Note: this article was originally written for the Northwest Austin Civic Association neighborhood's October 2024 newsletter.
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| Knox farmhouse. Photo courtesy City of Austin |
Margaret Thomas Knox passed January 20, 2022 allowing the development of the Knox Preserve subdivision to proceed. We’ve had several past articles in the newsletter on Mrs. Knox so I won't dive into her history here. But briefly for context, her husband James Knox inherited the property from his parents. His father, Capt. Warren Penn Knox, was prominent in Boy Scouting in Texas, acquired the property and after WWII started Running Rope Boys Ranch. Barring a thorough deed search, by 1946 the newspaper reports "W.P. Knox" buying the 184 acre property (The Austin American, 26 Apr 1946, Fri, Page 20). By 1947 Running Rope Ranch is up and running in the news.
The farmstead (a core house that was extended over the years; out buildings; cleared fields) is extant in the 1937 aerials of Travis County that have recently become available. An oral interview of Margaret Knox for the book Austin Originals, 1982, puts the farmhouse at ca. 1900 at least. Based on the history of this area, could the property be older? Maybe. For example, Esperanza School, which was above Spicewood Springs, was a one room log cabin started in 1866 serving this area [1]. The school was less than a mile from the Knox Preserve. Old aerial photos seem to indicate an older entrance to the property may have been off of Spicewood Springs Rd. not far from the school. Could the property be that old? We don’t know without a lot more research, but from the history of the school we know there was sufficient population in the community of Spicewood Springs in 1866 to warrant a school. The log cabin school was open until 1893; so close in time to the age of the Knox house quoted by Margaret Knox. The Thurms, a German family, settled on Bull Creek in 1855 on what is today’s Old Spicewood Springs Rd. at the bottom of what was known then as Thurm’s Hill. Their homestead was in today’s Bull Creek Park, roughly the 5300 “block” of today’s Old Spicewood Springs Rd; most of it was obliterated by Loop 360 construction; the current round of work is probably finishing off any potential sub-surface remains. All to say, settlement in this area goes back a ways and the Knox Preserve, with its own spring (called out on property plats as “Indian Springs”), close to Spicewood Springs, its namesake road and Esperanza School would have been a .. what’s the saying in real estate? Location, location, location.
I’ve been in contact with Ms. Kalan Contreras, Historic Preservation Officer, City of Austin Planning Department, swapping history on the property. She attended the Historic Landmark Commission meeting September 4th where they are considering “initiation of historic zoning on the property”; the review includes not only the house, but potential archeology of the site in general. Everything is tentative at this point. An argument is being made to preserve the house, either on-site (possibly to an alternate spot on-site) or off-site to another location.
The Knox Preserve is one of the last relatively untouched areas in Northwest Hills up on the mesa which is today our NWACA neighborhood so it would a be good if the developer would hire a firm to conduct a more thorough archeological assessment of the property as a whole. A cursory survey by UT was done in 1969 confirming prehistoric Native American presence on the property. While the wetland critical environmental feature (CEF; the springs area) will be preserved, once the bulldozers move in for development outside the CEF anything that is there is going to be lost. Fingers crossed.
Footnotes
[1] Esperanza School was one of earliest one-room rural schoolhouses in Travis County. The one-room log cabin was built on the property of Richard McKenzie in 1866 above Spicewood Springs, today’s 3511 Starline Drive, and served children from neighboring farms in the period before public education. In 1893 when a larger Esperanza School was built at another site the log cabin structure was put to other uses. The cabin was later moved to the Zilker Botanical Garden and restored. Bull Creek School discussed in last month’s newsletter, later renamed Pleasant Valley School, also started as a one-room log cabin the next year, 1867. Spicewood Springs and its namesake community and road appear on the USGS topographic maps of Travis County surveyed 1895-1896. 1866 Esperanza School at Spicewood Springs. https://traviscountyhistorical.blogspot.com/2017/02/1866-esperanza-school-and-spicewood_3.html
More
Austin Monitor. Landmark Commission strikes compromise on former summer camp. Wednesday, December 11, 2024 by Elizabeth Pagano. https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2024/12/landmark-commission-strikes-compromise-on-former-summer-camp/
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