Read First
The Lost Pines
A disjunct population of loblolly pine isolated 100 miles from the East Texas pineywoods, the defining landscape of the county, recovering for more than a decade from the worst wildfire in Texas history.
Bastrop County is one of the more interesting places in Texas right now, and one of the harder ones to explain to people who have not been. It is 30 minutes from downtown Austin and it does not feel like Austin. It is rural enough to have working ranches and a one-stoplight town and brick downtowns where the buildings have not been bulldozed, but it is also the fastest-growing eastward edge of the Austin metro and the home of a great deal of new construction.
The Lost Pines — the 13-mile band of loblolly pine that gives the place its character — are recovering from the 2011 fire that took 1,673 homes and most of the state park's canopy. The Colorado River runs through the middle of all of it. There are four school districts, four named towns, and a great many ranches and unincorporated places.
This almanac is the place where The Beat keeps the things about Bastrop County that do not change with the news cycle — the geography, the parks, the schools, the food, the festivals, where the neighborhoods are, what the river does, what the pine forest is, where to go on a Sunday drive, and why any of it matters.
It is meant for people moving here, people visiting, and people who already live here and have been wondering what the county actually contains. Read it from front to back or jump around. The chapters are listed below.
A disjunct population of loblolly pine isolated 100 miles from the East Texas pineywoods, the defining landscape of the county, recovering for more than a decade from the worst wildfire in Texas history.
895 square miles, four ISDs, four named towns, the Colorado River through the middle. The seam where pine meets oak meets prairie. Why the climate here is not quite like neighboring counties.
Tahitian Village, Pine Forest, ColoVista, Riverside, Cedar Creek, Pecan Park — what each one is, what you trade off, and who tends to end up there.
From a Spanish royal road crossing to the third-oldest Anglo settlement in Texas to the Civil War to the CCC parks to the Labor Day fire that reshaped the county for the next decade.
The river is the spine of the county. Where to put in, where to take out, what you can catch, where the public access is, what the dam upstream means for the water level, and why every town here is on it.
From Austin, Houston, San Antonio, the airport, the toll. Drive times, the route most locals use, what the 130 Toll costs, and what the last 10 miles of every approach actually looks like.