Carlson

Carlson had a school as early as 1881, and in 1903 it had one teacher and sixty students. By the mid-1930s the community counted a store, several houses and twenty-five residents. In the early 1940s its school was consolidated with several neighboring districts to form the Manda common school district. The population was reported at 100 in 1945 and sixty-one in 1972. By the early 1990s only the name marked the community on county highway maps, though the 2000 count was still sixty-one. It lies near Farm Road 973, nine miles east of Pflugerville in northeastern Travis County.

What the plaque says

Carlson Brothers Pete and John Carlson, Swedish immigrants who came to America in 1869, settled in this area in 1881. Pete opened Carlson Store, the first store in the community, and John operated the local cotton gin. The town's economy was based on cotton farming. At its height in the early 20th century, Carlson included family farms, the cotton gin (known as Larson Gin after Henry Larson bought it), the Carlson Store (later called the Nelson Store after it was purchased by J. B. Nelson), a school, a community band hall, and a community club. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• LBJ Presidential Library — 19 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 20 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 20 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• Harry Ransom Center — 20 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.

More markers nearby

• Manda — 2.0 mi
• New Sweden Evangelical Lutheran Church — 2.5 mi
• Kimbro — 3.0 mi
• Lund — 3.7 mi