Barton Springs Sunken Garden - Austin, TX - WPA Projects on Waymarking.com

From texasescapes.com website:

This spring originally powered a mill, then an ice factory. The state's first fish hatchery was established at Sunken Gardens. Most of the walls have washed away and are in need of repair, but the spring still flows. As of this writing, Sunken Gardens will probably be fenced off to protect the Barton Springs salamanders.

A flood in 1935 left four inches of mud in the Barton Springs bathhouse and washed away the Lake Austin Dam. Zilker Park was left under water for days. A new bathhouse was built in 1947 for $180,000. It was designed by Groos and Driscool, the same firm that designed the Deep Eddy bathhouse. The 1947 bathhouse still stands and has large open-air dressing rooms and grassy areas.

During World War II, soldiers wrote to their families about fighting for Barton Springs. It was an Austin treasure. Little did they imagine that the land around Barton Springs would develop rapidly after the war. An environmental debate over the springs has been raging since the late 1950s when the Parks and Recreation staff noticed trash and dead animals in the runoff coming from the Barton Hills subdivision, or what used to be the Rabb land, and high levels of fecal coliform. In the 1960s, an environmental group formed and began addressing these concerns with the Parks Department. A plan for a greenbelt was drawn up but not built, yet the public showed an interest in extending Zilker Park up Barton Creek. However, the city didn't respond and valuable recharge areas in the aquifer were rapidly developed. Robert Mueller was a locker boy and cashier at Barton Springs. He offered to sell a portion of his land, about forty to fifty acres on the south side of the creek from the pool up to Campbell's Hole, but the city declined to buy it. The city passed up several opportunities to buy and protect the land surrounding Barton Springs, and today it is an endangered natural resource.

Project type: Park structure/building (other than lodge) Date built or created: 1937-1938 Location: Austin, Tx Sunken Garden City: Austin Condition: In need of renovation/repair Website for additional information: Not listed

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