Round Rock, Texas

With its fertile soil and location along Brushy Creek, Round Rock, Texas is a bustling suburb just north of Austin in Central Texas.

Now considered to be one of the top 10 small cities in the nation, the area has been a crossroads for Texans for thousands of years.

Discovered in central Texas, this stone point with a broken tip was made at least 16,000 years ago.

For many years, scientists believed that the first Americans came from Asia 13,000 years ago. This discovery suggests that humans came to the Americas much earlier. The cultures that emerged over thousands of years developed vast routes all across the Americas.

Courtesy Bullock Texas State History Museum.

During the 18th century, the Tonkawa claimed the region as their home, developing relationships with Spanish settlers who traveled extensively through the Round Rock area using the El Camino de Arriba.

Courtesy Texas General Land Office.

In the early 1800s, the Delaware Indians marked another trail through Central Texas known as the Double File Trail, so named because travelers could ride along it side by side.

Courtesy Texas Historical Commission.

Following the immigration of Anglo settlers to the region in the mid-1800s, Round Rock became a popular stop for crossing Brushy Creek at a distinctive round rock and a stage coach line between San Antonio and Waco was routed through the town.

Courtesy The Williamson Museum, The Portal to Texas History.

As a feeder trail on the larger Chisholm Trail, cattle drivers herded thousands of cattle through the town in the 1860s and 1870s.

Courtesy Texas General Land Office.

In 1876, when the International-Great Northern Railroad was built through Williamson County, its tracks were laid a short distance south and east of Round Rock. The community began to move toward the railroad and the south bank of Brushy Creek.

Courtesy The Williamson Museum, The Portal to Texas History.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s the region became known for its cotton farming. After 1876, the International-Great Northern Railroad connected Round Rock to the major cotton ginning town of Taylor. Then in the 1930s the two towns were connected by US 79 which ran from Austin all the way to Tennessee.

Courtesy Taylor Public Library, The Portal to Texas History.

In 1928, Round Rock, Manor, Taylor and other towns engaged in a heated competition to secure the route of State Highway 2 (Meridian Hwy) which promised to be a main thoroughfare through Texas. Taylor won out.

Courtesy Texas Department of Transportation, The Portal to Texas History.

Thirty years later, Round Rock’s mayor Louis Henna lobbied for Interstate 35 to run through Round Rock instead of Taylor. Round Rock won, and when the interstate opened in 1959, it changed the town’s trajectory.

Courtesy Texas Department of Transportation, The Portal to Texas History.

Over the next few decades, the small farming community transformed into a thriving city. Between 1960 and today, the population of Round Rock has increased by 98.5% from 1,900 to over 128,000.

Courtesy Hardin-Simmons University Library, The Portal to Texas History.

Header image courtesy Larry D. Moore.

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