Old Quarry Site

Stone for the 1853 Capitol came from this bluff on Shoal Creek's east bank, and a Davis family account says convicts camped at the site and did the quarrying. Dirt now covers the face, with a few blasted boulders left. George Washington Davis, a veteran of Gonzales, Bexar and San Jacinto, received a league and a labor here for his service, 4,605 acres in what is now northwest Austin. His daughter-in-law Elvira was a daughter of James Manor, for whom Manor is named. The city bought about thirty acres in 1955 and opened Northwest Park in 1956.

What the plaque says

Old Quarry Site Limestone quarried at this site was hauled to Congress Avenue by oxen and used in constructing the 1853 Texas Capitol Building. The structure burned in 1881, but stone from the capitol ruins was later used in several Austin building projects. The quarry site was originally part of the land granted to Tennessee native George Washington Davis (1806-84) for his service in the Texas Revolution. Later inherited by his daughter-in-law Elvira T. Davis, the land was maintained as the family homestead for many years. The Davis Cemetery is located nearby (.25 mi. SW). (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Bonnell — 2.8 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.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 4.4 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.
• Harry Ransom Center — 4.5 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 — 4.8 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

• First Presbyterian Church of Austin — 1.7 mi
• Texas Newspapers, C.S.A. — 1.9 mi
• St. John Orphanage and Industrial Institute — 2.4 mi
• Fiskville — 2.4 mi