Broken Spoke

James White took the name from the James Stewart movie Broken Arrow and his own fondness for wagon wheels, and opened as a cafe on November 10, 1964. Customers danced to the jukebox until he moved the pool tables, and some danced in the dirt lot under the oak. In the 1970s he booked outlaw country acts, Willie Nelson among them, and George Strait and the Dixie Chicks played there early on. In 1988 White and Alvin Crow formed the Broken Spoke Company record label. Nelson filmed part of Honeysuckle Rose there in 1980.

What the plaque says

Broken Spoke In 1964, Austin native James M. White (1939-2021) opened a new dance hall and restaurant south of the city limits at a former lumberyard on South Lamar. It was designed in the style of a traditional honky tonk, and patrons danced to jukebox records and live bands on weekends. The Broken Spoke was so popular that White enlarged the facility with a dance hall and stage. White hired local bands from all over the Austin area, and soon country music legends like Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, Tex Ritter and Kitty Wells played here. Performances by continuing generations of musicians and appearances in movies, songs, music videos and travel articles helped to make the Broken Spoke a cultural treasure. (2021)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Barton Springs Pool — 1.8 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.
• Texas State Capitol — 3.5 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 3.6 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 3.9 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.

More markers nearby

• Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre Expedition — 1.7 mi
• Barton Springs — 1.8 mi
• Swedes of Texas — 2.1 mi
• Michael Butler and Butler Brick Company — 2.4 mi