Deep Eddy Bathing Beach

The pool's look comes from the rebuilding after the June 1935 Colorado River flood. The city and the Works Progress Administration hired Austin architects Dan Driscoll and Delmar Groos, who drew an L-shaped bathhouse of local limestone in a blend of Moderne and Rustic styles; the project ran over budget, so the dressing rooms were left open to the sky. Decades of other uses, including a science center and offices, left its roof close to collapse. A swimmers' campaign raised the money, and the bathhouse reopened in 2007. The pool is fed by two wells.

What the plaque says

Deep Eddy Bathing Beach Swedish immigrant Charles Johnson built a large home for his family on 39 ares of land in this vicinity in the 1850s. In 1902 two of his children, Mary and Henry, opened Deep Eddy Resort. The Johnsons named the park for a deep hole in the limestone bed of Colorado River at this site that caused the water's current to from an eddy. Recreational facilities included campsites, picnic areas, rental cottages, and a cable ride into the river. Mary Johnson sold the park to A. J.Eilers in 1915. He built a concrete swimming pool in 1916 and renamed the resort Deep Eddy Bathing Beach. Managed by George A. Rowley, the resort featured such attractions as silent movies, a ferris wheel, carousel ride,a diving horse show, trapeze swing over the water, a 70-foot slide, and a 50-foot diving tower. The carnival atmosphere attracted hundreds of visitors each summer. The City of Austin purchased the park for $10,000 on May 31, 1935. Two weeks later a devastating Colorado River flood inundated the city, swept away park improvements, and filled the pool with debris. With assistance from the federal Works Progress Administration, the city rebuilt the park. It reopened in 1936 as Eilers Park and Deep Eddy Swimming Pool. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Barton Springs Pool — 0.9 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 — 2.0 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.
• Harry Ransom Center — 2.0 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.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 2.0 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

• Travis County — steps away
• Austin High School — 0.5 mi
• Swedes of Texas — 0.5 mi
• Confederate Men's Home — 0.5 mi