Eanes School and Chapel

The school district that grew from the log cabin serves West Lake Hills, a town on the west side of Lake Austin at the edge of the Edwards Plateau, six miles west of downtown Austin. West Lake Hills incorporated in 1953 as a home for people who worked in Austin, and it still takes its mail through the city. In the early 1960s residents paid for a fire engine and equipment out of their own pockets. The town counted 714 people in 1960, 1,927 in 1980 and 3,116 in 2000.

What the plaque says

Eanes School and Chapel A log cabin built on property of Robert Eanes (1805-95) in 1872 was the first Eanes school. In 1874 the school was moved to a one-room frame structure on this adjacent 2-acre tract given by William and Sophia Teague. Itinerant ministers conducted worship services in the schoolhouse, and a community cemetery was located near by. Eanes Chapel, organized in 1923 by University Presbyterian Church in Austin, erected a stone building in 1928. It was purchased in 1956 for classrooms. The Eanes Independent School District, created in 1958, is now (1975) a modern educational complex with over 1,800 students. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Barton Springs Pool — 2.8 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.
• Mount Bonnell — 3.5 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.
• Harry Ransom Center — 4.2 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.
• Texas State Capitol — 4.3 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.

More markers nearby

• Desegregation of Lions Municipal Golf Course — 2.3 mi
• Travis County — 2.5 mi
• Swedes of Texas — 2.5 mi
• Barton Springs — 2.7 mi