Oakmont Heights Neighborhood
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OAKMONT HEIGHTS - A BRIEF HISTORYTonkawa, Comanche, and Lipan Apache tribes were among the original inhabitants of the region that now includes the Oakmont Heights neighborhood. Arrowheads have been found along Shoal Creek indicating that it was used as a hunting area. One of the earliest Anglo-American settlers in the area was Gideon White, who built a cabin along Shoal Creek in 1839 at Seiders Springs, now on the hike-and-bike trail behind Shoal Creek Hospital. While out looking for cattle in October 1842, White was attacked by Comanches and killed. The Oakmont Heights area was far from the new capital city when Austin (formerly Waterloo) was founded in 1839, and it developed slowly. Among the early settlers was Ed Seiders, who married one of Gideon White's daughters and settled next to the springs that bear his name. Federal troops under Gen. George Armstrong Custer, sent to occupy Austin in 1865 as the Civil War ended, camped next to Seiders Springs. In the late 19th century, the springs were a popular resort area that included bathhouses and a lake on Shoal Creek behind Alamo Dam, which later washed away. One of the greatest tragedies in our area occurred on Memorial Day 1981, when two people drowned when their houses were submerged by fast-rising Shoal Creek floodwaters. The greenbelt along the creek in the Ridgelea neighborhood marks where those houses once stood. Early travelers headed west toward Mount Bonnell used a road that roughly follows the modern 34th and 35th streets. The footbridge across Shoal Creek just north of W. 34th St., built in 1916, is a remnant of this road, once called State St.. Bull Creek Rd. also dates from the mid-19th century. The oldest surviving home in the area is the McCary-Theil house at 4712 Bull Creek Rd., built by rancher James D. McCary in 1859 and currently the fellowship hall for the Highland Village Church of Christ. One of the most prominent local landowners was Dr. W.C. Philips, a local physician and Unionist politician who briefly served as Texas Secretary of State under the Reconstruction administration of Gov. Elisha M. Pease. Dr. Philips owned the property between Bull Creek Rd. and Shoal Creek where the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the State Cemetery Annex now are located. He built a home there in 1864 that included a well-known horse racing track. In 1876, the International & Great Northern Railway was completed to Austin, with the route running through the Oakmont Heights area. Later purchased by the Missouri Pacific line and now owned by Union Pacific, right-of-way for the route almost a century later would be used to build MoPac Blvd. (Loop 1). In 1887 came one of the highlights of the history of the Oakmont Heights area. State schools for the blind and the deaf had been established in the 1850s, but did not admit African-Americans. The State of Texas purchased Dr. Philips's home and land for $10,000 and established the "Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Asylum for Colored Youth" (one of many different names over the years). Located far outside the Austin city limits, the school initially had to be self-sustaining, with its own farm and artesian well and later a small electric generating plant. The Legislature appropriated funds to build new buildings for the school, but it was never adequately funded. When the state schools were desegregated in 1961, the school and its buildings became an annex to the nearby Austin State School. The old school buildings fell into disrepair, with the last remnants demolished in December 1995. The State Highway Department had long used part of the property for parking for its nearby Camp Hubbard facilities, and in 1987 the Texas Legislature transferred the entire property from the Austin State School to the Highway Department. TxDOT considered using the mostly vacant property as a new campus consolidating various offices around the city, but none of these plans were implemented. At the instigation of Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, the Texas Legislature in 1995 designated the vacant portion of the old state school property as the future annex for the Texas State Cemetery and removed it from TxDOT's jurisdiction. TxDOT kept the portion of the property along Bull Creek Rd. used for offices, storage, and parking. The State Cemetery Committee commissioned a master plan to develop the property as a future cemetery, but other than the digging of an artesian well and construction of a pump station, plans to develop the cemetery annex property are on hold. TxDOT has discussed selling part of its remaining portion of the land for future private development. Another milestone was the 1892 donation by Austin businessmen of land as a parade ground and headquarters for the Texas State Guard. This land was accepted by the state and named Camp Mabry, which at one time was the headquarters of the Adjutant General's Officer (as it is today), the State Highway Department, the Department of Public Safety, and the Texas Rangers. In 1935, the Legislature transferred the portion of Camp Mabry east of the railroad track to the Highway Department, which had begun using part of the area for equipment maintenance as early the mid-1920s. Known as Camp Hubbard, named for former highway commissioner R.M. Hubbard, this area now is used by TxDOT for various purposes, most notably as the headquarters of the Vehicle Titles Division in the five-story Building # 1, built in 1955. Many of the early residents of Oakmont Heights worked for the Highway Department at Camp Hubbard. The Materials Testing Laboratory was located for many years in Camp Hubbard Building # 5, but has since been shifted to the TxDOT facilities near Cedar Park. (Plans in the mid-1990s to build a large new laboratory at TxDOT's Bull Creek Rd. campus were scrapped.) In the 1950s, the State Archives were stored in a quonset hut at Camp Hubbard until transferred to the Lorenzo De Zavala Building near the State Capitol in 1961. The Legislature in 1979 appropriated funds to build a new six-story administrative office building at Camp Hubbard, but when Gov. Bill Clements vetoed the appropriation, the building was never constructed. For most of the early 20th century, the area around Oakmont Heights was sparsely settled, but the city of Austin would soon require room to grow to house its fast-growing population. Hyde Park was developed in the 1890s only a few miles east, and new neighborhoods such as Rosedale and the various subdivisions that would become known as Bryker Woods were developed in the early 1930s. Much of the area between the state school and Camp Mabry/Camp Hubbard consisted of pasture land, mostly for dairies. The fact that most of the area was cleared pasture is explains why, despite being called Oakmont Heights, not many original live oak trees are found in the neighborhood, except for a few in the northern portion. In the 1920s, a subdivision in the Oakmont Heights area was platted, but never developed. Called "Military Heights," its streets would have tracked some of those existing today. The original names for Jackson Ave. and Lawton Ave. survive, but what is now W. 36th St. was to be called Hale St., W. 37th called Hulen St., W. 38th called Burns St., and Oakmont Blvd. called Mabry Ave. The current Oakmont Heights neighborhood developed in stages. The original Oakmont Heights subdivision consisted of W. 36th and W. 37th streets and the south side of W. 38th St. and was first developed in the 1930s. One feature that distinguishes the original Oakmont Heights subdivision from the rest of the neighborhood is the alleys behind the houses. In the 1940s the subdivision was expanded. The first annex to Oakmont Heights included the north side of W. 38th St. and W. 39th St. W. 40th St. also was added but not developed until the second expansion phase of the neighborhood in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when W. 41th and W. 42nd streets were added. The post-war building boom saw houses built on many of the still-empty lots in Oakmont Heights, but the early streets remained unpaved. This changed after the City of Austin annexed the area in 1946. The area north of Oakmont Heights saw considerable new development in the mid-to-late 1960s with construction of the Agudas Achim synagogue (later the Gateway Church, demolished early in 2006), Westminster Manor at 4100 Jackson Ave., the Masonic Lodge (now Meridian plastic surgeons) at the tip of the neighborhood at Jackson Ave. and Bull Creek Rd., and the apartment complexes on Bull Creek Rd. between the synagogue and the residences on W. 44th St. Also, construction of MoPac Blvd. began in 1969, with the Central Austin segment completed by the mid-1970s. TxDOT at various times has proposed extensive redevelopment at its Camp Hubbard and Bull Creek Rd. campuses, leading to considerable discussion within the neighborhood, but its facilities have remained mostly unchanged for the past several years. In 1998, the Oakmont Heights Neighborhood Association, with support from Westminster Manor and other nearby neighborhoods, successfully blocked an attempt to add a regional vehicle titles office at Camp Hubbard, which would have meant substantially increased traffic, including large trucks, in the neighborhood. In 2001, area neighborhoods, including Oakmont Heights as part of the MoPac Neighborhood Associations Coalition (MoNAC), united to oppose a proposal to expand MoPac Blvd. that would have included elevated access ramps adjacent to Camp Hubbard and required elimination of homes in nearby neighborhoods. TxDOT still has long-term plans to expand MoPac Blvd. by two lanes each direction and build noise walls along the corridor, but has committed to using existing right of way and no elevated ramps. Another long-term project now on the drawing board would be conversion of the Union Pacific line to a Georgetown-Austin-San Antonio commuter rail line, with a possible train station located between the tracks beneath the W. 35th St. bridge, possibly incorporating a portion of Camp Hubbard. In June 2004, the City of Austin completed construction of a new water line into Oakmont Heights designed to boost water pressure in the southern portion of the neighborhood. This history of our neighborhood is an on-going project. Please send any suggested additions, revisions, or corrections to Tom Whatley ) This page last updated: Sat Mar 20
19:45:46 2010 16:50:41 2010 |