Wood Street Settlement at Shoal Creek

Shoal Creek, the settlement's western edge, rises in northwest Austin and runs ten miles south to the Colorado, over clay and sandy loam shaded by junipers, oaks and pecans. By 1839 Austin residents were already fishing and swimming in it, and hiking trails followed along its banks. As the city paved the land around it, the streets poured runoff into the creek, and it began to rise fast in storms. The worst flood came in 1981, when thirteen people were killed and damage reached an estimated $30 million.

What the plaque says

Wood Street Settlement at Shoal Creek The northern half of Wood Street, near the west bank of Shoal Creek and extending to Henderson Street, was once home to a distinct enclave of African American and later Mexican American residents. As the frontier city's natural western boundary, Shoal Creek became a settling point for formerly enslaved people following the Civil War. The community along Shoal Creek was part of the African American settlements of West Austin which developed in the years after Reconstruction. As domestic servants, cooks, drivers, carpenters and laborers, residents influenced the lives and culture of Austin. Despite being surrounded by the homes of wealthier Anglos in the era of increasing racial prejudice, the African American community on Wood Street thrived into the 1920s. Two houses from the freedmen era endured several devastating floods and existed for over 100 years on the site before being demolished in 2014. As the 1928 city master plan pushed African American residents into a "Negro district" east of East Avenue, Hispanics (Mexican and Mexican American) began to occupy the houses along Shoal Creek, likely connected to the significant cultural enclave located just east of Shoal Creek dubbed "Mexico" at the time. While racial segregation concentrated most Tejanos in East Austin by the 1920s, the community at Shoal Creek persisted through the 1970s where it continued to contribute to the cultural and economic development of the downtown area. Although many of the physical reminders of this era in Austin's history have disappeared, residents of Wood Street at Shoal Creek were major contributors to the rich and diverse ethnic historical geography of Austin. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Capitol — 0.7 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.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 1.0 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.
• Harry Ransom Center — 1.1 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.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 1.2 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.

More markers nearby

• Ira Hobart Evans — 0.3 mi
• Wooldridge Square — 0.4 mi
• Pease School — 0.4 mi
• Zachary Taylor Fulmore — 0.4 mi