WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Cedar Choppers? Cedar Choppers came from Appalachia and the Ozark Mountains to the hill country of Texas in the mid-1800s. They were fiercely independent and reclusive from city folk. Living in tents and dirt floor shacks, near creeks with clear drinkable water, they never considered themselves Austinites. There were multiple settlements located on Bull Creek (*) and Shoal Creek in west Austin and Cypress Creek near the Anderson Mill on the Colorado River (now Lake Travis). Farther upstream on the river was Sandy Creek and north east of there were settlements at Leander and Liberty Hill. Across the river from the township of Austin there were settlements in West Lake Hills at Eanes, Bee Cave, Barton Creek and in Oak Hill. The hillbilly population was easily two generations behind mainstream America.______ It’s important to know that trees growing in cedar brakes in that day were not like the scrub or sap cedar in the hills today. Ash Juniper had tall straight trunks 20 to 30 feet high. In the 1940s and 50s the cedar industry was in its hey-day. Farms and ranches needed posts for fencing hundreds of acres; young cities needed telephone poles and street car ties. Cedar cutters made good money for their cash crop and cedar posts could be traded for groceries.______ A skilled cedar chopper could cut a small tree with four swings of his double bladed axe, producing 30 posts in 30 minutes – maybe 200 in a day. But there were accidental cuts by sharp axes and falling logs. Also there were scorpions, wasps, poison oak, snakes and dynamite was used to get into the thick cedar brakes. Some would camp in the brakes under trucks or in a deserted chicken house. A cedar chopper was recognized by cedar wax on his hands and face as well as by his floppy hat and dirty clothes.______ Some families owned the land on which they lived but many were squatters. Men were tough and often violent. When a fight ended in murder, vengeance was not optional it was obligatory. This was the code. One family bragged that they had not a natural death in their family for 3 generations. Charcoal and moonshine whiskey were sold, especially during Prohibition.______ The women married as teens, had 10-12 children. They cooked fish and wild game consisting of deer, rabbit, turkey, squirrel, possum and coon. There were nuts, mustang grapes and corn for making cornbread and whiskey. They washed laundry “in the hollers.” Some could cut cedar and shoot.______ Young boys learned to dress logs using a single bladed axe so their axes wouldn’t bounce back and cut themselves. Older boys drove trucks and learned stone masonry. The children attended elementary schools when they weren’t needed to help. Going to school with city kids was humiliating because often they had no shoes and had cedar wax in their hair and on their hands that wouldn’t come off. Shoes were known to be stolen. Kids put rocks in their pockets to defend themselves. But they had the run of the woods, creeks and caves in the afternoon. In 1937, Eanes school teachers brought soap and towels for the shower and the kids came to enjoy their baths.______ There was a support system among the clans. If a man was injured, all would help by cutting and delivering cedar for his family. There were churches and week-long meetings under brush arbors and Wednesday prayer meetings but most families were not regular church goers.______ They loved the hills, loved their freedom and their way of life. Their reputation for violence was achieved by the actions of a few families. But if someone was doing wrong, the clan took care of it and never called the law. They would never testify against one another. Lawyer Emmett Shelton was a friend to Cedar Choppers and was paid for legal services with tracts of land. Briefly, I worked in the same office as did Shelton. I remember one afternoon looking west with all the other employees to see a raging fire in West Lake Hills. Emmett Shelton was dashing for the low water bridge, (named the Emmett Shelton Bridge) with serious concern for his friends and clients. Carole Sikes 11/21 Ref. The Cedar Choppers by Ken Roberts. (*)Bull Creek’s name reflects an event: The last male Buffalo in Travis County was killed near Bull Creek.