DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this stretch of Williamson County and the stone that built a Capitol. Now, every great building has a story behind it, and most of those stories start with a mistake. This one's no different.
Back in the 1880s, western Williamson County was the kind of country that needed a railroad to wake it up. And wake it up the railroad did. The Austin and Northwestern Railroad came through, put towns on the map — Brueggerhoff, which folks would come to call Cedar Park, and Leander — and started stitching this land into something bigger.
At the same time, the state of Texas had itself a problem. They were building a brand new Capitol, and the limestone they'd been quarrying for the job turned out to be deficient. Now that is not a word you want attached to the stone holding up your statehouse.
So contractors went looking for something better, and they found it: pink granite, out of Burnet County. The Austin and Northwestern Railroad extended its line all the way out to the Granite Mountain quarry site in 1885. And then the real work began.
In 1886 and 1887, more than four thousand flatcars rolled through this very area, each one loaded heavy with great blocks of pink granite, all of it bound for Austin. Four thousand flatcars. You start to picture that — the rumble, the dust, the endless parade of stone — and you understand this was not a small undertaking.
Now here's the detail that sticks with you. Three dozen of those blocks tumbled off the tracks and landed in the creekbed. And they stayed there.
Because the state had obtained its building stone free of charge, and nobody was about to go to extra trouble and extra expense fishing boulders out of a creek when they hadn't paid a dime for them in the first place. Those blocks are still out there. The Texas State Capitol was completed in 1888.
Pink granite, Burnet County, hauled through Williamson County on four thousand flatcars — and a few pieces that never quite made it, resting quiet in a creekbed to this day, which is, if you ask me, just about the most Texas ending a building story could have.
What the marker says
In the 1880s, the arrival of the railroad helped develop western Williamson County and contributed to the construction of a new state capitol. When quarried limestone proved deficient for the new statehouse, contractors chose granite from Burnet County outcroppings. The Austin and Northwestern Railroad, which ran through this area and established Brueggerhoff (Cedar Park) and Leander, extended to the Granite Mountain quarry site in 1885. More than 4,000 flatcars passed through here in 1886-87, carrying the large blocks of pink granite to Austin. Three dozen blocks that tumbled of the tracks were left in the creekbed, since the state obtained its building stone free of charge. The Texas State Capitol was completed in 1888. (2008)