Local Stories in Travis County
Texas·5 places
History
Grassdale, Gregg, Manor
Three names in fifteen years, and the people living on the ground chose none of them. A post office called Grassdale opened in 1859 with James B. Manor as its postmaster, and closed again the following year. A second office opened in 1871 under the name Gregg, and was renamed Manor in 1872. What settled the question was the railroad.
History
Jackson Morrow's Littig
The town stands on land given by a man who had been owned. Littig was established in 1883 along the Houston and Texas Central line in eastern Travis County, about six miles east of Manor, on acreage donated by Jackson Morrow, who had been enslaved and who bought some two thousand acres from the same plantation where he had been held. The town took its name instead from A. B.
Education
Montopolis Negro School
A storm destroyed the original Montopolis Negro School in 1935, along with several of the county's white schools. St. Edward's Baptist Church secured a surplus army barracks building as a replacement and deeded the land on Montopolis Drive to Travis County for school purposes.
History
The Farms Under the Runway
The airfield that became Bergstrom Air Force Base, and later Austin's airport, was built on three thousand acres of the Santiago del Valle grant that the City of Austin bought and leased to the federal government for one dollar a year. Austin voters approved the bond overwhelmingly, and the Chamber of Commerce notified the Army of the result on 15 March 1942.
Industry & Science
The Gravel Pit Tesla Bought
Before it was a car factory, the land on the Colorado River east of Del Valle was a hole in the ground. A sand and gravel quarry operated there under TXI Operations, which Martin Marietta acquired when it bought Texas Industries in 2014.
Elsewhere in Texas
Hear it from the road
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