I Found "The" Round Rock

I've mentioned before the community, nowadays it exists as a proper city, of Round Rock, and it's proximity to Austin. I stumbled upon it's namesake a while back on a photo expedition, and I can say it was entirely accidental.

My morning job has moved across Round Rock to a new location, and coupled with our move to a new apartment, my morning commute time has shrunk to ten minutes, but before the move, the place was on a small street parallel to I-35 called Chisolm Trail. One day I went on a ride with my boss for a work related excursion, we travelled down Chisolm Trail past any point I'd been before (which was in fact very close to our base of operations), and I spotted what looked like an old-town-square-type collection of buildings. It had a marker our front that I read as we sped by that said "Old Town Square". How 'bout them apples, I thought.

I decided to go check it out when I had a chance and take pictures. I was informed that it was not actually as old as I might have thought; that it was in fact built quite recently, and that it was made to look old in order to trick possible consumers into checking it out in the same fashion as it had done to me. That prospect, that it was all modern marketing, was almost more intriguing to me and speaks to the whole purpose of this blog site.

The newness of that medical, accounting services, and retail center proved to be true, the fakery of the Old Town Square had lived up to my expectations. As I was leaving I walked through the center, taking pictures as lawyers looked at me with confused looks, and that's when I saw two informative plaques. One had information about the Chisolm Trail, the other had information about the round rock that gave the name to the area and that happened to be right down the street, actually, right around the corner.

Jesse Chisolm was the first of the large Texas ranchers who drove his cattle north to Kansas where they ould be shipped by train east to the slaughterhouses. At that time there were more cattle in the Lone Star state than people, and soon everyone used Jesse's trail. That stretch that I worked on was part of that original route; it meandered but had been paved, and obviously retains the name.

This round rock that people (and signs) speak of was used as a landmark for both the native Craddo and the later white settlers as they came west by wagon along Brushy Creek and headed north up Chisolm's trail. Seriously, the rock is right off the road (Chisolm Trail Rd) and in the creek, like a limestone pedestal you could park a VW Beetle on top of. The limestone that formed the creek bed is especially stubborn in the area that is the Round Rock, since it's persisted during the millennia of erosion. I guess it's been mostly visible, and let's crossers know how deep the water is.

The Brushy Creek community postmaster suggested that the fledgling community change their name to "Round Rock" because then people would know exactly where the place was. They did, and currently there is no (close-by) town called Brushy Creek.

Here's a shot of the fakery of the Old Town Square:



Here's a shot of the round rock. Large enough for a VW Beetle, no joke.



Here is is again, off in the distance, next to the bridge on Chisolm Trail Rd.



I love these wagon ruts the settlers left. Enough settlers passed through here to leave these ruts in solid stone.



This waterfall is only a few hundred yards up Brushy Creek from the Rock. I like waterfalls.