WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Waterloo?

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Waterloo? In 1838, Texas Vice President Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar arranged for Texas Rangers to take him to the Hornsby’s farm on the Colorado River to meet Jacob Harrell. Also in the party were James Rice, Willis Avery, Edward Fontaine and a slave. The destination was the very small, primitive and dangerous Anglo settlement called Waterloo in the new nation at the edge of Comanche territory. Upon arrival Lamar stayed in the relative safety of Harrell’s cabin. The Vice President was delighted with the beautiful violet foothills and the river valley that was covered with tall grasses. +++++new paragraph+++++ Mirabeau Lamar, poet and dreamer, became the second President of the Republic of Texas and had grand ideas for a new capital city on the Colorado River. The first and third president of Texas favored Harrisburg (Houston) as the capital and opposed almost everything for which Lamar stood, which included extermination of the Indians and Texas expansion to the west coast. ++++++++++ Waterloo became Austin in 1839. Edwin Waller laid out a grid of streets between Waller and Shoal creeks. An auction of lots was held beneath a grove of oak trees at Republic Square between West 4th and 5th Streets. The cash–strapped Republic sold three hundred lots for $182,585. Jacob Harrell was one of Waterloo’s first citizens and later a mayor of Austin. His lots # 1, 2, and 3, were on the west side of Congress Avenue near the river.++++++++++ The highest hill, at the head of Congress, was reserved for a future capitol. On the west side of the grid was the temporary capitol complex, called “Lamar’s Folly”. A two room “dog-trot” building, plus a “refreshment” building and separate meeting cabins were surrounded by upright hewn logs and a trench to protect against Indian raids. Later President Houston was inaugurated in the Senate chamber of the two room capitol, which was the place for governing and became the place for social events and church services. ++++++++++ Friends as well as enemies considered Lamar worthy but a better poet than politician. As president he had entertained and lived in a two story white house located on President’s Hill between East 7th and 8th Streets with a view of the river. Originally elegant but built with green lumber, Sam Houston found it to be “ruinous and dilapidated” and refused to stay there when he came to Austin in December 1841 for his second term as President. The “Presidents House” caught fire in 1847, and was demolished.++++++++++ After 10 years, the Republic of Texas became a state and three days later the new State Legislature convened. In 1846 President Anson Jones lowered the state flag and replaced it with the U. S. flag before a celebratory crowd. In 1857, the temporary capitol building was demolished and the location became a city market and city hall. There was an interim capitol, a block structure with a small dome that was destroyed by fire. The present State Capitol, sheathed in pink Central Texas Granite and 14 feet taller than the U. S. capitol, was completed in 1888. A $75 million underground extension was added in 1993. +++++++++ The Republic of Austin by Jeffrey Kerr, chapters 4 & 6, published by Waterloo Press, Austin History Center. For more detail about Waterloo, read Jim Woodrick’s non-fiction story in the Westminster Writers Journal, Fall Edition 2020. More about our Capitol from an internet article, All You Need to Know About the Iconic Texas State Capitol by Colleen Ford: Three million acres of ranch land located in the Texas panhandle was traded to the builders to pay for our present state capitol. This land became the XIT Ranch, largest cattle ranch in the world, 200 miles long and 20 to 30 miles wide located along the Texas & New Mexico border. When 1000 workers completed the building, it was the seventh largest building in the world (hard to believe). It’s 302 feet tall and had 360,000 square feet of floor space.