Wednesday, March 13, 2024

George W. Allen Memorial Park. First Travis County Park in Austin's City Limits.


NOTE: This is an adaptation of an article written for the Northwest Hills Civic Association (NWACA) newsletter.

The NWACA neighborhood has just one Travis County Park: Allen Park at 6413 Westside Drive. And, Allen Park was the first Travis County Park inside the Austin City Limits. It is a little known jewel of a park in the NWACA neighborhood; let’s look at the story of Allen Park.

From the Travis County Parks website:

“Allen Park is a 10-acre park consisting of a limestone plateau covered by a Juniper and Oak woodland interspersed with small, semi-open grassland areas. It is mainly used for low density recreational activities such as picnicking and hiking. The park offers a natural setting with panoramic views of the city to the east. The neighborhood church uses the park annually for Easter sunrise services.”

The park is technically known as the George W. Allen Memorial Park. George W. Allen was born in Jasper, Georgia in 1869. He came to Texas at age 15. As a lawyer, he moved to Austin in 1891 where he lived until his death in 1911. His many accolades as a lawyer in Austin included Assistant City Attorney. At his death the news reported the Bar Association, at a special meeting, adopted a resolution of "Respect and Memory" for George W. Allen.

The story now moves ahead a few years. Wilbur Price Allen (1879-1956) was George’s cousin. Wilbur graduated from U.T. Law School, and was on the U.T. Boards of Regents in 1917. At various times in his career he served as director of the American National Bank in Austin, national president of Sigma Chi Fraternity, president of the Austin Baseball Club, and president of the Texas League.

Without doing a deed dive on county deeds, apparently after George W. Allen’s death, Wilbur Price Allen inherited or acquired property part of which Wilbur Price in 1945 sold to Travis County for use as a quarry for caliche, gravel and rock. Today the east side of the park at 6110 Balcones Dr. has a gate that opens on to what looks like remnants of part of the quarry. The deed stipulated that after the county was done mining the property it would be dedicated as a park for public use.

The story again moves forward a few years to 1977, and Wilbur Price’s son, Wilbur George Allen, entered dialogue with Travis County about the property becoming a park. And so it was that Sunday, May 1st, 1978 Allen Park had its grand opening ceremony cosponsored in part by the Northwest Austin Civic Association. In attendance were Congressman J.J. (Jake) Pickle, Precinct 2 Commissioner Bob Honts, and U.T. football greats Earl Campbell and Brad Shearer.

The Parks history was not without a few hiccups. In 1996 the park had apparently become rundown to the point where the county was considering abandonment. The heirs of George W. Allen, likely led by Wilbur George Allen, concurred that if the park could not be maintained it should be closed or moved. Luckily that did not happen, issues were addressed, and today Allen Park remains a largely unknown jewel in our neighborhood.[1]

Sources; Read More

Funeral Of G. W. Allen: Last Sad Rites Over Body Of Deceased Lawyer, The Austin Statesman, Jun 22, 1911

George W. Allen Dead: Prominent Lawyer Of This City Passes Away, The Austin Statesman, Jun 21, 1911

U.T. Board of Regents, William Price Allen, https://www.utsystem.edu/board-of-regents/former-regents/wilbur-price-allen

Wilbur Allen Funeral Dated On Saturday, The Austin Statesman, Aug 3, 1956

Travis County Archives, memos re: Allen Park, 1977

County Opens Park. The Austin American Statesman, May 2, 1978

Allen Park Opening. Austin American-Statesman, 27 Apr 1978, Thu, Page 15

Notice of Proposed Abandonment. Austin American-Statesman, 29 Sep 1996, Sun, Page 29

County Seeks to Move Allen Park. Austin American-Statesman, 28 Aug 1996, Wed, Page 18

 



[1] Thanks to Christy Costlow and Charles Bergh with Travis County Archives and Travis County Parks for help researching this article.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

LIDAR for History and Archeology

NOTE: This is an adaptation of an article written for the Northwest Hills Civic Association (NWACA) newsletter.

For orientation, black dot is intersection of Far West Blvd. and Mesa Drive in Northwest Hills. Click to enlarge.

You’ve probably heard of LIDAR. It’s what enables many self-driving cars to sense their surroundings. OK, except maybe Elon Musk who thinks it’s "expensive, ugly and unnecessary". But even he may be re-thinking LIDAR. LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) works by emitting laser pulses, then measuring the time it takes for the pulses to travel to objects and back, using this information to create detailed 3D models of objects.

But rather than mounted to a car, LIDAR can also be mounted below an aircraft, drone or even satellite to build digital elevation models of the earth’s surface; “bare earth” models excluding trees, buildings, and other surface objects. This has been a game-changer in fields like archeology enabling the detection and mapping of features – old trails, structures, burial depressions, geologic features – that are hidden beneath dense vegetation and hence not visible in aerial photos, and which can also be difficult to access and survey in person.

In the news a commonly reported use in archeology has been the detection and mapping of lost Mayan cities in the dense jungles of Central America where many Mayan ruins are hidden beneath the jungle canopy. Here in Travis County we have a similar problem; rather than jungle, we have trees and other vegetation covering much of the county, for example in the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve (BCP) west of our neighborhood. While a preserve now, this was home to Native Americans for thousands of years, and starting in the 19th century European American settlers constructing ranches and farmsteads.

I recently had a chance to examine several sites in the BCP with USGS LIDAR data. One site we visited a few years ago, about 6 miles northwest of the neighborhood, was a collection of stacked limestone walls. It was quite a hike reaching them through a thicket of trees and brush, and once there it was hard to make sense of the layout. Oral interviews collected by archeologists when the area was acquired by Travis County for inclusion in the BCP suggested the site had been a stage stop along a historic road from old Jollyville[1] to Anderson’s Mill, with nearby springs for passengers to enjoy. With LIDAR the assemblage of old roads to and from the site, layout of corrals and buildings, and location of springs in nearby rock shelters became very apparent.

A drawback with LIDAR is that the data reflects the time at which it was collected. Since it is a relatively new technology, many areas you’d like to investigate have already been developed, hence the LIDAR is reflecting the development, not features of a historic site. Still with areas like BCP and other preserves like those in our neighborhood’s canyon lands it is a powerful tool for “seeing” what is there hiding beneath the dense overgrowth.

LIDAR data is publicly available in varying resolutions through the USGS. Included here is a birds eye LIDAR view of our own NWACA neighborhood. Enjoy.



[1]For more on Jollyville, see What's Up with Jollyville Road?

Friday, January 19, 2024

McCuistion Cemetery

This is the family cemetery of John Jourdan (J.J.) McCuistion ( various spellings “ion” vs. “ian”). His grandson was Shawnee Thomas (Tommie) Carpenter whose wife, Edna Turley Carpenter (both buried in nearby Live Oak Cemetery), wrote the family history Tales from the Manchaca hills: The unvarnished memoirs of a Texas gentlewoman. Tommie’s mother Susan Ann McCuistion Hancock is buried here, as is JJ’s wife Rebecca Thompson McCuistion.

Edna Turley Carpenter’s book uses the spelling “McCuistion”. Would suggest either a name change or an AKA for the cemetery to include that spelling to help searches.

His obituary says he was born August 19th 1824, and settled on Onion Creek in 1846, served as a Texas Ranger and Justice of the Peace. He died of pneumonia, May 25, 1900 after his buggy fell over in Onion Creek. He figures prominently in Edna Turley Carpenter’s book about Manchaca.

A few of the publications he is referenced: Travis County, Texas, School Census Of 1854; History of Texas, Together with a Biographical History of Milam, Williamson, Bastrop, Travis, Lee and Burleson Counties (p.327), and in Frank Brown’s Annals of Travis County and of the City of Austin (From the Earliest Times to the Close of 1875).

Links:

https://www.austingenealogicalsociety.org/cemeteries/mccuistian-cemetery/ 

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2323688/mccuistian-cemetery