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History of the Millwood Neighborhood.
It is not unusual for “old Austinites” (if you don’t know what the Armadillo World Headquarters was, where it was, or what people did there, you don’t qualify) to lament Austin explosive growth. In reality, Austin started expanding north from the shores of the Colorado River in the 1840s with the city annexing more and more of northern Travis County. Unsettled open expanses have been bought, worked, and sold by farmers who broke the soil to cultivate cotton and corn, by ranchers who grazed their cattle, goats, and sheep, and by land speculators who plowed under live oak groves and cotton rows to cultivate a labyrinth of houses, shopping centers, and dot.com office buildings. So many of us are so new to Austin suburbs we can hardly begin to imagine what and who was here before we were.
Truth be known, the tracts of land on which most suburban Austinites now live were mostly rolling prairies and scrubby hills covered with mesquite, cedar and live oaks. While rich in geological, pre-historic, and Native American and Mexican history, for the most part Austin suburbs overgrew claimed but unsettled lands. If most Austin suburbanites asked, “What was here before the subdivision?” the answer would be, “Nothing.”
Milwood residents, as well as our neighbors in Walnut Crossing east of Amherst, might be surprised to learn that the land on which our houses stand is rich with history intimately tied to the growth of the nation, of the Republic and state of Texas, and of Austin. You can hear this history humming in the railroad tracks where trains rumble and whistle on the western and eastern boundaries of Milwood. You can see ghosts of this history in the place and street signs surrounding us.
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