This article is by Mary Closmann Kahle, board member of Preservation Austin and the Texas Oral History Association, and a History Steward with the Texas Historical Commission; it is adapted from an earlier piece written by the author for Preservation Austin and with research conducted by her colleague Marta Stefaniuk.
Dry Creek Café & Boat Dock
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| Dry Creek Café & Boat Dock ca. 1970s |
In his 1997 song about Dry Creek Café, Owen Temple salutes the beer joint at 4812 Mt. Bonnell Road, with its live oaks, dramatic sunsets, and legendary proprietor Sarah Boyd Ransom. But those days are over. Closed in 2021, the property is now the subject of a zoning change request, scheduled for a hearing on October 17, related to lot size and other factors. Rumors abound over its future use, from a facility for orphaned children to possible office space.
Built around 1950, Dry Creek Café is a quirky fusion of personality and utility. Reputedly constructed with “100% appropriated” materials, its architecture was described by famed Austin American-Statesman columnist John Kelso as “Early Hooverville.” Distinctive for its limestone walls and yellow wooden details, the structure’s hodgepodge charm befits Austin’s identity as a place where the fun-loving, the accepting, and the “weird” can gather. Not incidentally, Dry Creek Café also claims the longest-running beer license in the same family in Austin.
Dry Creek Café opened in 1953 under
the ownership of “Bicken” Boyd and was known as the Triple B (“BBB”). Bicken
sold the property to his sister Sarah in 1956, who renamed it the Dry Creek
Café. Most of its early business came from the local cedar chopper communities.
As Ken Roberts writes in The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing, the cedar choppers began settling along the Hill Country’s creeks and rivers after the Civil War. Hailing from Appalachia, they reflected a nomadic culture of Scottish-Irish origin that migrated west to the Ozarks before settling in the Hill Country, thriving on the area’s abundant fish, game, and water. Cedar choppers used sharp hand axes to harvest old growth mountain cedar for railroad ties, construction materials, and fence posts. When the demand for fence posts surged in the West and Plains states in the early half of the 1900s, cedar choppers were hauling cedar posts as far as Wyoming and South Dakota. The introduction of steel posts and chainsaws, along with the 1950s drought, the growing scarcity of old growth cedar, and population growth in Austin, contributed to their eventual decline.
From the get-go, Dry Creek Café hosted a vibrant cast of characters. A 1958 Statesman ad said, “LOST – OLD crooked tail Siamese cat from Dry Creek Cafe.…Reward. Kittens.” Sarah’s pet cockatiel “Hot Rod” flew off in 1966, and a six-foot alligator, “Old Bulger,” lived in a nearby slough of the Colorado River after Sarah’s brother brought it (at six inches) from New Orleans in 1949. In April 1960, fugitive killer Joseph Corbett Jr. of Los Angeles was spotted nearby, “said to be driving a 1959 or 1960 model Thunderbird car.” Known for its scenic switchbacks, Dry Creek Café kicked off the 1980 Mount Bonnell Hill Climb, a bicycling race to nearby Mt. Bonnell.
The clientele expanded in the 1960s and 1970s to the musician, hippie, and college crowds attracted by its remoteness and the 1973 lowering of the drinking age to eighteen. This included musician Marcia Ball and her band Freda and the Firedogs, who recorded a single penned by band member Bobby Earl Smith called “Dry Creek Inn,” in which “Sarah” hides a killer from the police. Later years featured in-house band Cactus Lee and other local musicians.
Underpinning Dry Creek’s success was Sarah’s gruff demeanor – she notoriously chastised patrons if they didn’t return their beer bottles – that belied a generous heart. Patrons also developed their own traditions, such as the “Roundtable of Reason,” whose members solved the world’s problems over television or while playing the fabled jukebox.
Business boomed until the Texas Legislature restored the drinking age to twenty-one in 1984, which coincided with expanded city limits that included Dry Creek Café. Eventually, Sarah’s son Jay “Buddy” Reynolds bought the property and gave Sarah free rein to run it. Sarah stepped back at the age of ninety in the early 2000s, handing over the reins to equally beloved barkeeps. Today, while in a declining state, the property is a time capsule of Austin’s transformation from small college town to mega-city, reflecting the stories of the people who loved it so well.
As Owen Temple's song says, there truly was “no place better come five o’clock.”
More Photos
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| Upstairs concert room; facing parking lot from patio |
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| Jukebox and pool served with atmosphere |
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| Pool table facing front door |
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| From the parking lot at night. Upstairs: concert room and outdoors patio; downstairs bar, pool and jukebox. |
Read More
Texas Monthly. Dry Creek Cafe, an Old-school Dive Bar on Lake Austin, Is Closing After 68 Years, . https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/dry-creek-cafe-closing/
Texas Monthly. The Last Ballad at the Dry Creek Cafe, Michael Hall, November 9, 2021. https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/farewell-dry-creek-cafe/
Freda and the Firedogs' Facebook page includes a number of publicity photos shot at Dry Creek in the 1970s. https://www.fredafiredogs.com/
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