Our new house is in the Rosedale neighbourhood of Austin, about five miles of the downtown.
Rosedale
In the 1860's, the neighbourhood was primarily farm and dairy land. The majority of the homes in Rosedale were built during the 1930s and 1940s and many of these have now been renovated and enlarged. It’s an eclectic neighbourhood and I have observed how remarkably friendly everybody seems to be while outside walking, gardening or just hanging-out. This is a typical renovated Rosedale house:
Some take gardening really seriously:
Quirky yard art appears to be popular:
The politics seem sound:
And activism is alive and well:
Shoal Creek
Shoal Creek runs from north to south through Rosedale and eventually empties into Lady Bird Lake (formerly Town Lake). How benign it looks here:
The "Memorial Day Flood" of May 1981 in which 13 people drowned hit Shoal Creek particularly hard. Some areas received over 10 inches of rain in four hours. The Creek normally flows at 90 gallons per minute, but peaked during this flood at 6 million gallons per minute. “At one point, witnesses report a 15-20 foot wall of water. Not just the creek coming out of its banks, actually a wall of water moving down Shoal Creek to Town Lake” The water receded in four hours but damages were subsequently estimated at $36 million. Since then the City has spent oodles of dollars in flood control engineering which is hopefully effective. In fact there is another, smaller creek (Hancock Creek) that joins Shoal Creek in Rosedale:
Our new home on Great Oaks Parkway is outside the flood zone and in fact, the natural bed of the creek is quite deep there so we have about eighty feet or so of critical elevation. I studied the USGS topo map very carefully!
Moore-Hancock Farmstead
These now-restored log structures represent a rare surviving example of local pioneer farmstead architecture, and right in the middle of Rosedale! Martin Moore and his wife, Elizabeth Ann, moved to a farm north of town in about 1850. Their 521-acre farm, which included this property, was inherited by Elizabeth in 1846 and the buildings date from about this time.
In 1866 Elizabeth sold the homestead to John Hancock, a prominent local judicial and political figure. Although Hancock never lived on the farm, it is believed that his former slave, Orange, and his family lived here in the late 1860s.
Great Oaks Parkway
Our new home is on Great Oaks Parkway which was zoned for development by Francis Conley in March 1953. I think our house was built in 1957. It’s a wide street with large oak trees so the street is aptly named.
It is a rather homogenous street by Rosedale standards, for better or worse. After we do all the cosmetic work that we plan, I shall post photos on the blog but it will be several months away.
Cycling
Austin is a relatively bike-friendly city and there are many opportunities for urban rides.
We will be living close to Shoal Creek Boulevard which has wide bike lanes although parking is sadly allowed in them which can cause a major hazard by forcing riders out into the traffic. The latest City ordnances usually either ban parking in bicycle lanes or, where possible, stripe the roads to allow both.
To the south, the Boulevard connects to the Shoal Creek bicycle trail that allows safe passage all the way into the city and to the Lake.
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