother, who cooked for an especially large family, remembers that "breadmaking was much trou- ble and took so long ... we had only three [dutch-ovens], each one just large enough for one loaf at a time, and there had to be twenty loaves every day because there were so many of us."5 Another pioneer recalled that "invariably at the very moment when the hearth was filled with pots and pans, we would add two [dutch-ovens] of bread with their lids filled with red-hot firebrands, which threw off a terrific heat."6 Even after the free-standing wood-burning cookstove became common, cooking remained a tiresome and involved business. Dry kindling and green wood still had to be kept on hand. The fire had to be just right, not too hot and not too cool, and it was difficult to regulate, requiring constant attention to maintain the correct temperature. The stove's ash box and soot tray had to be cleaned once a week. Also on windy days it was not uncommon for a gust of wind to blow down the stovepipe and fill the house with soot and smoke. The most convenient thing about the wood cook stove was that the cook didn't have to squat or bend over so much. Too, most models had warming cupboards, where food could be kept before placing it on the table. Too, in winter a wood stove heated-up the whole house better than a fireplace could, but of course, that was a distinct disadvantage in the summer. Charlie Dellana, Jr., recalls that his grandmother and mother owned a special volcanic rock which they used in cooking. First the rock would be heated on the wood stove until it became very hot. It would retain heat all day. Then they would place it in a pot of beans, etc., and slow cook the beans all day without having to keep the stove fired up. Del- lana remembers, too, that during frigid nights the rock was heated, wrapped and put under the bedcovers to keep icy feet warm.7 Doing the family wash each week was a task women especially dreaded for it was backbreaking and tiresome work and took a full day to accomplish. A fire was built outdoors on which was set a large cast iron washpot. In the pot were put water, the dirty clothes and shavings of lye soap. After boiling for fifteen or twenty minutes, each item of clothing was taken out of the pot with a long-handled stick and was scrubbed individually on a rubboard. Sometime the clothes were beaten with a battlin' board to clean them. Then the clothes were boiled a few minutes longer then rinsed in a second large pot of cool water which had bluing in it. The clothes were then wrung by hand and hung out to dry, after which they were ironed. Ironing was done with a heavy, stove heated handiron. And of course, after the clothes were ironed they had to be folded and put away. Those families who could afford it hired a washerwoman to come once a week and take care of this hot, tedious and detested chore. Edna Pierce, who has lived in the Westbank all of her life, recalls just what a chore washing clothes could be. "Oh, I had a time getting my [family's] washing done. I'd pack the clothes about a half mile to an old mud tank to wash them. Had a baby on my hip. I'd tie my baby to a cedar limb so he wouldn't run down and jump in that water ... I had washing by gunnysack. I don't know how I did it ... taking those children [she had nine] to the creek. I'd throw the clothes over the brush to dry. Then I'd have to go back down there and get my clothes when they were dry." In later married life Edna would cart a barrel of water to her house using mules and wagon. "I was tickled when we'd get the barrel over there because I didn't have to pack water. . . " Edna still has her old rubboard. "I soak my sheets in a tub at night with bleach and wash powder. The next morning I get up and rub them out and boil them. You know, I get them just as white ... I don't dry my clothes in those boxes [electric dryers]. I'm afraid I'll burn them up ... I like to dry my sheets out there on

the clothes line. I leave them out all day long. Sometimes if it isn't going to rain I leave them out there at night. The next morning that dew dries on them and makes them look white."8

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Dellana family cast iron wash pot, ca. 1904. (courtesy Charles Dellana, Jr.)

Wood cookstove which has been used by Edna Pierce for sixty years. Depwe Coll.)

Handmade tools used by Condido Dellana when working as stonemason on 188 Capitol (courtesy Charles Dellana, Jr.)

Dellana family rubboard. (courtesy Charles Dellana, Jr.)

Edna Patterson Pierce, age 81 (1986). (Depwe Coll.) Several individuals in Eanes still have the utensils and tools their families used in the old days. Charlie Dellana, Jr., has a number of pieces of old farm equipment and some of the old pots and kettles which belonged to his grandparents and parents. Edna Pierce has her Grand- ma Riley's old iron washpot. In addition, Edna has used the same wood-burning cookstove for over fifty years.

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Eanes' men had it no easier than the women, for on their shoulders fell the burden of supplying the food which the wom- en cooked. Since cash was always scarce and most families had to rely upon their farm produce and upon barter and trade to acquire the goods and supplies which they could not grow or make themselves, Eanes residents were by neces- sity self-reliant. To live in the country successfully a farmer needed to have the skills of a carpenter, stonemason, driller, tinsmith, blacksmith, butcher, baker, tailor, chef and doctor. If he didn't possess all those talents himself then he had to call upon neighbors who did. Both "Uncle" Milt Jackson and Orlando Tracy were blacksmiths who could shoe horses, repair wagons and buggies and make or fix almost any type of metal object which was in common use in the early days. Joe Smith was a tinsmith who could make and repair windmills and pumps. Cal Roy, the Johnsons and the Oestricks were stonemasons and could build almost anything that they put their minds to. The Carlson's were dairymen and knew all about cattle, milk cows and dairy products. And of course the cedar choppers could clear land, build and repair fences and work as jacks-of-all-trades and as day laborers. Lytton Pierce worked for the Bradfield Realty Company in Austin for nineteen years clearing the land for the roads and houses that were built where present-day Pemberton Heights is now. Many families in the area also sold eggs, butter, jellies and preserves, honey and vegetables to make extra money. Tiny H. B. Marshall, ca. 1930 (Depwe col.) Viola Marshall, ca. 1930 (Depwe col.) Teague Roberts, who has lived all of her life in Eanes, and has lived for 36 years next to the cool, shade covered spring that forms the headwaters of Bee Creek, still sells eggs, twplve dozen each Saturday to a grocer in Austin. Edna Pierce recalls that her father, Robert Payton Patterson, raised plums, peaches, tomatoes, greens and corn, which he "traded out at MacAngus' store down on E. 6th Street" in Austin.9 The Aliens, Roys, Pattersons, Johnsons and Dellanas raised cattle for sale, but none ever made much money at it. The cattle market fluctuated then much as it does today, sometimes even more erratically. Too, the ranchers had to worry about drought and disease in addition to market forces. In the 1920s the Texas fever tick infested the state's herds so severely that Travis County officials built dipping vats on both the Dellana's and the Allen's ranches. Cattle owners who lived near these two families had to bring in their stock to be dipped, with each family having an assigned dipping day when its cattle were herded through the ditch-like troughs of water and arsenic. Charlie Dellana, Jr., remembers that his father told him that in those days it was an all day process to drive, dip and return a herd. As late as the 1940s and 50s the Dellanas' vat was being used. George Nalle, Ill, who grew up in Rollingwood remembers that the Dellana's "had goats and cattle, and they had a dip tank on their property . . . they'd fill the tank and all the kids would ride over and watch them dip cattle."1 H.B. and Viola Marshall sold honey and butter and raised goats. At one time H.B. was president of the American Goat Association and traveled to Chicago to attend that organization's national convention. There he met and talked with Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. In its early days the Ford Motor Company used mohair from goats to make a soft, long-lasting fabric which was used to upholster the seats in its "tin lizzies". H.B. Marshall was one of the company's first mohair suppliers. Later, after Bee Cave Road became a better, more reliable road, Marshall, who was a skilled printer sometimes worked in Austin at that trade.

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The Roys, too, raised goats as well as cattle. In the 1960s Jessie and Addie Roy were interviewed about the early days. "From 1900 to 1912 this was much better ranching country. It had bermuda grass along the river front. Then after the dam of 1915 was built the land was only good for goats, and we kept a large herd for a long time," stated Jessie. When the interview was held the women still had two sheep and a young lamb on the property, but that was "three too many" the sisters said. Jessie also added that, "I liked it just as well when there were only the Dellanas, the Marshalls and the goats and us up here."11 Despite Eanes' rocky, alkaline soil many of the families in the area were able to cultivate gardens and grow crops for sale. Of course, because of the hardpan and scrabble it often took years of work, removing stones and boulders, tilling and mulching, to make a plot productive. And, of course, every garden was no good unless it had a good, sturdy fence around it to keep out deer and other varmits. In the 1970s Gertrude Johnson was interviewed. She remembered that the Johnson family had had a large vegetable garden and that they had sold vegetables in Austin and also had preserved enough for themselves to last a year. She also remembered that the Johnsons raised cattle and hogs and "big bronze turkeys, sheep and goats."12 Like the Mar- shalls they sold the wool and mohair to buyers in Austin. In the early days each member of a family was expected to do his share of work in the garden and field. Here is how one early pioneer remembered field work, "Oh, hoeing corn. How I hated that the worst of anything. Right out in that hot sun one row at a time an' you get in a big ol' field an' just go along as slow as you have to go a'hoeing'. You couldn't build no time. Hoe all day and you wouldn't get as far as from here to there. All day and then just think about the days and days y'had t'go to get to that end of the field. An' it had to be done. Ever' stalk of it had to be hoed an' cleaned up around. I despised that worse than anything out in that hot sun."13 The Johnsons grew good crops of corn and hay in their fields. Edward Johnson, son of Henry, remembered that life was hard growing up on the family ranch. He used to have to take a change of clothes to Eanes School each day so that he would be ready to work in the family's cornpatch as soon as school was let out. In those days every extra pair or hands and every daylight hour was considered precious and had to be spent in productive work. The Johnsons' cornfield was located on the land where Westlake High School now sits. Years later life in Eanes was still hard, for Cecil Johnson, Edward's son, remembers that during the Depression he spent hours chopping fodder in that same field. He recalls that one sizzling summer day while working there he got so hot that he began to see mirages and before realizing it walked toward what he thought was a trough of cool water. His uncle Frank intercepted him and made him sit down under a tree and cool off. Cecil was about seventeen when this Charlie Dellana, Jr., remembers that many of the families has large plots of tomatoes and other vegetables which they sold to merchants in Austin. The Dellanas grew acres of sweet Crystal Wax onions which came in lots of 10,000 seedlings from Raymondville in the valley. The Dellana boys had to crawl on their hands and knees along the rows to plant all those seedlings. When the onions were mature they were harvested and sold to the Piggly Wiggly stores in Austin. The Del- lanas also sold firewood to Austinites. In addition they cultivated twenty-five acres of cotton in a field which was located just north of the present-day Barton Creek Mall.15 In the hills men learned how to handle guns and to hunt from the time they were just "little shavers." To keep a shotgun or rifle in your possession at all times was just good common sense, and every man had a hound dog. Most Eanes hunters were dead-eyed shots, especially the Shorts, Rileys and Simpsons. Emmett Shelton, Sr., recalls that, "Earl Short could knock a squirrel out of a tree at 200 yards, and hit him between the eyes, too."16 And, of course, Buck Simpson, Eanes' World War I hero, was a legendary marksman. Almost every family in Eanes supplemented the family's larder by hunting and fishing. Sometimes this could bring in a little cash, too. While pork, chicken and beef were the usual fare, venison, rabbit, squirrel, 'coon and 'possum were also served at many Eanes dinner tables, and each family had its favorite recipe. In the hill country in those days meals were simple but wholesome and family members didn't quibble about what was put in front of them at the table. "If it was hot and nourishin' then it was et." Pork, beef, chicken and venison, plus home- grown vegetables were the usual fare, but 'coon and rattlesnake were not uncommon either. Eanes 'Possum Dinner For Two 1 to 2 lbs. ready-to-cook possum cup water salt cup melted butter pepper cayenne pepper 2 medium sweet potatoes Wash 'possum, trim off fat. Season cavity with salt and pepper. Scrub potatoes. Do not peel. Add water. Brush

meat and potatoes with butter. Sprinkle with salt and cayenne. Cover and bake till tender. Baste frequently. Serve with biscuits and Chapparal Jelly.17

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Chaparral Jelly 2 cups Agarita (Chapparal) juice 1 to 1 cups sugar 2 tsp. lemon juice Wash berries, cover with water and cook until tender. Strain through jelly bag or cheesecloth. Measure juice and boil for 5 minutes. Add one teaspoon lemon juice and sugar and cook until it sheets from the spoon. Skim foam. Pour into clean, hot glasses and seal. Makes two 6 oz. glasses.18 To harvest Agaritas one placed an old sheet under the bush and then tapped the berries with a stick so they would land on the sheet. Then they were separated from the small branches and leaves which also fell. On special occasions, like harvest, syrup making or hog-killing time all members of a family pitched-in and helped. Often several families worked together. The Allen Family which lived off Commons Ford Road had a cane syrup operation each year at their ranch. They invited their neighbors, the Pattersons, Hutsons and others to help, each family contribut- ing time, supplies or cane in return for a percentage of the molasses produced. Many of Eanes' families raised hogs and after each year's first frost they would band together to share in the killing, larding and sausage and ham making. The operation which had an almost festive air about it always took place outdoors around open fires, where hams, shoulders, bacon, sausage, hogshead cheese, lard and liver pudding were prepared. Sometimes the whole process took several weeks during which time the families would move-in with one another. E.J. Rissmann, who grew up near Bear Creek in south Travis County, remembers hog killing time as follows. "[It] was a bloody, messy business. After killing a hog with a rifle shot the hog's throat was slit, so it would bleed good and the meat be drained of blood ... The hog was pushed head first, into a slanted wooden barrel, which contained hot water, to scald it. [This] loosened the skin, so the hair could be scraped off with a butcher knife. The hog, at last pink and clean ... was then hung by hind legs from a tree branch. The head was cut off, and the "innards" removed and the carcass drenched with water. The entrails were washed and put into a solution of salt brine, to be used as 'casings' in which to stuff sausage. After hanging all night the hog was cut up into hams, sides for bacon, backbones, chops and such. Hogshead cheese was made from the jellylike tissues of the head; liver sausage from the heart and liver. The brains, fried to a nice brown and properly seasoned, some- times scrambled with eggs, were considered by many a delicacy at the breakfast table ... Sausage was made with a hand mill and a sort of boot-shaped stuffer operated by a lever to force the ground meat into the casing, which was tied over the mill's spout... Seasonings included salt, pepper and sage. The sausage casings were hung in the smokehouse. The fire had to be just right, for too much heat could ruin the sausage and hams. After weeks of smoking the meat was placed in crocks and covered with lard for preservation in a cool cellar. The sausage turned dark and finally hardened in the lard. Smoked sausage made a mighty fine bedtime snack, along with fresh baked bread and newly churned butter."19 Even after people began to take their hogs to professional slaughter houses for rendering they still tended to make their own hams and sausages. The Dellanas cured their own hams in the following way. They injected each ham with a solution of brown sugar, sodium nitrate and spices and then hung them in the smokehouse over slow burning smudge fires made of corncobs and hickory wood for flavor. The smokehouse fire, which Rissmann called a "punk" fire, was kept smoldering for many days until the hams were well cured. Gertrude Johnson recalled that when they were curing meat they hung it to dry on Yucca cactus, also known as Bear Grass. Apparently the sun cured the meat. Many old-timers relished homemade liver pudding, which was said to taste similar to modern-day goose liver pate. Liver Pudding Boil a heart and liver then dice both. Add to one pound of diced leaf lard and mix with corn meal. Spoon into squares of muslin cloth and tie into bags, leaving room for swelling. Drop bags into boiling water and boil until well done. Store in cool place. As needed peel off muslin and slice pudding. Can be served hot, cold or Rissmann also remembers how soap was made. "Into a large outdoor iron washpot place accumulation of cracklings, fat and meat rinds. Add ten gallons of water, five pounds of grease or fat, two or three balls of lye. Stir with a stick or pad- dle, and boil over the fire until the contents begin to turn white, which means that the lye has consumed the grease and most of the solids. Pour mixture into a wooden box, and, when cool, cut into squares.''21 In the old days before lye could be bought in stores it was acquired by pouring water over wood ashes in a hopper to collect concentrated lye water for making soap. Edna Pierce, who has lived in the same house on Rocky River Road for 64 years, recalls that she made her own soap up until a few years ago. Rissman also recalls that after families stopped making their own lye and lye soap there was a soap-making firm in Aus- tin at the corner of East Third and Brushy Streets, called H. & A. Leser. Families would stop there and buy large, brick- sized blocks of Olive laundry soap as well as sweet-scented toilet soaps. Rissmann remembers that the old-time soaps

gave a freshness to body and clothing that are not found in modern products.

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Cistern and cold storage cellar in Eanes, ca. 1930. (Depwe Coll.) One of Rissmann's fondest memories, however, is of the cellar in his boyhood home. "In our cellar, dank, cool and twilit, the smell of homemade soap vied with the odors of mustang grape wine and molasses in kegs and barrels, of sweet pota- toes buried in sand, of onions hung from the ceiling, of salt, and of damp wood and earth."22 The author of this book recalls too those same wonderful smells wafting out of her grandparents' cellar at their old rock farm house in suburban Fort Worth. She remembers, too, that cellars made good haunted houses at Halloween time. Most homes in Eanes had some kind of water supply, a spring, a well, a windmill, a pond or a cistern to provide water for the family and animals. (The author has documented and photographed numerous old wells, cisterns and handpum- ps that still remain in the area.) Those families who were not so blessed with water had to haul their water daily from Bar- ton Springs or the river or they had to drive their animals to water each day. The lack of water was a recurring problem in Eanes, especially during severe droughts when Barton Creek dried up and the Colorado became a trickle. Many har- vests were lost because of lack of rain; however, there was never any record of the spring on the Marshall's ranch going dry. Many times the Marshalls' shared their water with others. [When Andrew Zilker sold Barton Springs to the city in 1917 part of the agreement between him and Austin was that Austin had to continue to supply free water to the hill people who needed it. Thus it is that today, in 1986, there is a county maintained water spigot located on west Bee Cave Road where some of Eanes' citizens, including many who live along Lake Austin, get their drinking water.] Because folks in those days knew that life came and went in cycles and bad times could follow good, they canned and preserved as much food as they had room to store during years of abundance. Before modern refrigeration food was kept cold by storing it in cellars, in spring houses, under the kitchen sink or in "pie safes," which were cupboards which had vents and holes to keep the air circulating around the food. One device which was popular in the hill country was the cooler. A Llano pioneer described it as follows. "The cooler stood some four to five feet high and was made of galvanized sheet iron. Across the top was a pan about three inches deep, and around the upper edge of the pan were small nail-like spikes extending about a half-inch. Below the pan were usually three shelves, and at the bottom, a few inches above the floor, there was another pan. Four metal posts at the corners supported the pans and shelves. In operation the cooler was draped around with a large cloth which was attached to the spikes in the upper pan and extended to the lower pan. Water was placed in the upper pan and flowed down the cloth toward the lower pan. Evaporation of the moisture in the cloth provided the cooling for the food. On hot days the cloth had to be moistened with a dipper several times a day because evaporation was such that the lower part of the cloth would otherwise never get After 1900 many families acquired an icebox for cold storage, but an icebox meant that one had to go down to Barton Springs every day or two to either the Rabb's ice house or to Andrew Zilker's Southwestern Ice Company and buy a 50 pound block of ice for the box. The block cost 15e and the buyer had to wrap it in a tarp and then rush it home to the icebox before it melted. During the Depression years many families recall that they didn't have the 150. Charlie Dellana, Jr., remembers that his father, who was a gregarious and friendly man, used to stop and chat with friends and neighbors on his ice-buying trips. Often the ice would be melted down to about half of its original size before he got it home and

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safely stored in the family icebox. Every family with an icebox also had an ice shaver as well as an icepick, for there was nothing finer or more refreshing on a hot summer's day than to sip on a tall glass of shaved iced which was topped with fruit nectar or homemade syrup. One old-timer recalls that such a homemade snowcone put the modern version "in the Cecil Johnson, Sr., recalls that one summer day in the 1930s Oscar Carlson was seen trudging up Bee Cave Road with one of the 50 pound ice blocks slung over his shoulders. The Johnson family stopped and gave their weary neighbor a ride home. It seems Carlson's old truck had hit one too many of Bee Cave Road's chugholes and had broken down. Since ice was critical to Carlson's dairy business for weeks he was forced to make the round trip to the ice factory on foot. Not only did Carlson have to walk to get his ice but during that period he also had to deliver his milk on foot. He would pour the milk in large tin cans, put the cans in a burlap sack and hoist the heavy sack on his shoulders and walk into Austin where he would deliver the milk to Meyer's Creamery, which was located on 6th Street. He was one of the company's major suppliers. Milk which is difficult to keep fresh unless kept very cold was used up more rapidly in the old days than it is now. Not only was butter churned almost daily, but cool, fresh, cream-rich milk drunk straight from the crock was considered a real treat, as was fresh buttermilk mixed with cornbread crumbs. Common, too, were buttermilk biscuits, buttermilk loaf breads and buttermilk pies. Almost every family in Eanes had a cow for butter and for curds (cottage cheese). All milk which could not be used by the family was fed to the farm animals for nothing was ever wasted. Gertrude Johnson's Curd Pie 2 cups strained curds 1 Tbs. corn starch 1 cups sugar Line pan with paste (dough), Pour in custard. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Dot with butter and bake until set.24 Dellanas' Cottage Cheese Take two day old milk. Let it curdle. Wrap curds in cheesecloth and hang in sun on clothesline or tree trunk. Let drip until all moisture has been eliminated. Bring inside, place in bowl, add salt to taste. Store in icebox. Serve as a side dish with meals. 25 Charlie Dellana, Jr., remembers that his dogs used to take turns sitting under the dripping cheesecloth with their mouths open so as to catch each drop of the milk as it fell. There was another way to make a living in Eanes and that was by chopping cedar. The cedar choppers were a breed apart. As has been noted, they came to the area in the 19th century because of the demand for clear-cut pasture land, for railroad ties and for fence posts. Independent and restless by nature, "the slow ways of the plow and the following of herds" never appealed to them. The cedar cutter was his own man and he came and went at will working either alone or in one of the large family groups which sometimes traveled together. All a man needed to make a living was a strong constitution, a good ax and a sturdy wagon and team, the latter replaced by the gasoline powered chainsaw and flatbed truck in the 20th century. A skilled cedar chopper could produce several hundred clean cut posts or several cords of fire- wood in a single seven to eight hour day. In the old days, after selling the wood to a cedaryard the chopper might pocket anywhere from $3.00 to $5.00. Not a bad day's wages, considering the alternatives. Of course during the Depression some choppers were hard pressed to make even $1.00 a day. Today a single cord of wood will fetch more than $100.00. As has already been mentioned, at one time nearly the whole of Eanes' population seemed to be choppers, most of whom lived down Tucker Lane, Brown Lane or out west off Bee Cave Road. The choppers lives were not only nomadic, with them moving from brake to brake every few days, but they were dogged by some of the direst poverty, ignorance and unsanitary conditions imaginable. And, yet, when offered a chance to improve their lot many of the choppers scorned "city ways" preferring to remain as they were with all of cedar chopping's disadvantages but also with all of its freedoms, too. W.C. Wimberley, of San Marcos, who lived and worked among cedar choppers, remembered them as follows: "The cedarcutter was his own man with his earnings determined only by his skill and effort ... nobody, but nobody, could tell the cedarcutter anything he had to do. No anchors held him in place and he drifted with the first restless wind . . . Traveling in the mode of itinerant squatters . . . They rode on wagons drawn by willow- tailed ponies, heaped high with their plunder, and topped with ragged children and coops of chickens. Hidden somewhere among the cracked dishes and dirty bedding, there were packets of seeds and roots of vegetables and flowering plants growing in cans, and hounds trotting alongside, and a milk cow tethered behind and bring- ing up the rear. . . At camp sites near water they stopped to throw up their rag houses or shanties of tin and

scrap lumber and brush - to chop select timber into post so long as the brake suited their whim - to follow

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hounds at night - to dance barefooted to fiddles on grounds cleared among the cedars - to curse and fight and drink raw whiskey - to take their women and raise their children - all done in ways foreign to other Cedar chopping was a family enterprise, with the wife and children working to strip, debark and load the posts after the cedar chopper had felled the trees. And since the chopper was apt to up and move in an instant as he was to stay put, many of those who resided in Eanes never stayed in one location for long. Their children drifted in and out of school and the parents themselves came and went on the voter and census rolls. The cedar choppers' suspicions of and isolation from the regular world meant that they were always wary of outsiders and of every day society. Bruce Marshall, an Eanes resident, recalls that when he was a boy visiting his grandparents, H.B. and Viola Marshall, he accidently ran into a hillbilly girl from a chopper family that was camped near Smith Creek on the Marshall ranch. She was dressed in ragged clothes, had matted dirty hair and was so spooked by seeing an out- sider that she high-tailed it off into the brush when he approached.27 A census taker who worked regularly in the Eanes area remembers that she always had to yell and shout and identify herself as she approached the cedar choppers' shacks and shanties, or else they would run off into the woods before she could meet with them. Too, she recalls that the yelling and shouting was good precaution to take to keep from being shot at.28 The cedar choppers' skills with an ax were legendary. Barbara Langham, an Eanes resident and writer, described their abilities in her article "Hill Country Cedar Choppers." She also gave a short history of the evolution of the ax which they used with such prowess. It seems "the ax was invented by Henry Weiss, a hardware store manager in Kerrville, from a broken hatchet he found lying by a road. Unlike the conventional ax that weighed four or five pounds and had a wrought iron blade, the new ax weighed only two to three pounds and had a steel blade widened at the cutting edge. It was soon manufactured in quantity. .. most people called it the 'Kerrville cedar ax.' With this innovation a cedar chopper could clear one to three acres a day by himself, depending on the thickness of the brake. The best choppers were not only fast workers but also skilled artisans [who] could chop a post to a length of exactly 6 feet and trim off branches and stubs until it was pencil smooth."29 But, cedar chopping was not without its hazards. Bob Simpson, an Eanes cedar chopper, was crippled and walked with a limp all of his life as the result of cutting his foot with an ax when a young man. Too, choppers had to learn how to handle rattlesnakes, scorpions and big red ants, which infested the cedar brakes. Langham also described the choppers as loners, clannish and suspicious of strangers and sometimes so belligerent that they had run-ins with townsfolk who didn't understand their ways. Too, "some [choppers] were lazy, a few were criminal . . . [and often] as youngsters, cedar choppers learned to chunk rocks, use knives, and shoot firearms as part of their survival in the rugged hills. They often carried rifles or tucked pistols under the belt of their pants, and they were just as likely to get mad at each other as at an outsider."30 W.C. Wimberley tells the following cedar chopper stories in his article, "Cedarcutters and Others." "Honest John was another one of the great cedarcutters during the Depression. In the cool of early morning, John's cedar wagon would take off for the brake with kids in and on and hanging all over this Model-A Ford Tudor Sedan. With a wife who could swing a pretty wicked ax and a bunch of kids who cut their eye-teeth on ax handles, this tribe could stump a jag of cedar posts about as quick as you could shuck and shell a peck of corn. By nine-thirty or ten o'clock, a couple of the younger boys would pull into the cedaryard with piles of poles riding the front fenders, post sticking from both back windows and a four-foot stack racked a-top the rear bump- er ... Usually there was an armadillo or two lying on the floorboards of the last load. John's wife could grind off a batch of armadillo sausage that tasted, looked like, and ate as good as pork if you paid no heed to bone struc- ture ... One time John was traveling along with his load of kids and cedar when a blow-out sent the Ford Tudor across a ditch to break a rural telephone pole off at the ground and knock three big posts from a rancher's fence ... John left the scene with three green stays baling-wired in to hold the fence in place, the phone lines sagging in the air, and his load topped with three new, dry, heart-post and a ten-foot pole - all barked, butted a-new, and freshly blazed." 31 Wimberley tells another story about a cedaryard owner who had a run-in with one of the cedar chopping Young boys who grew up in Eanes. "Flatnose Joe earned his moniker early in his career by arguing with one of the Young boys about the grade of a post. With the post held in one hand and the four-inch horseshoe measure in the other, Joe was demonstrat- ing that the top end of the post could easily be passed between the prongs of the horseshoe without the bark touching either side, and thus it wasn't a four-inch post ... without a word Young had eased one of the wagon standards out of its loops and settled the argument with one wild swing that left Joe flat on his back. The Youngs were like that and Joe's nose was never the same."32 Many of the cedar choppers not only sold cedar posts but they also made and sold charcoal which they made out of the cedar. Earl Short, a cedar chopper who grew up in Eanes, left the following description of how to make charcoal.

"Well, you cut up cedar wood, you can use a little oak, too. Cut it about 4 or 5 foot long, stack it up [like a tipi],

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and leave a hole in the top. Cover the logs with cedar bark and then cover all of that with dirt. You fire it up by dropping a bucket of cedar bark down the hole, followed by a torch. Sometimes it takes three to five days for it to burn. You have to watch it to make sure the dirt don't cave through and flame up the wood. You have to keep it smothered down. When you get ready to draw it you take a rake or hoe and break [the whole thing] up and rake out the charcoal. Then you sack [the charcoal] in sacks or bushel baskets ... most I ever got was 2 bits [254] a bushel." Short goes on to say that the only reason "we ever made charcoal was 'cause we was waitin' for the mash [moonshine] to cook off and we had lots of time to spare." E.J. Rissmann, who sold charcoal in his small east Austin store back in the 1930s, later wrote an entertaining article about the charcoal burners he had known and about their lives. He wrote, "Years ago in my store in east Austin I sold cedar charcoal by the wagonloads. Women used it to heat their irons when they took in washing. Blacksmiths, too, used it in forges ... various suppliers brought charcoal to my small store. There was Lonnie Roberts, dark in complexion and unhurried in talk and motion. His charcoal had to be good or he'd not sell it. His charcoal was asked for by name ... I'd retail a sack of groceries for the charcoal. Then I'd retail a towsack of charcoal for 50 and a big paper sack full for 100.. .. Lonnie Roberts was a preacher on the side. . . In the 1930s the woods were full of charcoal burners, sometimes as many as eight families worked at one place at one time ... everyone sold wood, too, by the rick for 25 or by the cord for $1.50. ... most of the cedar choppers stood tall and lean, the way most men do when brought up on a diet of biscuits, cornbread, bacon, molasses and small game ... Charcol burning involved some capital: a wagon and team, an axe, a garden rake, a sprinkler can and a shovel or scoop ... good charcoal has a sheen like anthracite, and it rings when tapped, like a century-old cedar fence rail ... most burners played checkers and dipped snuff to help pass the time away. There was always chewing tobacco or snuff dipped with a hackberry twig, Garrett's or Lorillard's in brown bottles with one to five dots on the bottom to indicate strength. Some liked it weak and some liked their snuff strong. The bottles when empty were used as borders for gardens and walks ... When the coal was ready it was shoveled into towsacks for marketing, the sack openings being woven shut with Spanish dagger leaves, tough like sisal. The sacks were piled on a wagon and taken to town ... Charcoal burn- ing was a whole way of life. No one burns charcoal in the hills now."33 William Elliot, who was born in 1891 and moved to Eanes in the 1930s. recalled that the cedar choppers used up all the red cedar in the area because it made the best charcoal. He also remembers Eanes choppers who went into Austin and sold their charcoal on Congress Avenue. He recalls that sometimes there would be several charcoal wagons driving up and down Austin Streets, wtih their drivers calling out the charcoal chant, "Charcoal, charcoal, Here's the charcoal man!"34 An enterprising cedar chopper would load his wagon with charcoal, cedar posts and flat rocks and go into town. Edna McRae remembered that her father used to trade eggs, vegetables and other kinds of produce for the choppers' cedar and charcoal which the family then used during canning or hog killing time. Gradually, the coming of the modern age changed the cedar choppers' way of life. Electricity, modern highways, creeping suburbia, all made inroads which changed how the chopper made his living. "Difficult though the transition may have been, many cedar choppers melted into the population. When the demand for cedar subsided, some turned to rock masonry, building rock walls and chimneys for the new people moving in."35 A few cedar chopper families still live in Eanes today, but in only a few rare cases have they kept the old ways of living. Most of them have improved their station in life to such an extent that one would be hard pressed to guess their family's past. One cedar chopper boy who was raised and schooled in Eanes even acquired a Ph.D. from the University of Texas a few years back. The cedar choppers were the most colorful residents ever to live in Eanes and their demise has made the community a much duller, if quieter place to live. Having Fun In Eanes, as in other rural societies prior to the advent of radio, movies, television, automobiles and other modern tech- nological marvels, people depended upon good old down-home entertainment for diversion. Amusement, frivolity and fun were simple and honest endeavors which were centered around the home, the church and the school. Too, unlike today's impersonal "mass happenings" with all their glitz and glitter, entertainment in the old days was people oriented and was always based, in some way, upon old-fashioned hospitality and neighborliness. Of course on Saturdays a family might journey into Austin to shop or sell produce or on occasion to see the circus, view a parade, listen to a band concert or perhaps take in one of the traveling theatrical reviews which periodically passed through the city, but such occur- rences were rare. However, because such treats were so special it explains why they were looked forward to with such anticipation and excitement and were cherished in memory for so long afterwards.

Church services and church socials provided hard working, hardscrabble farm families needed and well-earned diver-

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sion and respite after six days of fighting rocks, varmits and other elements of mother nature. Sundays were a time to renew the spirit, rest the body and meet with friends and neighbors. Gospel singing, church picnics, box suppers and even Sunday sermons and revival meetings offered citizens a chance to mingle and enjoy each others company. Too, they were one of the few proper ways that young people could meet, court and 'woo" one another. Box suppers were especailly good forums for courting. Held at the church house on Sunday evenings, they were a kind of auction-picnic- party where the congregation got together to raise money for the church. The girls, spruced-up in their Sunday best, would bring ribbon bedecked baskets full of fried chicken, potato salad and pie. Each boy, awkward and uncomfortable in his starched high collar and leather shoes, would nervously bid on the basket of his choice, thereby hoping to spend the evening with "his girl". If successful then the two would share the contents of the basket, under the watchful eyes of the ever present adults. If one didn't get the basket and girl of his choice, well, no one said life was fair, you just had to put on a good face and make the best of a bad situation. Edna Patterson Pierce, met her husband Lytton, at such a function at Watson Springs Baptist Church out on west Bee Cave Road. Mrs. Pierce recalls that she and Lytton "stole a kiss in the shadows but that Papa would've beat the livin' daylights outa' me had he've knowed it."36 Edna and Lytton were married the following year, she was 15 and he was 17. Mrs. Pierce recalls that they didn't have "anything to their names" and were so poor that they spent their two-week honeymoon off in the woods down by Barton Creek. "During the day we would swim in the creek, hunt squirrels and chop a little cedar for cash money." Edna also remembers that "in the evenings we were expected to return home to Mama and Papa [Patterson] to sleep. And we did!" Churches also held gospel sings and revival meetings at which residents could socialize. Several Eanes citizens remember attending camp meetings in the summer. One of the largest in the area was held at Camp Ben McCulloch in Hays County. A camp meeting was a week long denominational revival meeting held outdoors near a spring or lake, where scores, sometimes hundreds, of the faithful congregated in tents to participate in a week of Bible seminars, ser- mons, gospel singing and socializing. Another avenue used for socializing by young people, and adults, too, was the play-party. Mary Mowinckle, who taught at Eanes School in 1904 when she was eighteen, wrote about several play-parties which she attended. One, a Halloween party, was held at the Deep Eddy home of Charles and Emelia Johnson, where she met her future husband, their son, A play-party was a chaparoned party held in a private home where the party goers ate, sang, played parlor games like "Snap", and danced in the "proper" way. "Proper" dancing consisted of marches and reels similar to square dancing and allowed for a minimum of body contact between males and females. One Texan who attended play-parties around the turn of the century left the following description. "The people of the house would clear their largest room of all the furniture ... set benches around the four walls for the girls. The boys stood ... girls wore calico dresses their mothers made ... boys wore hickory-striped shirts and hand-me-down suits ... We played games like 'Thimble, Thimble, Who's Got the Timble?', 'Snap' and 'Go In and Out the Window' ... We danced to 'Skip to My Lou, My Darling', 'Drop the Handkerchief', and 'Irish Trot' ... You could hear that party a heap farther than you could hear the music. We usually had a French harp, an acordian and a violin."37 E.J. Rissmann, who attended many play-parties when he was growing up on his family's ranch off Ben McCulloch Road, recalls that when no house was available then the play-party would be held under a brush arbor next to Thomas Springs Baptist Church, in south Travis County. He also remembers that when a party was held at the Rissmann Ranch his mother would provide the music by playing the organ which sat in the family parlor. It seems that Mrs. Rissmann was an accomplished musician and her services were much in demand. Everyone stands in a big circle. A boy and a girl hold up their hands. Who ever is It (a third party) Snaps either the boy or girl. As soon as one is snapped (thumped with a finger), a chase starts with snapper chasing the snapped one round and round the ring until he is caught. When caught he is out of the game and becomes the snapper. The game continues until all are caught. Last one left is the winner.38 Most pleasures in Eanes were simple affairs centered around home and family. In the evenings children got their les- sons at kitchen tables lit by coal oil lanterns while the mother sewed and the father cleaned his gun or repaired some tool or utensil. Sometimes someone would read from the Bible or a story book, that is, if someone in the family knew how to read. Sunday was always visiting day. Families would call on one another and the adults would sit out on the porch or under a shade tree, and visit, whittle, smoke and spin yarns, while the children played out-door games like Red Rover, London Bridge, Hide-n-Seek and Ball-n-Jack. Sometimes a big pitcher of homemade lemonade would be passed around, or a big watermelon would be sliced up. On special occasions the bulk of the afternoon would be devoted to making ice cream in a handmade wooden bucket with a crank. But ice cream was only possible when a family had the means and

wherewithal to acquire a block of ice from Rabb's down at Barton Springs.

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Holidays, too, provided respite from the daily grind of hardscrabble living. Election day brought voters together for poli- ticking and visiting. The Fourth of July, the nation's most revered day, was a time for families to get together for picnics down on the river or creek and to shoot-off homemade fireworks. Sometimes, too, a family would journey into Austin on the Fourth for the special events - parades and band concerts - which were held then. Thanksgiving and Christmas each had their own special down-home flavor. The smells of homemade pies and cook- ies, baked wild turkeys, cedar trees and spiced apples and oranges would fill the house for weeks. One Eanes resident wrote about Christmas in the hills as follows: "... when times were hard and money was scarce, Christmas spirit in the hills was stronger than ever. Christ- mas meant a lot more to people than just the giving and the receiving of gifts. Many of the people of the hill coun- try were fairly poor ... It must have been then that the saying, 'It is better to give than to receive,' meant more to people than just words. The whole week before Christmas was dedicated to the children. Some of the more prominent people around ... got donations of clothing and fruit. Then they distributed these items to the poor so that the children would not find their stockings empty on the morning of the day that Christ was born. There was nothing artificial about an old time Christmas. Everything about it was the real thing. A man took his family out in the woods and cut down a well-shaped tree and headed for home. After the tree was set up, the sweet cedar fragrance wafted through the house, letting everyone know that Christmas was just around the corner. About a week before Christmas, the children took time to enjoy the warmth of the old wood heater that had rendered them many years of good service, and made decorations for the Christmas tree. Everything was homemade, from the strings of popcorn that dropped across its limbs, to the small, abandoned birds' nests that found refuge in its branches. Christmas Eve in all families was a special event. Friends and neighbors from miles around dropped by and sat around the wood heater and talked of old times, and the men passed around a jug of Christmas cheer. The children hung their stockings on the tree and drifted into deep slumber, knowing that Old Santa would not for- get them. On Christmas morning, the children awoke with excitement and dashed to their stockings and found that Santa had left them more than they expected. In his stocking, each would find an apple, an orange, and a stick of peppermint candy. Under the tree, a brand-new pair of overalls awaited each child. After the children had received their gifts and eaten a big breakfast, the family would go to church and give thanks for all that they had. After church, they talked with their relatives and friends. It was on this day that all people realized how hard times had brought them together into an unbreakable bond of friendship and Music was important to rural folks because it helped to spice up their lives. In addition to family sing-alongs, play- parties, and church and gospel singing, many of the hill country people made music using homemade instruments, a tra- dition which went back two hundred years to the first settlers who populated the Appalachian Mountains in the 18th cen- tury. Banjos made out of gourds, fiddles and guitars made out of hardwood and tambourines made out of hickory slats and 'possum skins were not uncommon. In the old days some believed that fiddlers "received their skills from the Devil and played Satan's music," but still most fiddlers were men of prestige and much in demand. One popular fiddle tune was "Sally Goodin." Sally Goodin I ain't dead, and I ain't wooden. And I'm in love with my sweet Sally Goodin. I love pie and I love puddin', And I'm crazy about my gal, Sally Goodin.40 Eanes, too, had its own music makers. The Riley brothers, Will and Rush, who lived off west Bee Cave Road, made their own fiddles out of Spanish oak and red cedar. Alice Oestrick, their niece, remembers that the boys used to play at family style hoe-downs and hoot-nannies. Charlie Dellana, Jr., remembers one of the Riley's fiddles, "It was built out of a cedar stump and was beautiful, all red and smooth, and sounded good, too."41 And of course on Saturday nights in their camps the cedar choppers made their own brand of music. They would gath- er together to dance barefoot in the dirt to the syncopation of homemade instruments and hand clapping "to songs like 'Bacon and Greens' ... Babies slept on tattered quilts in the wagons while the men drank home-brewed whiskey. As the night wore on, the dancing got faster and the singing grew louder. Sometimes a drunken dare sparked a fistfighting free- for-all. The next day, bruised and solemn-faced, they assembled in the same clearing for a religious service conducted by a traveling preacher."42 Water is the seedbed of life and in Eanes both Barton Creek and the Colorado River played such a role in the history of the area, for it was these two beautiful streams which drew first the wildlife and then men to the Westbank. Through

the years these streams have supplied most of the water required by man and beast, have been responsible for some

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of the area's worst calamities and have provided citizens, in and out of the area, with two of Texas'most popular play- grounds. Imagine, if you will, Eanes without either of these liquid gems. Indeed, Barton and the Colorado have always been, and are now, two of the most important elements which have determined the quality of life. Thus, as they go, so goes much of what Eanes and Austin represent - a way of life influenced and touched by the beauty and closeness of nature. One cannot imagine that there has ever been a resident in Eanes who has not, at some time or another, bathed in, sat beside or refreshed body and soul, in some way, with the cool, green waters of these streams. For generations they have been recreational havens. Since the middle of the 19th century Barton Springs, Blue Hole and Campbell's (Camel's Hole), on Barton Creek have been favorite swimming spots. Many old-time Eanes citizens liter- ally grew up within a stone's throw of these favorite sites. Earl Short states that he was born less than one-hundred yards from Campbell's Hole. Some of the Teagues lived for years on the banks of Barton Creek, and the Plumley's and Rabbs lived adjacent to Barton Springs. Others in the area lived out their lives less than a quarter of a mile from either the creek or the river and recall the hours they spent hunting and fishing along their banks. Not a few recall that "moonshine made with Barton Creek water was mighty good." Charlie Dellana, Jr., remembers that as a boy he explored the caves up and down the cliffs of Barton Creek and the river. Too, he recalls that years ago, before Town Lake was created, Cold Springs (seven springs located in the river mid- way between Deep Eddy and the modern low water bridge) was a favorite swimming spot. He also remembers that each year a World War I veterans reunion was held, the ex-soldiers always camping near Cold Springs at a site known then as Gray Rock. Other creeks and springs in the Westbank have offered refuge or recreation, too. Smith Creek (now known as Dry Creek) and Big and Little Bee Creeks in the east part and Eanes Creek, Watson Springs and Brewton Springs in western Eanes have provided refreshment and beauty to countless Eanes citizens. Prior to the building of the first dam in the late 19th century there was a regular contingent of private and public water- craft which plied the Colorado River. Even Ben Thompson, Austin's flamboyant, pistol-toting city marshal who also just happened to serve as proprietor of gambling operations at the Iron Front Saloon, had a "water velocipede" which he peri- odically churned up and down the river. Of course, in the early days all craft and boating activities were dependent upon the water's level and upon the whim of the weather, for flood stage was dangerous and droughts often shrunk the river to just a trickle. Before any dams were built the river was known to flow as slow as "200 cubic feet of water per second and as fast as 250,000.'4 During the 1880s one could partake of any numer of excursions on the river. One of the most popular was a trip on "The Sunbeam," a large party boat which cruised the river on weekends. "It would leave its dock near Shoal Creek, struggle past the big eddy [Deep Eddy] in the river, past Cold Springs to Bee Creek, where it would go up the creek to Bee Springs then it would return [to the river channel] and continue upstream, dodging rocks, eddies and driftwood, until it reached Bull Creek, where it turned around ... The round trip cost 50 per person." In 1886 the Austin Steamboat Company ran the "'Belle of Austin' on moonlight cruises from the foot of Congress Avenue up the river to Camp Mabry and back." From ancient times floods had periodically turned the usually placid river into a raging monster which swept away everything in its path. As Austin grew and more people settled along the river's banks, the floods became more deadly and destructive. As early as 1870 a dam on the river was proposed and a survey was made by engineers, who suggested that it be constructed below Mount Bonnell near the ruins of the old Mormon mill, but nothing further was done at that time. It was years before any action was taken. Finally, in 1893 the first dam was built where the present-day Tom Miller Dam now sits. This 1893 dam, known as Austin Dam, was proposed and promoted by the Austin Board of Trade, which was led at the time by A.P. Wooldridge. The goal of the dam builders was a lofty one - to tame the river and bring unlimited prosperity to the city, whose population in 1890 was only 14,575 souls. By providing cheap electric power and desirable recreational facilities, the promoters hoped new industry and people would be attracted to the city. Second only to the erection of the capitol building, which was completed in 1888, the Austin Dam was the most grandi- ose construction project ever undertaken in the area. Begun in 1891, it cost $1,400,000 and was sixteen feet thick, sixty feet high and one quarter of a mile long and took two years to build. It was constructed out of "tons of limestone rubble set in cement ... covered with [pink] granite blocks from the same quarry [in Marble Falls] that supplied granite for the capitol. Trains [brought] the material to the dam site ... The townspeople.. . flocked to the site in droves on Sundays. It was both a fascinating spectacle and a source of great pride to watch the dam edge across the river."45 Austinites boasted that it was the largest dam in the world. After workmen laid the last stone on May 2, 1893, an elaborate dedication ceremony was held, even though the new dam never proved to be financially successful or attract those it was intended to. Still, the new lake created by Austin Dam and christened "Lake McDonald," after Austin's mayor, was an immediate hit with the locals. It became "the place to go" on Saturdays and Sundays. In deed, an elaborate array of entertainments quickly sprang up on the east bank of the lake near the dam.

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To partake of these entertainments, however, Eanes residents, so close and yet so far away. had to take the long way around. They had to wind down Bee Cave Road and either cross the river at McGill's ford on Dolme's ferry, or they had to proceed past Barton Springs, across the arched, stone bridge over the creek and follow Barton Springs Road east to South Congress where there was a bridge over the Colorado. Then they could either park their buggies and wagons in town and catch the Suburban Railway Company's trolley which made periodic trips out Lake Austin Boulevard, a dirt road, or they could drive their own vehicles out to the dam site. There were no roads at all down to the dam from the west side of the lake, and it would be decades before Westlake Drive, Rocky River Road, or Low Water Bridge would even be twinkles in their developers' eyes. The only way to reach the dam area from Eanes was either to hack a path through cedar brakes from Bee Cave Road along a foot path which followed somewhat the route of the latter day Rocky River Road, or to go out to the Roy Ranch and ask the Roy family's permission to cross the ranch and take the old Mormon trail down to the lake. But the Mormon road was overgrown, rough and dangerous and no place for buggies or wagons. The dam site was to remain just as inaccessibhle to Westbank resi- dents until the 1940s. Regardless the inconvenience of it all Eanes citizens did use the new lake and enjoyed the fascinating diversions which sprang up near the dam; diversions which included, in addition to P.C. Taylor's East Lake View Park, with its picnic tables and camping sites, a zoo, band pavilions, a baseball park which had a fine grandstand, Bulian's Beer Parlor, res- taurants and fishing docks. There were scores of commercial pleasure craft on the lake. One brochure about the lake almost outdid itself when it waxed poetic about the pleasures one could find at Lake McDonald. "On the placid bosom of the incomparably beautiful Colorado lake, that stretches away and winds among the blue and purple hills for thirty miles, will be found every variety of boat that can minister to man's pleasure . . . What with sailing with congenial companions on a moonlit lake, under the canopy of an Italian sky, rambling in some sequestered vale, inhaling the odors of countless flowers of every variety and every hue, ascending the summit of some neighboring mountain, fifteen hundred feet above the sea level, whence a view that no pen can describe meets the enraptured gaze, bathing in the limpid waters of a mountain stream, having one's senses delighted, enchanted and intoxicated with song of bird, hum of bee, odor and hue of flowers, the art of man and the sublime works of God, the [patron] will return to his work a renovated, yea, a rejuvenated One could rent a boat and paddle over to the newly created Bee Creek Nature Preserve on Bee Creek or could take an extended cruise on one of the party boats available. There were the Dixie, the Cora, the Lone Star, the Fleetwing, and the most magnificent of all, the Ben Hur. The Ben Hur, the lake's largest craft, was a 181 foot-long triple-decker, paddle steamer, which could hold up to 1,500 people. It had a large party room and restaurant on board and even boasted its own orchestra to entertain the passengers. "For 50C one could take a 3 hour ride up the lake .. . and enjoy the scenery and dancing on its deck."47 Lake McDonald quickly became a boating site of some repute. Several world-class international rowing regattas were held whose entrants came from all over the United States, as well as from England and Australia. The first such regatta, held only a month after the dam was completed, drew 25,000 spectators who were treated to not only the rowing compe- rF.I.Lake McDonald and Austin Dam, ca. 1893. Ben Hur in background. (Austin Public Library)

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Ben Hur leaving for a cruise up the lake, ca. 1895. (Austin Public Library)

Lake McDonald rowing regatta, ca. 1895. (Austin Public

tition, but to band concerts and even a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pinafore" which was presented just for the occasion. It is recorded, too, Austin "bookmakers had a field day" and made sizable sums during the regatta. Mary Mowinckle, who grew up in Oak Hill and taught at Eanes School in 1904, remembers seeing the 1893 regatta and the Ben Hur, too. She was eight years old at the time and recalls that her family heard of the regatta and were told the big boat would take passengers for rides for the first time. Mr. Emmett White, an Oak Hill neighbor who owned land on the west side of the lake near the dam, suggested that he and his friends take their families through his land, along a trail to the high banks of the lake on the western side, camp there and stand on the high bluff and watch the proceedings. Mary remembers, ".. . We went in wagons . .. When we arrived we parked side by side. My mother was sitting in her rawhide bot- tom chair holding her baby. We children were excited and began to go toward the edge of the bluff . .. The boat was on the water near the opposite shore. Trains had been bringing people who unloaded as near the boat as possible as word had gone out ... The gangplank was put down. Men carrying musical instruments went on first accompanied by officials. The band began to play. People were being taken on. Suddenly, Mr. White called in a loud voice, 'The boat is tipping. Don't take on anymore passengers.' The gangplank was removed. Officers on the boat began to move passengers. Soon the boat was straightened. The band began playing, people were dancing. We watched the first load go out of sight then return. Papa decided we small children had seen enough. We were put to bed in the wagon.'4 One of the favorite spots on Lake McDonald was the Chautauqua, a site on the south side of the river, located on prop- erty now owned by St. Stephen's School, which could only be reached by taking a boat from the dam. At the site were a dock and two restaurants, one upon a high hill and the other one dockside. A Chautauqua was a cultural summer camp which offered meetings, seminars, lectures, concerts and dramas to culture hungry patrons. Chautauquas were com- mon all across the United States at the turn of the century. There were several such camps located in Texas, although the Chautauqua movement was a Yankee invention, having originated in the northeastern United States in the 1870s. Like all enterprises which were begun with an eye to making a dollar, Lake McDonald attracted to its shores its share of land agents and high-rollers. Unfortunately, the Colorado Lake Chautauqua Association became intertwined in a scheme promoted by land developers, who, in addition to its educational goals of "providing food for man's intellectual and moral appetites," sought to use the Chautauqua as a vehicle to market a grandiose development project which aimed to create a town at the Chautauqua site, whether it was practical or not. Unfortunately, the whole thing ended up merely milking a lot of Austinites out of their money. The Chautauqua on Lake McDonald was the brainchild of philanthropist Nicholas Dawson who visualized a grand cen- ter of learning which would also be "one of the most desirable and fashionable suburbs of Austin." Even when there was nothing more on the site than a few tents, a dock and a stairway up to the stone restaurant on top of Chautauqua Hill, Dawson and his cohorts had brochures printed up which stated that only the best was to be built: a grand pavilion, an

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inclined railroad, a boulevard, a hotel, boarding houses, retail establishments, and even a high school and college. The brochure also stated that, "much of the [development] has already been divided into blocks, lots, streets, alleys, drives, walks, parks ... Hundreds of these lots have been bought to build permanent residences on them ... from which boats will run on schedules to enable business men to reach the city in the morning in time for business, and return home at night ... the low, the mean, the vile, the depraved will not seek to live at Chautauqua."49 Unfortunately, for Dawson, and gullible investors, not only did "the low, the mean, the vile and the depraved" choose not to live there but neither did any- one else, for the location was as impractical as it was remote and few people relished the idea of having to take a boat everytime they wanted to go into Austin. The whole pie-in-the-sky scheme was a harebrained idea from the beginning and within a year's time it had all gone "bust," leaving such a scandal in its wake that the consequences dragged on for nearly a decade. Yet, during the time that the Chatauqua was being promoted, thousands of Austinites, including some Eanes residents, cruised up the river to see the place for themselves, to picnic, eat at the restaurant, climb Chau- tuaqua Hill and explore Devil's Gorge which "by holding to the points of rocks and clinging for support, one [could] at great risk to life and limb make the descent from top to bottom."50 There was no lack of far-fetched entertainments to draw crowds to Lake McDonald. In addition to regattas and the Chautauqua, both benign affairs, there were special events, indeed stunts, which made the front pages of the newspa- pers and caused excitement among the local citizenry. One such feat was a daredevil, high diving exhibition put on by one "Professor Speedy," who entertained a large crowd by diving into the lake from a specially constructed 75' high plat- form located only a few feet from the shore. The most spectacular and amusing stunt of all was performed by a woman. In 1898 a huge crowd gathered to watch and cheer as Miss Hazel Keyes slid down a cable which had been stretched from the top of Mount Bonnell, across the lake, to a pylon fixed on the opposite shore. "Later the cable was strung from the west side of the lake [near present-day Red Bud Trail] down below the dam to the powerhouse. Miss Keyes slid down it again, hanging from a [pulley] by her hair ... her pet monkey, Miss Jennie Yan Yan, followed her!"51 Alas, high divers and monkies were not enough to save Lake McDonald, which had seemed doomed from the start, for the dam proved a financial failure. The power it generated never lived up to expectations, few new industries were drawn to the city, the Chautauqua went bankrupt, the regattas faded from the scene and finally the fabulous old Ben Hur was mothballed. The boat had been just too large and expensive to operate. In 1898 it was finally stripped and anchored over on Bee Creek. Shortly thereafter it became a floating restaurant which served fried catfish and chowder. The final ignominious end to Lake McDonald came in 1900 when a devastating and deadly flood not only washed out the dam, but the power station and almost all of the lake's docks and craft, too, including the Ben Hur. The flood also destroyed much of low-lying Austin as well as the lovely, old arched stone bridge which had spanned Barton Creek since The flood washed most of the dam's granite blocks downstream but one intact section of the pink granite blocks can still be seen today lying about 100 yards below the present Tom Miller dam near low-water bridge. Debris from the great flood created Fire Island, across which low-water bridge now runs. The old arched bridge over Barton Creek was replaced by a metal structure with a wooden plank pavement which was so rickety that in 1912 it collapsed as Charlie Dellana, Sr., was driving a load of wood across it. Dellana's wagon was destroyed, his two mules were killed and he was so badly injured he nearly died. His family sued the city and collected damages. The tiller wheel from the old Ben Hur was salvaged and today it is used on the "Commodore," a party boat launched in 1949 and owned by the Fowler family of Green Shores. In 1915 the dam was restored and "Lake McDonald was reborn as Lake Austin with its many opportunities for amuse- ment. But in no time extensive flooding destroyed most of the spillway gates across the upper part of the dam, and other defects developed ... the builders went bankrupt and all further work ceased. While Lake Austin provided recreation the dam supplied neither power nor water [to Austin].",52 Each succeeding flood knocked out more of the dam until by the late 1920s Lake Austin was a lake in name only. The fact that the lake was only a ghost of its former self did not stop people from using it. In 1922 the McRae family bought the property which years later, in the 1950s, became West Lake Beach, an Eanes landmark. The Kreisles, an Aus- tin pioneer merchant family, bought river property in the 1920s, too. Now, in 1986, descendants of both families still enjoy the same riverfront land their ancestors purchased so long ago. The McDaniel brothers, Robert and Ernest, who attended the University of Texas in the late 1920s, have many memo- ries of the lake.53 They remember that streetcars still went from downtown out to the old dam. The ride cost 50. There were no homes on the west side of the lake at all, although there were several farms and ranches along its banks, includ- ing the Fowlers, out near Commons Ford. A Mr. Hughes had a place on the river where he raised watermelons which the boys transported into town and sold for a fee. They also hunted and trapped coons and possums along the river's banks, selling the pelts to Tom Miller, future Austin mayor, who had a hide and pelt company. The boys got to be friends with Ben Scott, who was caretaker of the Fowler Ranch. Scott had been a pal of Sam Bass and had a notched hole in one ear.

He told the brothers that it was where he had been nicked in a gun battle.4

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Remnant of Austin Dam after the great flood of 1900. Ben Old metal bridge and new concrete bridge over Barton Hur in the background. (Austin Public Library) Creek. Looking west toward Zilker Park. ca. 1920. (Depwe The McDaniels recall that the lake was very shallow, averaging only four or five feet deep, and had wide, gooey mud flats along both banks. Bee Creek was just mud and could only be reached at high water after a good rain. The deepest water was near the dam and there the brothers sailed their little homemade two-masted schooner sailboat, the Bee Creek Breeze. Because of the wide mud flats the McDaniel's boats, all homemade, were mostly shallow-draft skiffs which could be pushed or pulled easily over the mud. They also recall that the lake still hosted the occasional rowing regatta, but none was ever as large or as grand as the ones which had been held on the lake in the 1890s. The McDaniels tell several stories about the lake during the 1920s. They remember that in the evenings moonshiners used to hang around the dam area where the water was the deepest and if a customer wanted some whiskey the moon- shiner would then row out to his "trotline," pull it up and unhitch his "catch," a nice cold bottle of homemade brew and make a sale.55 The McDaniels also tried to make money off of the lake. It seems that the river's mudflats were home to thousands of fresh water mussels and clams, which the local people gathered for food. One year the two brothers selected hundreds of the biggest clams that they could find then they roped off a section of water near Taylor's Slough. Then they opened each clam, cleaned it and placed a large grain of sand inside, taking care not to kill or damage the clam. Then they careful- ly placed each clam in the roped-off area and sat back and waited for mother nature to take her course. After about two years they harvested their clams and sure enough within a number of them they found a tiny pearl. Excited by their find they rushed a "snuff box full of Lake Austin pearls" down to a jeweler in Austin. After what seemed like an interminable amount of time inspecting the pearls he made them an offer - 50( for the lot. It seems that precious stones from the "Lake Austin Pearl Farm" were of such poor quality that some of them actually disintegrated after exposure to the At one time the McDaniels had a boat, The Paul Bunyon, which had an engine just powerful enough to pull a man in its wake. They had pulled innertubes and a homemade aqua-plane (a smooth, round board), but they wanted to try to pull water skis. They had heard of waterskis but had never seen a pair, either in real life or in a picture. Still they deter- mined to build themselves a set, which they did, out of two 1x8's. At first they drilled a hole through the toe end of each ski and knotted a rope through this hole and attached each rope to the back of the boat. A bridle, also knotted at the toe of each ski, was used to hold on to. As anyone who skis can readily see such a set up made an incredibly unwieldly and hard to control contraption. After days of trying to maintain balance on the skis the two boys finally abandoned the proj- ect. The next summer they found a picture of someone water skiing on free floating skis. The McDaniels copied the pic- ture and learned to ski. In 1929 a big flood washed the boys' boats over the dam and ended their carefree days on the

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Hugh Yantis, a native Austinite, remembered the old dam and lake as they were in the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote in "In 1931 there was no low water bridge on Red Bud Trail, and no Red Bud Trail. Almost none of the roads in the Westbank existed then and only a few old families lived in the area. Bee Cave Road was an unpaved gravel track. There were two ways to get to the area near the west end of the dam that creates Lake Austin. One way was by automobile across the Congress Avenue Bridge thence out Barton Springs Road and Bee Cave Road, and finally by meandering [through brush] to wherever you wanted to go ... The other more practical way, was to rent a row boat from Mr. Burns who kept a lot of small row boats just below the old wreck of the earlier dam [built in 1915]. With a Burns row boat it was simple - and at night a little scary and sometimes a little romantic - to row across the river from the east side to the west side. The old dam was wrecked insofar as being opera- ble. The old power house just below the dam was a wreck, too." "Driftwood piled up in the water on the upstream side of the dam and stayed for years. From time to time some of the driftwood was washed away in floods. Slightly adventurous people scrambled across the river and back on the driftwood. One year in the early 30s the quiet water upstream of the drift froze and some of us walked across the river and back on the ice." "There was a cabin on the west side near the dam. The cabin was hidden in the live oak and cedar just west of the west end of the old dam, maybe two or three hundred yards into the woods. The cabin was securely hid- den, hard to reach and known to very few people. I never met anyone who knew when, why or by whom the cab- in was built. In the early 30s, and for an unknown time before, Mammy Cabin, as it was called, belonged to the University of Texas Women's Physical Training Department ... During the early 30s period, a group of adventur- ous athletic minded women students had overnight or weekend outings at the cabin where they sang songs, played games and hiked through the then undeveloped hill country nearby ... The passing of the Mammy Cab- in era is regrettable. The innocent, clean fun and companionship the girls had on these outings is now The Church It will be remembered that there was a Watson Springs Baptist Church on west Bee Cave Road, but little is known about its history, except that it was still a viable church in the 1920s and 1930s. Several present-day Eanes residents attended services at the church and recall that its baptisms were always held in Barton Creek. Edna Patterson Pierce remembers the church's revival meetings. They were held outdoors under a brush arbor which the men of the church erected out of poles and cedar branches. Under the arbor were placed benches and the church's piano. Pierce recalls that before each revival service the men and women would split into separate groups and go off into the woods for prayer meetings, called grove meetings. Afterwards they would all congregate together to sing and to hear a rousing hellfire- and-brimstone sermon. Mrs. Pierce remembers that George Hudson was one preacher who had a "strong delivery and message," which always brought a lot of "Amens" from the crowd. George Hudson was no doubt related in some way to the two earlier Hudson preachers, the brothers John and Edward, who preached at the church around the turn-of-the- Alice Oestrick remembers that many of the people who lived out in western Eanes were baptized by preachers who preached at the church, and the baptisms were always held down on Barton Creek's banks. She has one picture which shows Dee Grace, Lonnie Roberts, Harve Roberts, Ross Patterson, Truman Thurman, Ollie Roberts and Reverend George Hudson, pastor, after one such baptism on the creek in 1929. Sometime during the 1940s Watson Springs Bap- tist Church ceased to hold services. Later the abandoned church burned to the ground. It is only a church in memory That was not the case with the church in eastern Eanes. From the beginning of its establishment in 1872, Eanes School also served as the churchhouse for what became known as Eanes Community Church. It will be remembered that William and Sophia Teague had specified in their deed giving the land for the school that it also be used as a church house for the community. For years after 1872 formal church services were few and far between because they depended entirely upon preachers who periodically passed through the area while traveling their circuits. One of the earliest circuit riders old-timers can remember was a preacher by the name of Hardin Walsh who was a Campbellite (Diciples of Christ Chris- tian denomination). It is not known if he was related to the architect, Dennis Walsh, who moved to the area in 1911. There does seem to be a mystery, however, for Hubert Lee, who has lived on Walsh-Tarleton Lane for many years remembers that there was a preacher named Walsh who lived in that area, but Lee thinks that he was a Baptist and not a Christian. At any rate, it is known that circuit riding ministers from several faiths - Baptist, Methodist and Christian - periodically preached at the church. Eliza Eanes, wife of Robert Eanes and a Baptist, is credited with organizing the church's first Sunday School. Her daughter, Viola Eanes Marshall, following in her footsteps, continued to oversee the Sunday School and church services

after Eliza's death in 1883. As far as is known Eanes Community Church remained non-denominational and had no regu-

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lar pastor until 1923 when it became a Presbyterian mission. It is doubtful if the little church ever had enough money to support a full-time preacher prior to that time. Viola Marshall, the church's guiding light, is remembered as a God-fearing and compassionate woman who never refused stranger or friend help when in need. She not only served as the church's leader, but also taught regular school when the teacher was ill and she acted as nurse and doctor to the community, too, regularly visiting the sick and dispens- ing aid. As Eanes' goodwill ambassador she is remembered for always being ready to help the country folks and cedar chopper families who lacked food or clothing. Earl Short recalls that even after Viola got up in years she regularly visited any of the Shorts who got sick. He especially remembers that she looked in on his elderly mother during Mrs. Short's last bedridden months. Viola and H.B. Marshall also allowed many families to camp near the fresh water spring which was on their ranch. To Viola Marshall the Bible was a living book to be followed in daily life. She often quoted from it and read daily verses of Scripture to her husband and children, impressing upon them their duty to society and to God, and obligation to be God- fearing citizens. It is also recalled that "Viola made all of her relatives go to church each Sunday, as well as anyone who may have been visiting in her home, too, whether they wanted to go or not. When Viola went to church everyone around her went too!"59 When the little church was low on funds and could not afford to pay a minister to ride out from Austin to preach, Viola would climb onto the pulpit and deliver the Sunday sermon herself. It is reported that she was a persuasive preacher. Viola Marshall died in 1947 and was buried in the family cemetery on the Marshall ranch. Because of the distance, going to church in Austin on Sundays proved impractical for it meant leaving at sun-up and not returning until sundown. Still, on special occasions, families such as the Marshalls, Johnsons and Carlsons would rise early, get their chores done, pack up their children and picnic lunches, hitch-up their wagons and teams and head into Austin for services. A trip into town was always a special event, looked forward to with eagerness and anticipation. Several times a year a family would go to Austin on Saturday for shopping and then put up at relatives' or friends' houses for the night so that they could attend church in the city on Sunday. One particular Sunday was remembered by Mary Mowinckle [Johnson]. It seems that in 1904 the Henry Johnson family made plans to go into Austin for Easter services, but, "the daydawned warm and bright. Mr. Johnson decided it was a good day to plant a garden. At the breakfast table he said, 'Frank, you can take [the girls] in the cart. Henry and Will will help plant. Alice will stay home and help her mother.' I remembered seeing tears in some eyes. The rest were so disap- pointed. I heard Will say, 'Christ risen on Easter day. I want to go to Sunday School. Now I have to work.' He was about nine years old."60 This story illustrates how important good weather and good crops were to a family ekeing out a living off Eanes' rocky soil. Through the years, Eanes Community Church remained non-denominational but had difficulty maintaining regular ser- vices. Finally in 1923 the Sunday School was reorganized; Mr. and Mrs. H.H. Glissman, of Austin, assisted in the reorgani- zation. One Sunday that year Mrs. Glissman served as organist and Gertrude Johnson and Viola Marshall led the singing, then H.H. Glissman gave a Bible reading followed by a talk on the benefits of formal organization. John Marshall was elected superintendent of the Sunday School that day and took as his subject "The Brotherhood of Man." Apparently, the Glissmans were Presbyterians, or had some connection with that denomination, for a few months after the reorganization of the Sunday School the Home Mission Committee, of Austin's Presbyterian Theological Seminary, begar to send ministerial students out to Eanes each Sunday to preach. The first such student preacher was C.P. McEl- roy. Shortly thereafter the church became a formal mission of University Presbyterian Church in Austin. Charter members of the newly organized Eanes Church were: Frank Johnson Ada Bradford H.B. Marshall Mrs. Frank Johnson Jack Bradford Mrs. H.B. Marshall Mrs. C.P. McElroy Albert Johnson R.L. Simpson Mrs. Rebecca Simpson Randolph Johnson James Simpson Mrs. Martha Smith E.H. Johnson J.W. Cooper Jesse Simpson Mrs. E.H. Johnson Clyde Cooper Mrytle Cooper The officers were 1st elder: H.B. Marshall; 1st deacon; Frank Johnson; and; pastor: C.P. McElroy. In 1925 seminary student J.A. Reed became the pastor and the church roster added the following new members: Charles Reece May Thurman Mrs. Williams Mrs. Charles Reece Ernest Thurman Mrs. Tracy Mrs. Annie Pierce Mr. C.A. Johnson Tom Smith Clarence Pierce Mrs. C.A. Johnson Mrs. C.H. Deison Mrytle Clawson Albert Brust Bill Burdette Jasper Simpson Mrs. Pearl Brust Henry Eugene Simpson

Robert Simpson Clara Bell Short

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Joining before 1930 were: Katherine Johnson, Lee Brown, Beulah May Wofford, Cecil Johnson, Woodrow Moody, Edward Pierce.61 By 1928 the little mission had grown in numbers and confidence to such an extent that the members voted to erect their own church edifice next to the schoolhouse which they had used for so long. The construction of the church was directed by Henry Johnson, and his sons Frank and Edward. They and other men in the community carried stones in wag- ons to the site from the Marshall Ranch and from Clato Martinez' old rock fence which he had built in the 1880s. They also used wagons to cart big wooden barrels full of water from the Marshall's spring for use in making mortar and lime cement. Edna Pierce, who was a member of the new church and attended until, as she puts it, "it got too aristocratic," remembers when the church was constructed. She recalls that there were about five wagon teams used, including one which belonged to her husband, Lytton. The church's construction was a community effort with almost all labor and supplies donated. And all of the area's resi- dent's pitched in to help. Children helped in the building by gathering stones and doing odd jobs. The women made sure every worker had plenty to eat and drink, holding dinner on the grounds everytime a work session took place. By working on Saturdays the new church was completed in about a year's time. A contemporary account recalls that "It was com- pleted after a hard struggle and self-denial in February, 1930 ... It would have cost by contract $3,000.00 but was erected at an actual cost of only about $1000.00, with R.F. Gribble and Mrs. H.B. Marshall carrying the debt on their own personal

Wagon full of rocks used to build Eanes Church, 1928. Men unidentified. (Depwe

In July, 1930, the City of Austin gave the new church a 75 pound bell and a steel tower which had previ- ously been used by the Austin Fire Department. The city's fire stations had become "electrified" and didn't use bells anymore. "The student pastor and men of the church moved the tower and erected it in the church yard and hung the bell."3 Someone from the congregation was assigned to toll the bell each Sunday to call the faithful to worship. Mrs. Pierce, who heard the bell often, recalls that it had a "real nice sound" and was also used to call students to school on weekday mornings. On December 11, 1932, the new church building was officially dedi- cated and was named Eanes Chapel. But the dedication of a debt free church did not come without a strug- gle and great personal sacrifices, for the Depression had brought hard economic times. One member of the church in those days recalls that, "Since the people of the community were generally very poor they were not able to give very much money so they took a project to raise [money] for the church. Five families raised a pig each, two families raised a hen and chicks, one family raised turkeys and one family vegetables. Everyone was anxious to do something to help.'"64 All of the church's furniture and altar appointments were either handmade or donated by members.

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Eanes citizens who helped construct Eanes Church, 1928. Eanes Church, bell tower and old frame schoolhouse. 1930. (Depwe Collection). (Depwe Collection) The dedication sermon was preached by Rev. Robert F. Gribble. Mrs. Marshall told about the history of the church, special music was performed by Felix Shuford and the hymn of dedication, "All Things Are Thine," was sung by the con- gregation. The service was followed by a large, festive picnic lunch held on the church grounds. Soon the women of the church organized and began to develop projects to help the community. They made quilts and linens, they visited the sick, and they sewed and knitted clothes for the poor children in the area, many who wore only flour sacks which had holes cut in them for their arms and necks. Almost none of the local children had shoes. Gertrude Johnson remembers seeing one little hillbilly boy wearing blue jeans which had been shortened to the knees. The lower part of the pants legs, which had been cut off, had been made into sleeves, by pinning them in back to form a crude shirt. 6s During the Depression many of the country children dressed in such a manner. The women always made sure that when any such children came to Sunday School they got some special attention and a ride home after the services.

Eanes Church, ca. 1930s. (Depwe Collection)

try, yii ly

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Home Remedies

Like all turn-of-the-century country people who lived far from doctors and hospitals, the residents of Eanes relied upon home remedies to ward off and treat disease and sickness. A few in Eanes even indulged in practices which smacked of black magic, but most of the remedies used by area residents consisted of such common sense cures as homemade salves, poultices, tonics and teas made of herbs, berries and other natural healing agents, whose recipes were tried and true and had been handed down from generation to generation. In Eanes, as in most rural areas, it was the women who doctored, nurtured and cared for the people in the community. Viola Marshall was one such woman, as were Rosa Dellana and "Aunt" Cindy Jackson. Viola Marshall is remembered as one of Eanes' foremost healers. She was often "seen riding on her horse [to visit a sick neighbor] equipped only with a vast knowledge of home remedies [and she] would go endless hours without sleep until the patient passed the crisis stage of his illness."66 In one case especially close to her heart and hearth she was required to call upon every ounce of her healing skills. It involved her new twin baby girls, Mildred and Clara, born in 1887. Born prematurely, they weighed only a little over one pound each at birth. General wisdom believed that the tiny babies could live no more than a few hours or days, but Viola Marshall felt otherwise. She wrapped the little babies in soft blankets, held them next to her in her bed to keep them warm and fed them frequently with an eye dropper filled with goat's milk. For more than a month she stayed in the ranch house close to her babies, keeping them warm and nourishing them with the rich goat's milk in the dropper. "Because of her great determination and refusal to abandon them" the two girls survived and lived long healthy lives.'"67 (Mildred became one of the first female graduates of the University of Texas School of Law, had an illustrious career as a lawyer and later authored a book, Women Who Man Our Clubs, about prominent clubwomen around the nation.) For years "Aunt" Cindy Jackson, who lived in the black settlement, Belle Hill, served as midwife to white and black families in the area. Aided by her daughter, Nancy, she delivered all of the Tucker and Short children, all eight of Jess and Lizzie Plumley Teague's children, including Tiny Teague Roberts, and eight of Edna and Lytton Pierce's nine chil- dren. Edna Pierce remembers what a new mother had to go through in those days whose house was three or four hours from Austin by wagon and team. For most of the births Mrs. Jackson charged $15.00, but then after the baby was born "a doctor would arrive with an infant scale to weigh the baby and check on the mother and child. He charged $30.00!" Mrs. Pierce recalls that she ". . . never was in a hospital ... never had anesthesia or drugs for the pain ... during most of the births she had help from relatives and the midwife but she birthed one child alone."6 Mrs. Pierce remembers her last child. He weighed only 2 pounds. The doctor told her "that if [she] could keep him alive three days [she] could raise him. So, I put his head downhill in an apple box and used whiskey toddy - a mixture of whiskey, sugar and water - in an eyedropper to revive him during fainting spells. He was then fed powdered milk for three months before graduating to the breast. Today he is a big healthy man."69 Rosa Dellana, wife of Condido Dellana, was another Eanes woman who doctored the sick. She was also the local den- tist for those who couldn't afford to seek care in Austin, and she was an ingenous and creative healer. To treat a badly inflamed and rotten tooth she would do the following. First she would rub oak ashes, which were rich in tanic acid, onto the sore gums around the infected tooth. Then she would tie McCord's heavy gauge thread around the infected tooth and let the string hang out of the patient's mouth. The patient would be sent home with a packet of oak ashes and instruc- tions to periodically rub the gums and tooth with the ashes, followed by a gentle tug on the string. After several days of rubbing and tugging the tooth would usually come out or at least would be very loose. Then Rosa would take a special pair of needlenose pliars and pull the infected tooth.70 Tooth-pulling pliars used by Rosa Dellana. (Courtesy Charles Dellana, Jr.)

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Rosa Dellana used other home remedies, including: For chest colds: 1. Combine hog lard with a few blocks of camphor which have been purchased from a druggist in Austin. Heat together and rub the mixture on chest. 2. Combine hog lard with mustard to make a mustard plaster. Rub on chest. Have cold drinking water handy because plaster stings like the dickens and heats up patient. For coughs: Give patient horehound cough drops. Make drops by boiling leaves of horehound plant in water and lemon juice. Strain. Add honey and heat again until thick and sticky. Pour into pan and cool. When hard cut into pill-size cough drops. For rattlesnake bites: 1. Rub bite immediately with a solution of kerosene oil, permanganate of soda and copper sul- 2. Kill a black chicken (not white or brown, must be black), put skinned chicken flesh directly on bite. Leave until poison has been drawn out. For splinters and boils: Skin a prickly pear pad or an aloe vera leaf and place directly on the wound. Keep in place by tying cloth around it and leaving it for some hours. It will fester and draw out the poison. Apparently applying fresh chicken skin to a rattlesnake bite was not as farfetched as it sounds, but was a common remedy used by hill country people, for Mrs. Basheba Hudson Milam, used the same technique to save one of her chil- dren. Her granddaughter Dorothy Lain states, ". . . one of Basheba's sons was bitten by a rattlesnake near their home [off Commons Ford Road]. She grabbed up the child and two fat hens. She split the hens and applied [them] to the bite immediately, thus drawing out the poison and saving his life."71 The story does not mention what colors the hens were. Other remedies which Eanes' pioneers used included homebrewed herbal teas and tonics made out of various leaves, berries, roots, and prickly pear pads, tunas and mesquite beans. Epsom salt was deemed good for eleviating indigestion and stomachaches. "Slippery elm tea was prescribed for ailing kidneys. A yummy concoction of egg yolks, vinegar and turpentine was recommended for swelling, bruises and aches in the joints. There was senna tea for purgative, rhubarb liquid and mercury for billiousness, quinine and calomel for malaria, sulphur and molasses for pimples ... mustang wine for colds, and good old castor oil for everything else. '72 E.J. Rissmann recalls that the leaves of the Mullen plant made a good homemade tonic which was used as a laxative.73 The Mullen plant which grows in abundance in the Eanes area has large, velvety leaves. It is a low growing plant and looks somewhat like a mustard-greens plant except its color is a beautiful, pale green with the aforementioned velvety texture. Mullen Plant And of course some of the pioneers used asafetida bags to ward off disease. An asafetida bag was a small cheese- cloth bag, filled with strong, usually foul smelling substances, such as asafetida leaves mixed with garlic. The bag was hung around the neck like an amulet as protection against disease. Often the bag was successful in keeping the person free of disease, but not because of the concoction in the bag, but because the wearer was "given wide berth" and avoid- ed by friends and strangers alike because he smelled so bad. In such quaint ways were our grandparents protected from contagious diseases.

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Oscar Carlson left this homemade elixer for coughs. "Take equal parts of whiskey and salt and dissolve salt in the whis- key. Then fill in more whiskey until all salt is disolved and then add more salt. Take a teaspoonful of this dope every time the cough is troublesome.''74 No doubt one could become mighty addicted to this remedy. The Mexican nationals (there was no such thing as an illegal alien until the 1930s), who worked on some of the ranches in Eanes, smoked marijuana in corn shucks and chewed peyote to dull severe pain caused by cancer or other dire illness- es. The Mexicans were ingeneous healers and had a whole menu of folk cures. The curandero, or folk healer, was a respected member of their society. Obviously, not all of the early-day home remedies worked any more reliably than some of modern medicine's prescrip- tions. In such a small community as Eanes each death was mourned by friends and neighbors. The loss was especially poignant when the death was that of a child. In 1933, little Johnnie Johnson, six years of age, who had just enrolled in the first grade at Eanes School, fell sick when a diphtheria epidemic swept the area. Despite all of the attention and prayers that friends and neighbors could offer he died. He was buried in Eanes Cemetery. During the same epidemic, Mamie Pierce, eight year old daughter of Edna and Lytton Pierce, also died. She was buried in Tucker Cemetery. In doing research for this book the author visited each of Eanes' ten cemeteries and was struck by one poignant fact, that so many of the graves are those of children. It merely confirmed what she had read, that the child mortality rate prior to the development of modern medicine was very high. It also showed that Eanes suffered its most heartfelt and tragic losses among its most prized and innocent citizens, its children. In 1916 central Texas was swept by a smallpox epidemic. During the worst of the outbreak a makeshift hospital was constructed in the little black community, Belle Hill. Blacks and Mexican nationals in Austin who caught the disease and had no other place to go were sent to this temporary hospital. Many of the patients died but the general public was so frightened of the disease that no one could be found who would bury the dead. Finally, Charles Dellana, Sr., and several of his hired hands went over to Belle Hill and buried the victims. More than fifteen individuals were buried in the Jackson Cemetery at that time. In 1913, Viola Marshall wrote this heartfelt and moving death certificate for Gustave Carlson when he died. It touchingly demonstrates the God-reliant value system on which most Eanes residents relied. "On the fourth day of January, 1913, at ten minutes to twelve o'clock the roll of the great beyond was called, and Gustave Carlson answered. Aching hearts and loving hands did their uttermost to keep him here, but he knew his Heavenly Father's voice and sweetly fell asleep in the arms of his Saviour. Born of honest Swedish parents, reared in the country, with the beauties of nature for his companions, he lived a singularly beautiful and pure life. He was a constant atten- dant at the little country church, and many saddened faces will miss him there. But as I write in memory of him, there comes a sweet, quieting peace, and my Heavenly Father whispers, 'His body is at rest and his spirit is with me.' The father and mother and faithful brother will grieve, as only those who love can grieve, and their bur- dens seem heavier today than ever before, but as for the dear departed, he has entered into new and green pastures, where living waters flow, and he shall suffer no more. At the time of his death Gustave was twenty- four years and one day old. He leaves a father and mother and brother to mourn his loss. January 6, 1913 Mrs. H.B. Marshall"75 Later that same year both of Gustave's parents passed away, leaving Oscar Carlson to live out his years alone on the family farm. He never married, but remained a bachelor until he died in 1959. Spirits, Critters and Characters From the beginning spirits, critters and characters of all kinds, two-legged and four-legged, have called Eanes home. To the Indians the hills were alive with enemy and ancestor spirits, buffalo, snake, bear and bird spirits, and the venerated spirits of the wolf and coyote, those guardians of the collective soul of the people. Spirits held great power over the living. They were feared and respected. They were part of the natural order of things. Some of them lurked in the dense cedar thickets. Others soared and floated on the wind high above Barton Creek and the sacred hills. The spirits had always been; they would always be. The whiteman rejected such seeming nonsense and prided himself on his scientific thought, yet, when he moved to the area his spirits, too, took up residence in Eanes and joined those of the redman. Some of the new spiritual inhabitants had names. Others did not. What were they? Who were they? No one knows. Judge for yourself, reader. Their stories Years ago at the place where Old Walsh-Tarleton intersects with Bee Cave Road there used to be a big, solitary oak tree. Eanes old-timers said the tree was haunted. It seems that on nights when the moon was full and shimmered in the sky like a silver beacon, the ghostly figure of "a woman [could] faintly be seen walking across the road and into that tree [where she] disappeared." Many residents who lived down Tucker Lane saw her. Others who did not see her still

believed, for in their hearts they knew that what had been observed was true.

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One day around the turn-on-the-century, Viola Marshall went out looking for stray goats. She followed the sound of their tinkling bells and made her way down to the canyon which stretches along Barton Creek below present-day Knoll- wood where golf holes 4 and 5 of Lost Creek Country Club are today. As she made her way toward the softly tinkling bells she looked across the canyon where there was a trail, and there in bright light she "saw a hairy creature [which] looked like a man. He had a forked tail and was running . . . 'There goes the devil,' she said."76 And that is how Devil's Hollow got its name. In 1935 William Elliot moved to Eanes. He bought the rock house which is located on the corner of Bee Cave Road and Buckeye Trail and is now a commercial business. When he bought the house it was being used in a most interesting way, but, we'll let Mr. Elliot tell the story, for in 1976, when he was 85 he talked about his move to Eanes. "The house I bought was being used by tricksters as a spook house. It was run by a lady and her son as a tea room, but only on Wednesday nights, the only time it was open. People would come out here from Austin that night and would drink tea and then wait their turn to visit with the spooks. Behind the tea room [the large front room] there was a spirit room run by a [blackman] who claimed he was a Hindu, but I knew different. He wasn't no Hindu. He had worked in Galveston loading cotton on ships and had sailed to foreign countries where he'd learned sleight-of-hand and magic tricks and stunts. Behind the tea room was a small room which the [blackman] had canvassed. He had tacked canvas to the four walls and at the center of the ceiling the canvas was brought together and tied in a big ball which hung just above one's head when a person sat down. When you went in there you had to stoop down and push the canvas up so as to get in ... That [blackman] had hidden a telephone receiver in the ball and he would say he was going to make contact with the spirits. He would leave the room and directly you'd commence to hear a voice speak. It would come from the ball ... It was real clever. People believed in things like that back then."77 [note: During the 20's and 30's seances, palm readings, Ouija boards, etc., became the rage all across America. Appar- ently, Austin was not spared the fad.]. Mr. Elliot remembered that out in front of the house there was a "filling station," a big galvanized tank which held gasoline. But he doubted if more than a gallon a week was ever sold for Bee Cave Road was still little more than a wagon road in those days and there wasn't much auto traffic, except, apparently, on Wednes- day nights. Cecil Johnson, Jr., who used to write articles about life in Eanes, related the following story. "My father, mother and uncle ... while walking along the banks of Smith Creek noticed a spot on the bank, near a dense thicket, that looked like something was buried there ... they started digging. Within a half an hour they had unearthed a complete human skeleton. They were at the point of calling the sheriff when old John Marshall came by for a visit. When asked about the grave, he said that the man had been buried there many years ago. H.B. Marshall had found the deadman, murdered and thrown in some brush on the side of Bee Cave Road ... It appeared that the dead man had been a farmer who had gone into Austin with a load of cotton. On his journey home he had been killed for his money. The killer was believed to be the victim's hired hand, but neither he or the money were ever found. In May of 1966 a ghost hunt was held in the old and abandoned Marshall ranch house (which is now Bruce Marshall's studio.) Bruce Marshall covered the story for the Houston Post. He was not a believer in ghosts, but he witnessed a strange episode. The ghost hunters reported two contacts, one being a man, or spirit that identified himself as 'Tom Burns.' Before the seance began the seven ghost hunters visited the grave of 'Burns,' and the Marshall Cemetery there on the ranch. They reported no vibrations at 'Burns' gravesite, but at the grave of Robert Eanes, in the family cemetery, they reported very strong vibrations. The seance was held in the upstairs room of the old Marshall house. The ghost hunters used a system called automatic writing. To use this method correctly, one person holds a pencil very lightly, making sure that his arm does not touch the table. To relax the first person, a second person gently holds his elbow ... The ghost or spirit is supposed to be the real force moving the pencil .. . The first person to hold the pencil immediately reported a contact. When asked who he was, the spirit replied, "Who shot you?" "How many men?" "Three men." "Did you know them?" "Were you in a wagon?" "Yes ... I got down to pick up a rock. My back was to the hill." "What were you killed with?"

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Then 'Burns,' through automatic writing sketched a picture. It was the head of a man who wore a big bushy moustache and a large western hat. Then the spirit sketched a huge ear shaped like a figure eight. "What does the ear mean?" "A deaf man, a helper. He worked at this ranch. He was made deaf when butted by a cow." Some thought it might have been Dolph Tarleton, for he had been deaf and had worn a big bushy mustache and large Stetson. But Dolph was not a killer. Then the spirit went on to describe the man as a Mexican named Martinez. The ghost hunters had checked history, an 1871 newspaper account bears a certain similarity to 'Burn's' story. In that account a farmer with a load of hay was returning from Austin to his farm. He was mur- dered and his body was buried near where it was found. His killer was never apprehended. But the newspaper said the deadman's name was Barnes and that the murder happened seven miles north of Austin instead of seven miles southwest of the city where Bee Cave Road is located. The ghost hunt continued. "Are there any other spirits present?" At that moment the ghost hunter holding the pencil reported another contact. A strong personality had taken over. The spirit identified itself as 'Robert.' The writing became very erratic. The pencil holder started shaking violently. The pencil point broke repeatedly. In a matter of minutes the house began to shake violently. The win- dows rattled and wind swirled around the house. The pencil holder slumped in his chair. All became quiet. The seance was over."78 Thus are the facts put forth. But, who was 'Burns'? Was he Barnes? Was he shot in 1871? Robert Eanes did not move to the ranch until 1872? H.B. did not buy the ranch until 1883. Was Martinez the Clato Martinez who owned a ranch near Eanes? Why was Robert's spirit so violent? In life he was a peaceful man. The mystery continues. What do you think? Prior to Anglo settlement the mountain lion or cougar (called a panther by most Texans), and its smaller cousin, the bobcat, were common in the hill country. Up until modern times many of these cats lived in Eanes' caves and roamed its streambeds and canyons, feeding off deer, foxes, rabbits and other wildlife. Retiring and shy by nature, and nocturnal by habit, they were rarely seen in daylight, were seldom caught and hardly ever attacked humans. Nevertheless, there sprang-up an almost mythical body of folklore about them which recounted their intelligence, savagery, numerous attacks on men and their hair-raising, blood curdling screams which reverberated through the hollows at night. Within the lifetime of many present-day residents wild cats still roamed in Eanes. Earl Short remembered that in the 1930s he, and his brothers, ran into a large panther while cutting cedar in present-day Wild Cat Hollow. There were no roads in the area at that time. The Shorts had walked into the hollow from Bee Cave Road and had set up a camp down on Bee Creek and were returning to their tents after a full day of chopping cedar in the nearby canyon. Suddenly "a dog- gone ole panther jumped off a bluff and screamed like a woman."79 Short recalls that even though the men had their rifles with them everything happened too fast for anyone to "draw a good bead" on the big cat. In 1950, Bobby Dale Edwards, who was twelve and a student at Eanes School, had a run-in with a panther. Bobby was helping Mrs. Beulah Fry build a fence to protect her goats. Fry, who lived in the vicinity of present-day Yaupon Valley Road, had lost several goats and had "heard two panthers screaming at night." While Bobby was working on the fence he saw a panther in the brush. He remembers that "the panther got so close he fired three shots at it [with his 22-rifle]." Mrs. Fry called the authorities about the panther and Deputy Sheriff Jack Kelley came out to investigate. He found pan- ther tracks that were 3" in diameter and deep enough to leave an imprint like a man.''80 Kelley also found a "small ball of fine cat hair" hanging on the barbed wire fence. While Kelley was conducting his investigation he heard the animal "squawling" down in the hollow. Della Edwards, Bobby's mother, recalls that in 1960 she and her husband saw a panther out in their backyard late one night. Apparently the cat was after a chicken which one of their children kept in a coop. She also remembers that her neighbor, Frank Davis, had a run-in with a panther when he went in search of his milk cow which was grazing along the side of Bee Cave Road in one of the pastures on the Marshall Ranch.81 Cecil Johnson, Sr., who has lived in Eanes since 1931, also recalls seeing panthers. When he was about 15 years old, in the 1930s, he was walking on the Marshall Ranch when he saw a black panther, which was a rare sight even in those days. He also remembers hearing panthers at night as they roamed along Smith Creek. Johnson says the lore was that a panther deliberately "cried like a baby" so it could lure a human victim out into the woods.82 Johnson recalls that Rob Roy killed a panther down in Burnt Hollow on the Roy Ranch. E.J. Rissmann, who was a young boy at the time, remembers that Roy loaded the dead panther "on the back of his truck and took it to town to show it off to the city folks. It created a real stir."83 Finally, Johnson remembers his last sighting of a cat. It was in the 1950s and he was deer hunting on the Marshall Ranch about where Lost Creek subdivision is now. He was up in an oak tree deer-blind and had just settled down for a long wait when he saw a big panther coming down the trail. He judged it to weigh well in excess of one-hundred pounds. He watched it for a few minutes and "just when he decided to shoot it the big cat bounded off into the brush." That was

the last cougar Johnson ever saw.

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Mountain Lion, "panther" to Eanes pioneers. Linda Vance interviewing E. J. Rissmann, 1986.

Rob Roy (standing behind seated individual) and hunting companions. (Depwe Coll.)

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Unfortunately not all panther hunts pitted man against nature so spontaneously. One panther hunt which took place in 1899 was a real trumped-up affair. The December 28, 1899, issue of the Austin Statesman relates the following story. "The Hon. William Jennings Bryan was the central figure in a big panther hunt in the mountains near this city yesterday. The hunt was specially arranged for him and ex-governor [Stephen] Hogg. They left the city early yesterday for the moun- tains west of the city and returned about 1:30 p.m. with a live panther in their possession. The hunting party took about fifty dogs ... The panther had been cooped up for the past three days and was released shortly before the party arrived ... After two hours rambling through heavy undergrowth they came upon the cat . .. After about an hour's skirmishing between dogs and panther it was decided to capture the panther by roping it . . . The country around the hunt was exceedingly rough and many hunters bore marks of having met prickly bushes, and many of the horses' legs were bleed- ing profusely from prickings from long, sharp thorns."84 A participant of the "hunt" later admitted that the panther was in truth a pet that was kept in a cage at Redd's Meat Market on South Congress and "had been taken out to what was part of the Rabb pasture [Zilker Park] just outside the city limits and was released for the hunt ... the old panther was easily roped and taken back to his cage where he enjoyed his fame for sometime after."5 Interestingly, many old-time residents claim that in some areas of Eanes deer have become much more numerous today than they ever were before. They attribute the increase to the fact that in the early days the cedar brakes were too dense and thick, even for deer. And that other times there was no brush at all because of forest fires which burned off all the vegetation. It seems that deer thrive best in a moderately wooded habitat. Too, as settlers moved into the area the panthers moved out, eliminating one of the deer's few natural enemies. Bill Bullard, who owned the Bullard Ranch, where Lost Creek Country Cub is now, recalls that before he sold the ranch in the 1960s he invited some fellow hunters out during deer season. Thirty-one deer, mostly bucks with good antlers, were killed within a few days.86 And today the deer are very numerous in and around West Lake Hills and in some parts of Rollingwood. In the late 1930s, Edna Pierce, who lived down on the little dirt lane which was to become known as Rocky River Road, kept a pet deer. His name was "Spotty" for she had adopted him when he was a fawn. "Spotty" had a small cow bell around his neck and had free run of the local territory. Mrs. Pierce recalls that "Spotty" especially liked to go down to Beard's Store on the corner of Bee Cave Road and Westlake Drive, and eat watermelon rinds and other assorted dis- cards. Unfortunately, "Spotty" also ate Mrs. Pierce's neighbors' peaches and tomatoes. Finally someone reported "Spotty's " crimes and the law, in the guise of a state game warden, came and took "Spotty" off to prison. It seems that even then it was against the law to have a pet deer. Wildlife was so abundant in Eanes when the Beards moved to the area in 1932 that Benton Beard kept some of the animals as pets. Both he and his wife, Ruth, enjoyed raising orphaned critters. At one time they were given two little wild piglets, which they raised. At another time they raised two baby great-horned owls to adulthood. One of their favorite pets was a raccoon named "Jerry." They kept him on a long chain which was hooked to a tree next to Beard's store. At night Jerry slept in a cage for protection against stray dogs. Jerry could do all kinds of tricks and kept the store's custom- ers entertained with his antics. "He especially liked to drink soda water out of glass bottles.'"87 In 1940 Beard sold Jerry for $55, just the amount that was needed to pay Seton Hospital for the birth of the Beard's first child. The Beards, who were avid fishermen, also remember that before Tom Miller Dam was built giant catfish and bass were commonly pulled out of the Colorado River. The Beards own numerous photographs which attest to the size of these fish. Some of the catfish weighed well over 50 pounds and ten pound bass were commonplace. Most of the catfish were caught on trotlines set out where Bee and Bull Creeks run into the river. Even as late as the 1950s assorted wildlife was abundant. George Nalle, Ill, who grew up in Rollingwood in those years, recalls that, "We could step in the backyard and wave a flashlight and see a dozen rabbits and usually deer ... and we always had a pet raccoon. Actually, there were several, and we named them all Wilbur .. ."88 Great Horned Owls found in Eanes, ca. 1940. (Depwe Coll.) "Jerry" Raccoon, Eanes pet. ca. 1940. (Depwe Coll.)

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At one time coyotes and wolves roamed throughout Eanes in abundance, but after farmers and ranchers settled in the area the battle against them was joined. Soon the state put a bounty on the two animals, causing many hunters to make their livings just by trapping the predators. Benton Beard recalls that John Marshall told him that during the 1920s he made $250.00 in one day, the most he had ever made for just a day's work. It seems that Marshall cornered a mother wolf in a den and shot her and then killed her pups, all nine of them. Each pelt fetched $25.00 from the state. Alas, today environmentalists and conservationists are spending vastly larger sums to bring the stately, but beleaguered, wolf back from the brink of extinction. And, of course, the battle between rancher and coyote is still an on-going and controversial Emmett Shelton, Sr., with tongue-in-cheek, takes credit for populating Eanes with wild hogs. It seems that in 1929 he acquired his first property in the area, 139 acres located where present-day Knollwood is now. Lee Brown, Bud Tracy and Lade Young were hired to build a fence around the acreage. Then Emmett bought two boars and four sows and announced to his family that he was "goin' in the hog bidness and wasn't gonna sell any for 3 or 4 years." As he remem- bers it his "mama's mouth fell open, for she was an old country girl raised up on high Barton Creek in Hays County, and she said, 'Emmett if you don't sell any hogs for four years you'll have all the hogs in the world.' And it was true, too, for after they started havin' litters, it seemed there was a litter a month. I had a little corncrib on the property but didn't have enough corn for all those new hogs that jest kept a coming ' Finally, I told Tom Short, who was then working for me, to go over and cut a hole in the blame fence and let those hogs out cause I was givin' em back to the natives. But you know, hogs won't leave a barn full of corn to go out and eat jest acorns in a creek bottom.''89 It is reported that for many years "the natives" feasted upon the remnants of Emmett's hog herd. Eanes has always had its share of eccentric critters of the two-legged variety. Most of them came from the hillbilly fami- lies, but not all. Stories about Homer Teague are legendary. He was the son of John Teague and younger brother of John, Jr., Jim and Tom Teague. It is doubtful if any of the Teagues ever received more that a few years of schooling, even though they grew up near Brewton Springs School, for Homer never learned to read or write very well. He spent his entire life living on the family's west Bee Cave Road property. Sometimes he stayed in his father's house, sometimes he lived like a hermit alone back in the woods, and after a new Brewton Springs School was built about 1936 he moved into the old schoolhouse, lock-stock-and-barrel. Apparently Homer married at one time because he had two sons named General Robert E. Lee and General Stonewall Jackson, which he raised alone. Homer told neighbors that he gave the boys' mother $2.00 to leave home, and she did! Well, whatever the truth, Homer and his boys lived alone. Neighbors remember that Homer taught those two sons of his to curse a blue-streak. It seems that when they were only six or seven years old they could "let fly with a string of cuss- words that would make a sailor blush." As a consequence the two Teague boys were left pretty much to themselves. Local residents also remember that Homer talked "sing-song like" and that his pronunciation and speech pattern were not unlike the Elizabethan English which can still be heard today in the mountains and hollows of Appalachia. Homer made his living by chopping wood and doing odd jobs. He traded at Oswald Wolf's store in downtown Austin and once a week he would walk into town to buy a few things on credit. Sometimes he would stay in town for days before he returned home. Whenever he ran up a sizable bill of credit he would pay off his debt by deeding over an acre or so of his land. Some say that that is how much of Seven Oaks Ranch came into being. One area resident remembers that Homer was a sort of one man do-it-yourself constable and that he wore a tin badge and packed a '45 revolver, although no one ever knew how he got his authority. During the 1920s it is remembered that he had an old truck which just barely had a frame on it and which had a homemade gas tank, which consisted of two large cans which sat on the seat next to the driver and had feeder lines rigged to go directly through a crack in the windshield and into the carburetor. One who remembers that truck recalls that you sure didn't "want to light up a smoke in it, I don't know how Homer drove that old timebomb for so long and didn't blow himself to simthereens." By the onset of the Depression Homer had lost the truck and he became a familiar sight trudging along Bee Cave Road with his burlap tow- sack slung over his shoulder. The bag contained his supplies and any other usuable goods which he found along the roadside. Sometimes neighbors gave him a ride in the back of their trucks, but most remember that they were "mighty reluctant to let him ride in the cab," for it seems that ole Homer had an aversion to soap and water and an affinity for whis- One Eanes resident remembers the following Homer Teague story. Homer was in truth a pretty "laid-back fellow and even tempered" but one time he got really riled up. It seems that "in the 1930s Homer was living in the old home place and taking care of his father, 'old man Teague', who was quite elderly by that time. John and Tom didn't much like the fact that Homer was warmin' up to the old man and seemed to be in cahoots with him, for they feared Homer'd wind up getting all the Teague property. Now this was about 1936 for there was a WPA crew working on Bee Cave Road at that time and Tom was in the crew. Every time Homer passed by this road gang on his way to or from town Tom would give him trouble by cussing him out and chunking rocks at him and such. Also about this time someone was shooting at the old Teague place. It seems that every time Homer or old man Teague stepped out on the front porch someone would

unload a rifle at 'em. Now they knew it was Tom or John but they could never catch them. Finally, Homer had about as

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much as he could stand and one day he just showed up at one of the county commissioners' meetings. He told them his problem and then in a solemn tone asked to be deputized so he could 'shoot those two son-of-a-bitch brothers of his fair and square.' The request was denied." Homer, who had a long black beard and wore a big slouchy, black hat and is remembered as looking more like an Appa- lachian mountain man than a 20th century, central Texan, was not as menacing looking as his friend, Buddy Brown. Bud- dy Brown, a cedar chopping hillbilly of some repute, was the father of Lee, Mike and Charlie. The family lived down on Tucker Lane (Walsh-Tarleton). One resident remembers that Brown "always carried a rifle, rode a big, white horse and wore a black hat which had a hatband made of rattlesnake skin decorated with snake rattles. . . people steered clear of him . .. You know, he looked just like one of those latter day hippies, but, he was for real." One amusing story about another of the cedar chopper families that lived down on Tucker Lane goes as follows. It seems that [anonymous], a son of the family, married a girl from a neighboring chopper family. It was the height of the Depression, no one had any money and the couple couldn't afford a modest honeymoon, much less a fancy one, so their families rigged up a unique honeymoon "suite" for the newlyweds. They placed an old iron bedstead out in a brush arbor, filled feed sacks with corn shucks and piled those on the bed springs for a mattress. Over the whole bed they placed a large piece of corrugated tin, fastening it at the four corners of the bedstead to make a "roofed bed." And there the happy bride and groom spent their honeymoon, despite the fact that it rained on and off for days after the wedding. Cecil Johnson, Jr., who used to write a column about life in Eanes, published the following stories about Lee Brown, another of the area's colorful hillbillies. "Lee Brown, who once lived down old Brown Lane (present-day Castle Ridge), was a rare breed of man. In his last years he occupied a small tarpaper shack and his sole possessions were his shotgun, hunting rifle, dog, a few scrawny chickens, and an old rusted cook stove. Lee had a weather-beaten face, gnarled hands and a patch work beard. Like most hillbillies he chewed and dipped and locals remember the throughout the day Lee would spit longer and longer strings of tobacco juice." "Within a stone's throw from Lee lived his relatives in assorted cabins and shacks. The Browns, and their relatives, the Simpsons, were cedar choppers by trade. They would spend all week cutting wood and every Friday afternoon would load up the wood and their families onto an old flatbed truck, which had taken them years of hard labor to buy, and they would head into Austin. The money received for the wood they'd split between themselves, then they'd go to the nearest store and purchase a few staples such as flour and cornmeal. The children would be given a big stick of peppermint can- dy and the men would each buy a jug of good old California wine. On the return trip all the women would ride in the cab while the men would find a place in the back among the children and the dogs. Usually by the time they reached Bee Cave Road the women would have had to make a stop or two to pick up one of the men who had fallen off the truck . . As the years went by all of Lee's relatives eventually died or moved away from Brown Lane, leaving him alone. The only person that ever saw him on a regular basis was the census taker who had to make her way into the cedar brake through snakes, brush and brambles until she found his shack back in the woods. Lee always seemed to enjoy her visit and will- ingly put his mark on the census."91 Years ago when Cecil Johnson, Sr., was a boy he was out looking for the family cow. There was a stiff wind blowing that day and he could hear the cow bell but couldn't see the cow. He followed the sound, which led him near Lee Brown's shack. As he approached he saw Lee stomping wildly on something. Cecil thought Lee was trying to kill a snake, but then he saw Brown reach down and pick up his battered old hat off the ground and yell at it, "Now, blow off again you In his last years Brown quietly lived out his life in his shack in the woods. He liked to scare children he met by spitting juice and then telling them how much he "loved to eat darlin' chillens for supper." But it was all in jest, for in truth, Lee Brown liked children. No one knows exactly when or how he died, but when he did a piece of Eanes culture died with While John Marshall was not hillbilly born, but was rather the son of community leaders, H.B. and Viola Marshall, still he was one of Eanes' most colorful characters. Born in 1888 he lived most of his years on the Marshall ranch, where he died in 1966. He married once but the marriage lasted only a few weeks. And he served in France during WWI and appar- ently at one time he also served as a Texas Ranger in south Texas. Several times he ran for constable of Travis County and once was elected. But strangely, he resigned just before taking office. A number of stories about Marshall have come It seems that when John was about 16 years old Eanes School nearly burned down. Henry Johnson, who was a trustee at the time blamed John for the fire. "One day Mr. Johnson was coming home from church in his buggy when John stopped him. John said, 'Mr. Johnson, I hear that you been tellin' it around that I almost burned the school down.' The old man replied, 'Son, I'm just gonna get down from here and whip the hell out of you with this buggy whip.' At this John reached behind a tree and pulled out his shotgun and leveled both barrels at the old man, who promptly high-tailed it on home. Years later when John told this story he would die laughing and say, 'I've never seen anyone get a buggy goin' that fast.' "93

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John Marshall and sister Clara, ca. 1945. (courtesy Bruce In about 1933 the Marshalls and the Johnsons had a dispute over the boundary of their land. One day John was digging on the disputed land when Edward and Winnie Johnson drove up in their buggy. "Edward Johnson asked, 'John, why don't you just wait 'till we get the land surveyed and you won't dig up my land for nothing.' John started cussing for every- thing he could think of, right in front of Mrs. Johnson. This made Mr. Johnson mad and he went into town and pressed charges on John. When the sheriff came to arrest him, John ran off down to an overhang in Devil's Holler. He stayed there about three months until charges were dropped against him. "94 It seems he would slip home at night and get supplies then he'd return to his hideout before sun-up. Apparently John Marshall was Eanes' first "streaker." One of his favorite sports was coon hunting. "One summer day he and his dogs were across Bee Cave Road around what is now Red Bud Trail ... he found two baby coons and decided to take them home. He had on only his boots, his hat and a pair of khaki pants . .. so he took off his pants, tied off the legs and put a baby coon down each pant leg, then slung the pants over his shoulder ... everything went smoothly until he came to Bee Cave Road. There was not a car in sight. However, just as he crossed the road and was about to crawl over his fence a car came by with a woman driving. There was John, wearing only boots and a hat and carrying a gun and his pants ... the shocked lady went straight to the sheriff's office and reported that an armed wildman was on the loose on Bee Cave Road near the Marshall ranch."95 For years John Marshall lived in the ranch house with his parents but about 1945 he built himself a cabin on the hill above the house. (After the cabin burned he lived in a tent on the site.) The walls of his cabin were papered with hunting and mountain scenes cut out of magazines. He also had deer antlers and coon skins tacked to its walls. Here he lived in contentment with his dogs. But occasionally he would get a hankering to go to town. Then he would walk down to his parent's house and tell his mother, "Ma, I'm gonna hafta hitchhike to town and sell my shoes to get some money to buy me some terbaccer."96 The ploy would work every time and Mrs. Marshall would give her son a little spending money. No one knows if he would have really made good on his threat and sold his shoes. After his parents died (Viola in 1947 and H.B. in 1951), John moved into the ranch house, but still continued to live pretty much like a hermit. But John Marshall was never lonely for he loved animals and had all kinds, including dogs, which seemed to be everywhere. Once Cecil Johnson, and Cecil Jr., went over to eat dinner with John. He brought out a heap- ing platter of fried venison, more than ten men could eat. "We wondered why he cooked so much but our questions were soon answered when he called in his dogs. He piled his plate full and cut his meat into bite-sized pieces. For every bite he took, using the same fork, he would give each dog a bite, calling them by name as they politely took their turns ... Once we asked him why he had so many dogs and he replied, 'These dogs have a lot more sense than a lot of people Another early resident remembers that "John Marshall had a lot of dogs and was always huntin' coons and every sum- mer he'd set the woods on fire to kill the snakes, so the snakes wouldn't kill his dogs . .. we'd fight the fires with [gunny] sacks ... he 'bout burned the country up every summer."98 There was one animal, however, that John didn't get along with, an old male goat named Bill, which the Johnsons had given him. It seems that Bill was big and like all goats he liked to butt. '.'John said Bill was the oneriest critter that ever lived and he and the goat were constantly fighting. The goat would butt and John would kick it back, and so on for hours. Things got so bad that eventually John couldn't sit down without groaning in pain from the bruises he had received from Bill. One day while cooking breakfast, John accidently dropped his knife into an old oil barrel he used as a trash can.

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When he stooped over to get the knife old Bill rushed over and let John have it right in the hindquarter, sending him head- first into the barrel. John was a heavyset man and it took him a while to get out. That was the last run-in he and Bill ever had for that evening for dinner John had barbecued cabrito." John Marshall, who threw picnics for his neighbors at election time and who was active in the local church, was mourned by friends and neighbors when he died in 1966. He was buried on the ranch. Another colorful character was the cedar chopper, Buck Simpson, who was born and raised down on Barton Creek. Buck attended Eanes School for only a few months but he was a good woodsman and marksman, although he was a "tad on the wildside and a fearless fighter who liked a good ruckus" every now and then. When Buck was a young man he achieved national fame and a lot of local notoriety, but, we'll let Emmett Shelton, Sr., tell the story. "The most famous and interesting character I ever met was Buck Simpson, a local hillbilly, born and raised in Eanes. During the first world war he was drafted and went oversees and was in a machine gun company in France. It so happens that in the heat of battle his group was charging the German line. Buck was able to get over into the German segment and he took a German machine gun nest by killing five or six men and he turned the machine gun around and starting shooting into the German line. Most of his fellow soldiers had been killed or mowed down. Buck was the only one who got across no-man's land and held the Germans at bay until the American's could regroup. His citation said he killed several hundred Germans with the captured machine gun ... He got the French Medal Military and the DSO (a Belgium medal),. . . He came home in due time and Austin had one of the best heroes in the country 'cause General Pershing had rated Buck right after Sgt. Alvin York of Tennessee as the greatest hero of the war. . . The citizens of Austin used Buck to lead all the parades. He only had a few months schooling and so they raised about $2,500 for his education. They put him in a special 3rd grade class out at Wooldridge School. Buck was about twenty-three when this happened. Now, Buck didn't think too much of goin' to school but he wanted to do what the people wanted, but it was only about a few weeks after he started school that Buck developed some kind of eye problem. Of course it was the only excuse he could think of to get out of going to school. Of course, if you'd taken him out to Barton Creek he could've taken his rifle and knocked the eye out of a squirrel 300 yards away ... Well, anyway he quit school ... My papa [John E. Shelton, Sr.] got Buck a job at the Capitol building as a night watchman. Each night he had to punch a time clock, but no one knew that ol' Buck couldn't tell time. His idea was to come down to the Maverick cafe at 7th and Congress and sit down there all night and drink coffee and so that's what he did for his first month on the job, until they found out. . . they had to let Buck go."100 One version of the story about Buck says that not only did he never punch his time clock but also that one night when he was on the job and got bored he shot out some of the streetlights around the Capitol building. Buck continued to get in and out of scrapes until finally he settled down to a relatively peaceful life, but not before he had become a local legend. Murder, Mayhem and Moonshine Hillbillies are noted for their rough and tumble ways and since the Westbank was chock-full of hillbillies it was only natu- ral that from the beginning Eanes acquired a reputation as a place with more than its share of mayhem and murder. Eanes, too, retained its frontier atmosphere longer than many neighboring communities. Also, the fact that Eanes was later deemed the "moonshine capital" of Travis County only added to the area's reputation and enhanced the violence which periodically swept through the hills. There are numerous unmarked single graves scattered around Eanes. One can only speculate as to how the individu- als died. Two graves are located along the side of Bee Cave Road. One is located on the old Marshall Ranch. Several are along the banks of Bee Creek, a longtime moonshining site of some repute. Emmett Shelton, Sr., discovered several such graves when he was putting in roads in West Lake Hills in the 1940s and 50s. One grave he found had a stone on which had been written the simple but crude epitath, "Harlan dead." Of course, a lone grave off in the woods does not mean a death was violent, but it can make one suspicious. Too, it will be remembered that from the earliest days of Travis County the hills west of the river were a haven for outlaws and renegades. One of the area's earliest known confrontations to end in violent death occurred about 1888 in western Eanes. Sam and Dave McNeill, sons of Wilson McNeill who settled in the Commons Ford area, were accused of having killed Deputy Sheriff Morris Moore, when he went to arrest them over the burning of a schoolhouse, which it seems had been set afire after a card game on the premises had ended in a free-for-all. Deputy Moore was reportedly buried on land which later became the Roy Ranch. The McNeill boys were no-billed for the murder for lack of evidence and soon thereafter the whole McNeill clan moved to Washington state. It is interesting to speculate if the schoolhouse that was set afire was Eanes School which burned about 1892, or whether it was a Brewton Springs schoolhouse which burned. Since there are only four years difference between 1888 and 1892, and since sometimes dates and times handed down from generation to

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generation get misplaced in memory, it is not too farfetched to think that both events could have been part of the same brouhala. Of course, this is only speculation. Another violent event which involved a member of the Moore family occurred about ten years later. There is a hill called Moore Hill on Bee Cave Road, between The Narrows (near the Roy Ranch) and Thurman Hill, where the Moores apparent- ly lived. One day one of the Moore boys had a run-in with some residents who lived in the area. Soon thereafter "old man Moore awoke one morning to find his boy hung on a tree out in the front yard." 'No one was ever arrested for this killing but some in Eanes believe to this day that it was Youngs and Simpsons who were the culprits. Whoever did the deed they were left alone and went about their business, for in those days one thought long and hard before he made rash accusations which could lead to only more bloodshed or to a long lasting feud. One of the most interesting and historic occurrences in all of Texas criminal history involved an Eanes resident, Tom Young. The event took place on March 30, 1906, just outside of Georgetown, in Williamson County, when Young became the last man in Texas to be hung at a public outdoor hanging. Young, who had been born into an Eanes cedar chopper family and had grown up on Barton Creek, and who on the very day he was hung had two young sons attending Eanes School, was executed for the brutal murder of Alma Reece, a sixteen year old Williamson County girl. The story of Tom Young is not a pretty one. Young had a history of violent behavior. His mother had died when he was a boy and his father, Spaulding Young, had had a time raising Tom and his brothers and sisters. By 1905 Tom Young was no stranger to law officers. It was even thought that he might have had a hand in the shooting of Morris Moore in 1888 and the hanging of the Moore boy a short time later. At any rate he had had numerous scrapes with the law and had even served time in the state penitentiary for horse theft. In addition, he was brutally sadistic toward women. His first wife had died when their two boys were babies and Young's second wife had been mistreated so badly that "Young had been driven from Travis County as a fugitive."101 After Young fled Eanes he had roamed around central Texas using false identities. Under the name of Jack Hailey he even married a third woman in Brady City, despite the fact he was still married to his second wife. It was through his new "false" wife that he met Alma Reece. Alma Reece was a young girl who had had a troubled homelife and had been taken in by Young's new "wife." From the beginning, Young abused both women, but he was particulary violent toward Alma, working her until she was so tired she would drop and whipping her until she had permanent scars on her body. Finally, on May 8, 1905, Young went too far. Citizens in Florence, Texas, reported that "a man was beating to death a frail girl of about fifteen years old ... A few old Texans volunteered to go see about it. When they neared the place Young ran ... [and] made a fight with a knife, but [two local officials] drew their six shooters and Young surrendered.' '102 Alma Reece was found near death with more than a hundred bruises on her bleeding, broken body. She whispered an awful tale to her rescuers. She told of having been beaten, "whipped and 'outraged' [raped] by Young who had chained her to a post and beaten her with whips and hoe handles and then had put vinegar, salt and acid on her wounds ..."103 She died on May 11th. Tom Young's lawyers were John E. Shelton, Sr. (father of Emmett Shelton, Sr., of present-day Eanes) and A.O. Sand- bo, who were law partners in Austin. Of course Young had no defense, for this was in the days before the plea of insanity had become a common defense tactic. As more and more of the story of Young's brutal behavior came out in the trial it stirred up more and more talk from local citizens about storming the courthouse and lynching Young on the spot. Too, Young did not help his own cause, for he was arrogant throughout the trial, boasting that he could escape any jail and that he had friends who would help him. In addition, Sampson Connell, Williamson County sheriff, had received warnings by both letter and telephone that Young's friends might attempt a rescue. As expected Young was found guilty and sentenced to hang. For months court appeals were made in Young's behalf, but finally when all recourse had been exhausted the day of Young's execution, Friday, March 30,1906, arrived. It proved to be a remarkable day. One local newspaper described the hanging. "An immense crowd estimated at four or five thousand, from all parts of Williamson County, and many from adjoining counties [filled Georgetown]. They began coming the day before, some camping in the river bottom and others finding food and shelter with friends in town. By Friday morning the roads leading to Georgetown were filled with moving teams and horsemen ... It reminded one of a big circus day and the crowds in their holi- day attire added to the illusion. Around the jail the people were packed in masses waiting patiently for a sight "Up to Sunday Young had seemed careless, even reckless, but on that day a change occurred ... it remained for a good woman, mother of County Attorney Neal, to soften [Young's] heart. To her prayers and supplications he yielded and declared himself a converted man ... His uncle, Rev. Isaac Young, of Jonesborough, came on Thursday and baptized him in the jail bathtub ... Young now declared that he was not only resigned to death but anxious for its approach. He talked incessantly about his sins being forgiven and his salvation assured . . . On Thursday he talked and sang hymns until about 1 o'clock on the morning of Friday then he went to sleep

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(all pictures courtesy C. E. Jordan)

Hanging party at jail house steps: Will Morris (on horse), Chief Austin Police Dept.; Thomas Russell, deputy; Sampson Connell, sheriff Williamson County; Tom Young; Wayne McGill, deputy; two men on lower steps Tom Young flanked by Sampson Connell, Williamson County Sheriff, and by Warren Moore, District Attorney. Crowd at hanging. Estimated at 2,000 persons. Mother of Alma Reece (center). Others unidentified. Tom Young's body and Les Fox (in bowler and standing next to body) from the Austin Police Dept.

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"As the time approached several student preachers grouped in front of his cell and sang "O Happy Day" and "Are You Washing in the Blood?" Young joined in the singing. .. He would not admit his guilt outright, but told Sheriff Connell that he had confessed to God and need not confess to man.. . He was read the death warrant and then he said, 'Come and let's finish this thing.' He had been clothed in a neat suit of black, with a black scull cap, and looked quite respectable despite a two week growth of stubby beard. He was handcuffed.... With deputies on each side and the sheriff in front he was led out of jail, pausing on the top step for a photograph ... On the left lapel of his coat was a bunch of violets and he held in his right hand a small bouquet, given him by Mrs. Neal, which he waved at every group of women he saw on his way to the gallows ... "[The party in a wagon] was led by hundreds of men and boys on horse back, in buggies and wagons and afoot, past the people lining sidewalks, past the University where Young gaily waved his flowers at the girls in the yard, past the poor farm and on into the open field, at the end of which stood the gallows. "On the way Young chatted or sang incessantly ... When the gallows was reached it was discovered that the black [hood] had been forgotten in the hurry of departure and a deputy was sent back after it. While awaiting his return the party remained in the wagon, Young chatting on as if he too were a mere spectator, and evincing no fear whatever ... "[The crowd] sang "Pass me not 0 gentle Savior," Young joining in. Then his uncle [Isaac] climbed upon the step of the wagon and in a clear voice he preached a sermon that lingers in the minds of those who heard it ... this plain, country Baptist preacher warned [the crowd] to flee from the wrath to come and to let the execu- tion of his nephew incite them to seek salvation . . . '[The family] all feel the strain and the shame and the dis- grace of this execution, but none of us censure the officers who have done their duty, and this execution is only the reaping of wild oats sown in his reckless youth. Whiskey and gambling is the cause of this and I exhort you all to shun them.. . Some of you have come from idle curiosity, others seem to take amusement in it, but beware! Death is a debt we all have to pay ... take warning!' "[After Young was on the gallow's platform] the group sang 'I'm Coming to the Cross' ... then each man shook Young's hand and said a few quiet words. Mrs. Neal took the bunch of flowers from him. His uncle bade him farewell and then turned aside with tear-stained cheeks. Then Young stepped on the trap. The black [hood] was put on and the rope was adjusted. His nerve was something wonderful. Sheriff Connell stepped to the lever and sprung the trap immediately."' Mrs. Lena Hinton, mother of Alma Reece, was among the spectators. And there were scores of other women and chil- dren. One news report stated that as the time to spring the trap grew close some in the "crowd pressed to the very front of the wire fence [holding back the spectators]. There were also hundreds pushing and joisting to see the pitiful figure on the gallows. This caused a student preacher to deliver a scathing rebuke to the mob from the Scaffold." 105 Alpha Teague Slawson, who witnessed the Young hanging when she was an adolescent left this eyewitness account a few years ago. "I saw him hung. I was still single. My sister dressed that little girl and helped put her in the casket ... Tom Young and his wife and Alma Reece ... chopped cotton for Will Mullins ... They camped down there in the field ... he tied the little girl to the wagon and beat her, then poured salt and carbolic acid on her body. Mama saw the chain and a little shirt, blouse, that she wore ... Didn't have no undertaker building back then. So Mr. Potts says take her back to his little old restaurant, cafe, he had ... they took her there and they washed and dressed her. The city got a casket and put her in it. They buried her in the Florence Cemetery. "Then they arrested [Tom Young]. I went to see him while he was in jail, there ... They hung him at the poor farm out on Hutto Road. They had a platform up there. Had a rope out here [off the scaffold] where you couldn't get to it. Had people roped off, but we were just about as close as you could get to it. We saw the guy who pulled the trap door. Big crowd. We saw them take him down ... Then when we left there we all went back and danced until 1:00 that night and had supper there ... "106 Young died instantly, his neck broken by the fall of nine feet. His body was placed in a coffin on a wagon and taken to the depot where it was loaded on a train. In Austin, Young's father, Spaulding, age 70, and his brother and his sister, Sallie, met the train. On Saturday morning a small procession of wagons crossed McGill's ford and headed out Bee Cave Road. All along the way there were curious onlookers. At 10:00 that morning Tom Young was buried in a quiet, family ser- vice. He was interred in an unmarked grave next to his mother in Tarleton Cemetery. Young left the following letter written the night before he was hanged. "Dear father, I am feeling better because Jesus is on my side and I don't mind dying because I am going to heav- en to rest ... Papa these is some of my last words please treasure them in your heart and stamp them in memry as the appl of your eye and read Luke 23 and 43 for my sake ... share this later to all the rest of the family and

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beg them to turn to the lord so we can be all together and put on emartality ... Papa please raise my two boys up rite and teach them to love Jesus ... Tell them to be good boys and don't get in bad company. Yours, truly as ever, p.s. My love to friends in that country and tell them I said howdy and good-bye.''107 The Young family seems to have been particularly prone to violence, for a later generation of the family carried on the tradition. It seems that in the 1930s one branch of the family had four sons, two of whom were killed by the other two - brothers killing brothers - in separate incidents. A 12 gauge, double barrel shotgun, which was owned by one of the surviving brothers, and is now in the possession of a family friend and has been inspected by the author of this book, has five notches on its stock. Each notch represents the death of a man, a death in which the gun played a role. During the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was popular throughout the nation. There were meetings and cross-burnings throughout Texas and even some well-known Texas politicians in the legislature became Klan members, including a gubernatorial candidate. Eanes had its share of Klan members, too, but most of the area's residents just ignored the whole phenomenon. The politically-minded south Austin Shelton family, however, was especially opposed to the Klan. Emmett Shelton, Sr., tells the following story about those times. "It seems that Edgar Shelton [Emmett's brother], had a run-in with a Klan member and pulled the Klan mem- ber's hooded mask off at a Baptist church meeting in south Austin. This got the whole Klan mad at [the Shel- tons] and they got a charge of disturbing a public worship filed against Edgar. Klan members also tried several attempts to kill Earl Shelton and John Shelton, Sr... Buck Simpson [the sharp-shooting, WWI hillbilly hero from Eanes], offered to help the Sheltons but John, Sr., declined thinking that things would quieten down. But as Edgar's trial approached it stirred up a lot of publicity and hard feelings escalated.. . On the first day of the trial one of south Austin's roughest Klanners, by the nickname of 'Country Day,' drew a crowd on the court- house steps and talked big and threatened to get the Sheltons, especially Earl ... John Shelton, Sr., who heard all this talk motioned for Buck, who was at the courthouse that day, and said, 'Now Buck, you've been a wantin' to whup some Klanners for a long time. Now's your chance.' Buck went out and grabbed the Ku Kluxer by the shirt collar and said, 'Country Day, you talk 'n act like you're the meanest S.O.B. in Travis County, but I'm the meanest S.O.B. in the state of Texas, and I'm gonna whip your a-- all the way down to the river bridge if you don't stop your ways.' And, that was the last trouble we [the Sheltons] ever had from the Klan."108 In most societies water is the elixer of life. In Eanes the elixer seems to have been moonshine whiskey. From the begin- ning of our nation's history rural folks always made their own whiskey, beer and wine. In deed, to do so was part and par- cel of frontier life, for it was deemed a man's God-given right to brew his own spirits. Only the government ever cared one way or another whether such produce was homemade or not, and then only because alcohol was viewed as a taxable item and a revenue source. Later there came those who opposed the distilling of spirits on moral, social and health Because of the frontier ethic of those who settled Eanes it was only natural that the making of moonshine became a pervasive part of Westbank life, a part which was not easily controlled or eliminated. There is little doubt that moonshine brought much pain, as well as pleasure, to Eanes and that it accounted for a high percentage of the guarreling and may- hem which occurred in the area. Still, it was a colorful part of local history which deserves to be told. A few early residents agreed to talk about the subject if names were deleted, and to that the author consented, except if the information was already public knowledge or permission was given to divulge it. First she learned that almost every family in the area, from high status down to cedar choppers, distilled their own spirits. Of course there were only about 50 families, or not more than 300 souls, in the whole 32-square mile area, still almost all of them made their own whiskey or beer. There were some exceptions, like H.B. and Viola Marshall, but not many. However, only a small minority bootleg- ged their whiskey. Most made it for personal consumption only. Yet, to most Westbankers distilling spirits was as natural as putting in a garden. And why not, country people had been making mustang grape and elderberry wine and "corn likker" and beer for generations. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which established national Prohibition, changed things. What before had been natural and above board suddenly became illegal. From 1920 to the mid-30s Prohibition was the law of the land, and it spawned a whole new industry - an industry which generated large under-the-table profits. It was during these years that Eanes became one of the moonshining centers of Travis County. The area proved an ideal locale, for it was close to Austin, yet still primitive and isolated enough to be "off the beaten path." Too, Eanes' hills and hollows and springs and creeks were perfect locations for illicit stills which could be well hidden but be close to clean, fresh water. After the Depression began moonshining became an even bigger cash crop, for it allowed a man and his family to sur- vive the desperately hard times. Since hillbillies had few marketable skills it just made good sense for a man to bootleg rather than go on the dole or work for 15c to 20c an hour, if he could find a job at all, that is. Why, a man could make $50.00 to $100.00 with just one batch of good whiskey. Earl Short, Eanes born and raised, put it this way in 1976, "If I hadn't a'

bootlegged we would've had to get on the soup line."109One Travis County lawman estimated that in the 1930s there

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were nearly 100 stills operating in the hills west of Austin, with the Westbank leading the way, but the biggest operation was not in Eanes but out Spicewood way. During Prohibition enforcement of small-time stills was left up to the local sheriffs. This put many lawmen in the position of having to arrest people they had known all their lives. "Most of the moonshiners reserved their real hostility for federal agents and informers, 'Revenue Dogs,' who helped them. They had nothing against their sheriff friends."110 During the 20s and 30s one of the most feared and respected Travis County lawmen was Deputy Sheriff Jim McCoy, who drove a large, powerful "Whippet" automobile, and who understood well the ways of the hillbillies, since he was only slightly removed from being a hillbilly himself. At least one early Eanes resident told the author that McCoy was feared by moon- shiners for he was "the meanest man in Central Texas. He was real good at sniffing out moonshiners and if he didn't like you he would make sure you'd be locked up . . . and he wasn't above manufacturing the evidence if that was re- In some areas in the South moonshiners and lawmen respected one another and operated on such a friendly basis that enforcement became a kind of gentleman's game. "On one raid a sheriff caught four men single-handedly. There was no struggle. They helped the official cut their still apart; and when the job was done, everyone sat down and had lunch together. When they had finished, the sheriff told them to come to town in the next few days, and post bond, and then he left."112 And they did! Most moonshiners didn't hold grudges against sheriffs for they knew that the lawmen were just doing their jobs. That is not to say that there was never any violence. There was plenty of it, for that was the nature of the business. In Eanes most moonshiners and bootleggers packed pistols and there was plenty of mayhem to go around. Earl Short, did his share of bootlegging until it just became too dangerous. During his bootlegging days he killed one man in self- defence when a man pulled a knife on him at a Hooper's Switch dance hall where Short was making a delivery. He was no-billed for the killing, but he was arrested many times for bootlegging although never convicted because of lack of evi- dence. Rob Roy and Bob Ringstaff had a still down in Burnt Hollow on Bee Creek on the Roy Ranch. Their operation was so sophisticated that Roy had a self-installed phone line rigged up which went from the ranch house down to the "holler" so that the boys could be warned if lawmen approached. During those years Albert Brust killed his stepson, Ernest Thur- man, in a shootout at a party which was being held at the Roy's ranch. Brust, who was wounded in the fray spent weeks in the hospital recovering fro-ra gunshot to the groin. Lee Lawrence was another local bootlegger who had some close calls. An unknown assailant killed a county deputy down on Smith Creek, near the Dellana's ranch during Prohibition. One of the Plumley boys, who grew up near Barton Springs, was a well-known bootlegger, who was so flamboyant and daring that he drove about town making his deliveries in a large purple car which drew such attention to himself that Eanes old-timers still talk about it. One of the Riley boys went to prison for a short time for bootlegging. And, finally, Ike Young, another son of the Westbank, had a still down on Bee Creek which could only be reachedby walking on a hidden trail through brush or by paddling up Bee Creek inlet at night in a boat. His moonshining days ended when he killed a federal agent, named Thomason, in a gun battle when agents came to destroy the still. A Mexican man who was helping Young was also killed in the shootout. Ike was convicted and spent many years in prison for that deed. And the above cited events are only those stories which the author feels free to divulge because they are already common knowledge and in the public record. Hiding and camouflaging a still was part of the art of moonshining. Inaccessibility was the best protection. Some stills in Eaves were especially hard to detect because of the ingenuity with which they were hidden. Several were housed in brush arbors and roofed over with cedar branches. Others were in caves and one in particular was located down in a hol- low where the cedar brake was so dense that the still couldn't be seen by someone standing only fifteen feet away. Resi- dents remember that lawmen combed the hills looking for stills, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Benton Beard tells the following story. "The men in the area liked to 'coon and 'possum hunt on moonlit nights. One evening [some locals] gathered and went through the woods, going down Barton Creek and on towards Oak Hill. Joining in the hunt were men they didn't recognize, but they supposed them to be 'revenuers' trying to locate stills on Barton Creek ... The 'coon hunt continued for many hours into the night, and finally the strangers asked to be shown the way back to their cars. It seems that the leaders of the 'possum hunt knew better than to stray too close to any of the local stills, where they might have gotten shot, and they had led the group around and around in circles so the federal men wouldn't find their target."113 Still, a good lawman could find a still if he knew what to look for. Tell-tale signs such as well-used trails, lights in the hollows at night, circling birds, littered trash such as sugar bags, mason jar lids, etc., were all clues. A good moonshiner was always careful to destroy or hide any evidence which could give away his occupation. Too, during Prohibition the naturally taciturn Westbankers became even more closed-mouthed. A man just didn't talk about his business and friends and strangers didn't ask a lot of questions, if they knew what was good for them. And, an informer better look out, for he was especially detested. One southern moonshiner described an informer as follows, "One who don't have

enough of his own business to mind and so he feels obligated to mind th' business of other people. Th' lowest man I know

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is one who wins your confidence, buys your liquor and then turns you in. I believe there's a special place for people like that after they die."119 Smoke could be a dead give-away as to a still's location, but even here moonshiners had ingeneous ways of handling the problem. "They would 'burn the smoke' by placing a pipe from out the side of the still's furnace and back into the firebox to recirculate the smoke and make it invisible . .. Too, smoke was only a problem at the beginning of a fire, for after a fire began to burn well it gave off heat waves rather than smoke. Thus often the fire was started just before dawn and was burning well enough by daylight to escape detection."15 But not always. Frank Spiller, who moved to the top of Spiller Hill (formerly Bankie Hill) remembers that when he would get up early in the morning he could "see smoke rising all through the [Westbank] from charcoal kilns and stills."116 The simplest still operated on the following principle, although there were many variations, some elaborate and some simple. A large square shaped furnace was constructed out of rock, mortared with lime. This spacious firebox was built on the ground and when in operation was fueled with logs 10'x12' long which were gradually fed into the furnace as the fire burned. On top of the firebox a rock platform was built and on it was placed the still - a large vase-shaped cook- er/condenser pot - made out of copper sheeting. (Sometimes 55 gallon metal drums were converted into stills, but the meticulous moonshiner made his own out of cooper sheeting.) The still was then enclosed in a rock and mortar housing, with a flue to allow heat to escape, and only the still's copper cap showed above this rock casing. A pipe (a cap arm) was then run from the still's protruding cap to a large barrel. Another pipe (a slop arm) was run from the bottom of the still to a smaller barrel, but this arm was kept plugged until distillation had been finished. The moonshine mixture was cooked in the still and steam formed. The cap arm conveyed the steam from the still to coils (a worm) which were in the large barrel which had cold water circulating around in it. (In cold weather sometime a "worm" was simply fixed in midair.) The steam condensed in the coils and alcohol flowed out the bottom of the worm. This liquid was then strained through a gause-covered funnel and was put into glass jars of various sizes, the most common being one-quart in size. Then the slop arm was unplugged and the moonshine mash mixture (or dregs) was drained out after each "run" of the still. Meticu- lous moonshiners would flush out the whole system after each batch of moonshine. For safety, the still and all its coils were best made out of copper which was solder together and sealed with flour paste. But some of the poorer or less careful moonshiners used old car radiators for condensers and coils. This practice was dangerous and frequently resulted in severe lead, zinc or acid poisoning. One local Eanes resident recalls seeing moon- shiners whose hands were gnarled and deformed because of continuous contact with lead, zinc and lye. Another inter- viewee told the author that all the men in one Eanes moonshining family had a nervous tic which caused them to "always have the jitters and shakes." This came from lead poisoning and its affect on the men's central nervous systems. This same individual who told this to the author also stated that he still had "an old vat and set of coils under his own house," but he declined to bring them out for a look-see. Copper moonshine coils. (courtesy anonymous Moonshine jug. (courtesy anonymous Eanes Eanes citizen.) citizen.) Each moonshiner had his own favorite recipe. But the usual combination called for water and mash (finely ground corn) to which was added barley and sugar in various amounts. For a special kick, (white lightning), lye was sometimes added. If one wanted routine whiskey then one "run" would do it and the end product would be about 80 or 90 proof. If it was recooked it could come out about 140 proof. But if one wanted to be daring and make "high shot" then he kept the fire blazing hot and tempered (controlled) the dilution of the water to produce a liquid as high as 200 proof, which one old moonshiner swore was strong enough to "float nails."

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In 1923 one Austin newspaper printed the following news item which confirmed what went on in the hills west of Austin. "The capture of an alleged bootlegger and gallons of white lightning and the discovery of clues are expected to lead to the location of a veritable nest of illicit stills in the Bull Creek hills. It was the achievement of the sheriff's department after an all day search through cedar-studded territory ... The hill canyons and the caves honeycombing the limestone cliffs form ideal hiding places as favorable as the wild mountain fastnesses of Kentucky and Tennessee ... but there all resem- blance ceases, for the squirrel whiskey of Applachia is soft water compared to the double-poisoned, steel-lined, grease white lightning that local moonshiners manufacture. The sheriff's office has six gallons of this booze to match against any equal quanity of squirrel beverage from any other place in the universe."117 Each moonshiner had his own speciality. Some made gin, by adding juniper berries. Others darkened their brew by filtering it through charcoal or adding Coca Cola to it, and still others made brandy by using mash that was fruit con- tent. Earl Short was interviewed about his bootlegging days in 1976. One of Short's stills was located next to a small spring on little Bee Creek down in Buzzard's Hollow (also known as McCulloch's Hollow), near the present-day intersec- tion of Westlake Drive and Red Bud Trail. Short recalled that he "liked that bootleg whiskey better than that stuff you now buy in a store." He left his recipe and it went something like this, accounting for difficulties in translating a scratchy, ten- year old taped interview. "Use a 50 gallon barrel. Plenty of mash. 50 pounds of sugar. 25 pounds of rye. 5 cakes of yeast. 50 gallons of water. Makes about 10 to 20 gallons. Takes anywhere from three days to ten days to run."118 Apparently, Short used a two-barrel still since he mentions a second barrel in the process. He does say that when he first started bootlegging he got as much as $20.00 a gallon, then everyone in the area started making and selling whiskey and he was getting only $2.00 a gallon. He also mentions that he often received as little as "four bits" a pint and 5c a bottle." After Short quit moonshining, "because he had too many close calls," he took a job on a road building crew where he earned $7.50 a week. Later he worked for Emmett Shelton, Sr., when Shelton began to put roads in the West- bank area. Short did all of the dynamiting to build roads like Terrace Mountain Drive and the High Road. Shelton recalls that Earl used to "clamp the blasting caps on the sticks of dynamite with his teeth." Some families passed up the making of moonshine but made their own beer for it could be done without furnaces, coils, etc. Most made crock beer by simply placing in a large crock measured amounts of malt, barley, brewer's yeast and sugar, and letting it ferment until the desired taste was reached. Beer making was a real art and everyone agrees that the best homemade beer came from Texas' German communities. Charlie Dellana, Jr., who was a young boy during Prohibition remembers one story which his father told him, "It seems that the Lang boys from Fredericksburg were on their way to deliver some of the hill country's finest 'tonic water' to the back door of the Driskill Hotel in Austin, when their truck's axle broke after hitting one of 'hell's-half-acre's' monumental chugholes. The two young men walked down to the Dellana's house and asked [Mr. Dellana] if he was a member of the Sons of Herman. When he said he was they knew he was a Catholic and probably opposed to Prohibition and would help them. [Mr. Dellana] towed their car to the ranch and allowed the men to hide their precious cargo under his woodpile. [It had previously been under bushels of green beans in the back of the truck.] After some frantic, and fast-paced hours spent on car repairs the two young men continued on their clandestine journey, no worse the wear, but just one step ahead of the sheriff. . . After they left [the Dellanas] found one jug of the prized liquid had been left under the woodpile as a token of thanks Another story that Charlie Delanna, Jr., tells about Prohibition days has a humorous twist. It seems that during the 1920s the Dellana Ranch was occasionally used on Sunday evenings by a group of Austinites who liked to watch cockfights. The cockfights were a transient entertainment because they moved from place to place around the county so as not to "wear out their welcome." One Sunday the cockfight was being held down in a hollow on the Dellana's ranch and the merry revelers were enjoying the fights and a little drinking and gambling, when the law showed up at the Dellana's gate. A lookout who had been posted for just such an emergency fired a shotgun blast as a warning to the men who scattered through the woods like a bunch of "spooked deer." Since it was nearly nightfall and the territory was unfamiliar to most of the revelers, "not a few spent all night wandering around in the woods. One got so lost he spent the night sleeping up in a tree ... and several did not make it home until nearly noon the next day."120 That was the last cockfight ever held on the Dellanas' ranch. During Prohibition several "private" clubs, or lodges as they were called in those days, were opened in the Eanes area. The lodges were used by Austinites who occasionally came out to the hills "for a little drinkin', gamblin' and relaxin'." The most popular was the Cedar Crest Lodge, which was located where the present-day County Line Restaurant now is. Cedar Crest was operated by Mervin Ashe, who hired the local hillbilly, Ernest Thurman, as night watchman. Thurman had his own makeshift dance hall nearby, a tented, open-air pavillion in the woods. One contemporary recalls that Thur- man was forever threatening patrons with physical mayhem if they didn't leave the premises when he told them to. (Thur- man was later killed in a gun battle in the area.) Ashe, who didn't mind hillbillies as night watchmen, but didn't want them

as his clientile, came up with an ingeneous plan for eliminating them as customers. "He put tablecloths and napkins on the tables and that scared them all off!"121

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Another "private" club to open at this time was Elm Grove Lodge, which was housed in an old barn located where Hill Country Middle School is now. Years later that barn became Griffin's Party Barn and then the Soap Creek Saloon. The Elm Grove Lodge had its share of mischief-makers as patrons for it was the site of several well-publicized free-for-all brawls which involved patrons and employees of the club. Other honky-tonks in the area included the colorful Bloody Bucket, which was a favorite of cedar choppers and hillbil- lies. There was also a "private club which was located in Zilker Park. It specialized in gambling and was run by a French- man named Francois. In addition to all of these lodges and road houses, there were several private retreats which were truly that, private, and were owned by rich Austinites who used them on weekends. One such retreat was located out off River Hills Road and belonged to a prominent [anonymous] politician. Then there was a private retreat in eastern Eanes owned by Dr. Robert Shipp, an Austin physician. Shipp's lodge, located atop Belle Hill where the black community had once been, had a panoramic view of downtown Austin. Shipp later sold the property to the Eldridge family. In modern times the place is owned by the Stanley Adams family. Another home next to Shipp's lodge, the old Covert house, has its own interesting history. Originally part of the Gano Ranch, the property was bought by Ernest Leonard in the 1930s. He lived there until about 1940 when he sold it to the Covert family. Later they sold it and eventually, in the early 1960s the old house became a retreat used by male homosex- uals from Austin. Their weekend parties at the place scandalized more than one area oldtimer. One recalls that "some pretty wild parties and goings-on were held there by those boys. And such nice lookin' young men, too.''122 Eanes' reputation as a risque and wide-open territory lying on the fringes of the law continued up to modern times. Fid- dlestick Lodge on Stroter Mountain was built in the late 1940s. Even the gypsies knew of Eanes, for during the 1930s and 40s gypsy caravans composed of mule-drawn wagons periodically passed down Bee Cave Road stopping to camp along Smith Creek. Some residents still remember that whenever the gypsies were in the area "one's chickens and goats had to be locked up." On more than one occasion the gypsies were forced to move on after being threatened by area residents carrying shotguns and rifles. After WWII one of Austin's most famous madams had her private residence in Eanes, although her brothel was located on South Congress at Ben White Boulevard. She moved from the Westbank after it became popular and too many people began to move in. During the 1950s and 60s several bookie joints were located out in the area. The most notorious, The Redman's Club, is remembered by a resident as follows. "When the new owners bought the house [which became the club] they boarded over all the windows and put big floodlights on the outside. People came to that place night and day. Just traffic at all hours of the day ... Sometimes they would get lost and knock on our door instead. They just kept coming' and goin' . . . finally the neighbors had enough and the sheriff shut it down."123 Unfortunately for the neighbors the peace was short-lived, for not too long afterwards, on the very same lot, a house trailer was parked and it became a clandestine drug center where both soft and hard drugs were sold. Once again nearby residents had to endure streams of people coming and going at all hours of the night. One neighbor remembers that occasionally the "hippies would get in fights and all hell would break loose ... some of those drug peddlers who lived in that trailer owned a big pet ocelot." Eventually, most of the druggies, like the bookies and moonshiners before them, were driven out by the sheriff. Unfortunately, now in the 1980s there have been several raids on cocaine dealers in the area.124 Still, by and large, the Eanes area is vice free and a relatively peaceful, safe and family-oriented place to live. The old wide-open days and frontier ways are all gone now. The most severe clashes are now over school board elections, property appraisals and environmental concerns. So far these controversies have not erupted into gun play but have been only verbal in nature.

_(52 additional pages omitted from this transcript — view the full text on the Portal to Texas History.)_

Original record: metapth769391 on the Portal to Texas History.