A history of Austin,
since 1835
Postcards, papers and photographs of Austin from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of human habitation since at least 9200 BC. The area's earliest known inhabitants lived during the late Pleistocene (Ice Age) and are linked to the Clovis culture around 9200 BC (over 11,200 years ago), based on evidence found throughout the area and documented at the much-studied Gault Site, midway between Georgetown and Fort Hood. Excavations at the French Legation in downtown Austin revealed a site utilized during the Archaic period of North America, about 5,000 years ago. Artifacts dating to the Paleo-Indians period show possible use as early as 9,000 years ago.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Austin’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
0 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewOld Capitol building, 1860: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Austin, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Old Capitol building (1860) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Historic places
National Register · via Wikidata
From Wikimedia Commons (2), the Library of Congress (3) and the National Register (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.