Legends & Lore of the Texas Capitol

by Mike Cox

  In true O. Henry style, the tale even had a surprise ending: despite the violence earlier that week, the protest march on the capitol that day proceeded peacefully.

  22

  A MASSIVE MYSTERY—LITERALLY

  Back in the 1950s, Austin’s Airport Boulevard carried light traffic to and from the city’s small air terminal, a one-story frame structure built in the 1930s. Railroad tracks paralleled the roadway from Airport’s intersection with North Lamar Boulevard to East Avenue, a thoroughfare that later became Interstate 35. And along the railroad right-of-way adjacent to the boulevard lay several large blocks of red granite.

  For those not familiar with Austin’s landscape, red granite is not indigenous to the area. The closest point it occurs naturally is the wrongly named Burnet County town of Marble Falls, which more correctly should be Granite Falls. The granite blocks in Austin, and others strewn at various points along the railroad right-of-way from Burnet to the capital city, fell from rail cars carrying them to the capitol construction site in the mid-1880s. Since the state got the granite at no cost, no one had any incentive to spend the time, effort and money it would have taken to retrieve the stones.

  After the decision had been made to build the capitol of Texas granite rather than Indiana limestone, subcontractor Gus Wilke needed a way to get fifty thousand tons of donated stone from the soon-to-be-opened quarry at Marble Falls to Austin.24 Necessity being the mother of capitalism as well as invention, a sixteen-mile rail spur (locals called it the Wilkeville & Rosewood) was laid from Granite Mountain to Burnet, which had existing rail service to Austin. That was provided by the Austin and Northwestern Railroad, which had been in operation since the spring of 1882. Under Wilke’s supervision, workers completed the spur on December 1, 1885, and the quarrying process soon began in earnest. By July 25, 1886, 300 convicts were working at Granite Mountain.25 An additional 148 non-inmate laborers, nearly half of them Scottish stonemasons, dressed the granite at a facility Wilke had constructed in Burnet. As had been the case in Oatmanville, the project noticeably perked up the local economy.

  Prison inmates quarried granite from near Marble Falls, Texas, but stonecutters brought in from Scotland dressed the stone. Author’s collection.

  Harry Landa, whose father had come to San Antonio from Germany via New York in 1844, ran a flour and feed supply house in Burnet at the time. His place of business being adjacent to the tracks, Landa got hired by Wilke to supervise the loading of the granite onto the rail cars at one dollar a car. “Wilke would come to town every Saturday,” Landa later recalled, “pay me for my services, and then pay off the workmen. The main street of Burnet became a lurid Broadway, with the saloons, gambling houses and everything going full swing.”

  The capitol project not only stimulated a boom in Burnet County, as capitol board construction superintendent R.L. Walker presciently told the Austin Statesman, but the benefit would likely also continue for a long time. “[The quarrying] opens up the way for future developments that are grand in their possibilities,” he said. “There will be no need to cease working these inexhaustible quarries even on the completion of the capitol. The time will come when it will be in demand for…the erection of other costly edifices all over the state.” (Walker was right. The Marble Falls quarry, which has sent Texas granite all over the nation, remains in business, albeit under different ownership.)

  From Burnet, the granite blocks intended for the capitol were shipped to the Austin and Northwestern depot between Fourth and Fifth Streets, just east of the present interstate highway. The granite was then transferred to a short line that extended up East Avenue and west on Twelfth Street to a point near the capitol construction site. The line took that route because Austin city fathers had rejected the original plan to run the tracks right up Congress Avenue.

  The syndicate’s steam engine Lone Star pulled four thousand carloads of granite to Austin during the construction of the capitol, often at a rate of ten to fifteen cars a day. One flatcar could only carry two blocks of granite, the load being placed over each set of wheels. The tremendous weight put intense pressure on the forty-pound narrow-gauge rails, often causing them to spread. When that happened, the cars jumped the tracks and the granite spilled from the train.

  The long-lost stones remained visible along Airport Boulevard through the 1960s. But they are gone today and have been absent for decades. So where did they go?

  The Capitol Syndicate had this locomotive custom built to haul granite to the capitol job site. They named it the Lone Star. Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives.

  A hunk of spilled granite remains where it fell in the mid-1880s along the railroad right-of-way in the Burnet County community of Bertram, Texas. Photo by the author.

  Three Scottish stonecutters never saw their native land again. Their co-workers placed this granite monument over their graves in what is now the Old Burnet Cemetery. Photo by the author.

  That some souvenir hunter took the granite is easily ruled out. Granite weighs 168 pounds per cubic foot, compared to a mere 62 pounds for a cubic foot of water. Obviously, it would take heavy equipment to remove rocks of that size. At some point in the early 1970s, someone using some stout hydraulic equipment must have removed the granite along Airport Boulevard, but the files of the public library’s Austin History Center make no mention of it. Why the stones were removed is also a good question, though it probably had to do with the value of the granite finally exceeding the cost of moving it. Or maybe the corporate successor several times removed of the long-defunct rail line that initially owned the right-of-way had the stones removed.

  Fortunately for those interested in history, not all the fallen granite in Austin has disappeared. There’s still a medium-sized chunk on the railroad right-of-way where 38½ Street crosses the tracks, just east of I-35, and more in the vicinity of the old Watters Park community. Other single pieces of granite can still be seen between Burnet and Austin along the rail right-of-way adjacent to State Highway 29.

  The largest scattering of long-abandoned cut granite lies in Brushy Creek in Williamson County near a railroad trestle that still crosses the creek bed at that point. Eighteen flatcars derailed there in 1886, leaving thirty-six giant blocks lying in the creek. Since half the rail line’s rolling stock also ended up in the creek bed, the flatcars were put back into service as rapidly as possible. No one cared about the spilled granite, which was left where it lay.

  Another piece of granite connected to the capitol stands in the Old Burnet Cemetery. The tallest tombstone amid nearly two thousand, it marks the spot where three Scottish stonecutters who died while working on rock for the capitol lie buried. The piece, a large square base supporting a smoothed granite column with its top symbolically broken off, was placed “By Their Fellow Workmen” in memory of the three young men who came to the United States seeking a better living and never made it home. In the lower left corner is noted, “Cut of Burnet Granite.”26

  Closer to Austin, starting at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday, a Capital Metro commuter train makes ten trips a day across Brushy Creek and the scattered granite blocks left over from that long ago freight train wreck. Traveling from Leander via Cedar Park to downtown Austin along modern, standard-gauge tracks built on the old Austin and Northwestern right-of-way, most passengers—lost in their smartphones, tablets and laptops—have no idea they’re zipping past history.

  23

  THE DAY THEY ATE THE CAPITOL

  It should be remembered that on February 1, 1982, the government of Texas sanctioned an event at which its citizens were cordially invited to eat cake—a giant replica of their historic capitol.

  Queen Marie Antoinette is famously credited with derisively dismissing the fate of her starving subjects during the French Revolution by uttering four hard-to-swallow (at least for them) words: “Let them eat cake.” Turns out the expression had been around a lot longer than that, and no documentation exists that the young queen actually said it. Still, she continues to
get the blame for the arrogant remark. Convicted of treason, she went to the guillotine on October 16, 1793, in the wake of the bloody uprising that transformed France from a monarchy to a republic.

  State officials probably didn’t have the late French queen in mind when they decided to provide free cake for all comers at the celebration they were planning to mark the capitol’s first century, but it proved a nice touch at an otherwise fairly low-key event. As a matter of fact, the festivities that February 1 amounted to a mere cupcake in comparison to the five-day dedication celebration in May 1888. Still, more than 2,700 Texans (and two members of royalty from Scotland in remembrance of the Scottish stonecutters who came to Texas) showed up for the observance and ingested a 250-pound cake shaped and iced to look like the capitol. They ate it, naturally, in the rotunda of the building they had come to honor.

  In yet another superlative associated with a long list of capitol-related superlatives, the Texas Restaurant Association—with considerable help from numerous other organizations—presented the people of Texas with the massive cake. The edible replica of the capitol included more than seventy-five pounds of flour, one hundred pounds of sugar and forty-five dozen (540) eggs. It stood two and a half feet high, six feet across and three and a half feet wide. Granite not being digestible, the cake was covered with pink pastillage and buttercream icing. The well-manicured grounds around the capitol were represented by landscaping covered with light-green icing.

  In 1982, to celebrate the centennial of the capitol’s construction start, the state served a giant capitol cake to all comers. Author’s collection.

  Just as the state government eventually outgrew the 1888 capitol and began putting up other office buildings to accommodate Texas’s expanding bureaucracy, the giant capitol cake was not large enough to afford a slice to everyone who wanted a piece. So an additional fourteen sheet cakes made it possible for all comers to enjoy a little sweet taste marking the occasion.

  The cake went on display in the rotunda at 8:00 a.m. that day. Three hours later, workers moved the giant pastry to the front steps of the capitol for the program. Sugar junkies in the crowd could only look on with watering mouths until all the speechifying ended. Volunteers then moved the cake back into the rotunda.

  Finally, Governor William P. Clements, Texas’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, and his wife, Rita, cut the initial piece of cake with a sterling silver cake cutter donated by an Austin jeweler. By then, it was lunchtime, but most of those on hand for the event decided, given the significance of the observance, that they would eat dessert first. After that, volunteers fed the masses until the capitol cake had been reduced to crumbs.

  Of far more substance than cake, an essay written for the occasion by noted Texas historian T.R. Fehrenbach put the capitol in perspective:

  Buildings are erected by people for shelter, but more than that, as symbols and monuments. Legislators in 1879 wanted a new structure to house state government, but they also wanted a symbol of the state’s inherent greatness. They did not dwell on the past, and they did not think small. This was to be the best state capitol…a statement for the ages.

  Clearly, all those involved in the process had succeeded in making that statement true. But Fehrenbach also noted that the statehouse had not been built “without political feuds, rhetoric, controversy and wheeling-dealing on a Texas scale.…There was fine-lining and maneuvering, and trade-offs.… There were cost overruns.” Yet, he declared, “the capitol emerged in its full magnificence…and so [has]…the state it symbolizes today.”

  Reducing that symbol to a king-size cake must have proven quite popular, because a second capitol cake was prepared six years later for the centennial of the capitol’s completion. This time, however, the cake was the tasty highlight of the children’s party. First Lady Rita Clements (her husband had lost a bid for a second term in 1982 to Democrat Mark White but regained office in 1987) made the ceremonial first slice.

  The kids loved the cake, but the centennial celebration turned out to be a washout. On May 7, a steady drizzle began falling about twenty minutes before the centennial parade’s start time and lasted throughout the Congress Avenue procession. Whereas an estimated twenty thousand people had attended the capitol dedication a century before, only 10 percent of that number showed up for the 1988 festivities. When the precipitation continued, officials decided to scrap plans for an outdoor celebration and moved the centennial ceremony to the House of Representatives. At least this time, one hundred years after the 1888 dedication, the capitol’s roof did not leak.

  24

  CAPITOL KITSCH

  Back when most American adults smoked, many a cigarette butt got ground out and left to stink up ashtrays bearing an image of the Texas Capitol. And no telling how much whiskey got knocked down by folks drinking from a genuine Texas Capitol shot glass.

  Visitors to the capitol or Austin in general have been buying statehouse souvenirs since there’s been a capitol. Actually, even before the new capitol opened, entrepreneurs realized money could be made by producing capitol commemorative items. “The News has received a copy of the Capitol Souvenir, a handsome advertising card, published by Mr. W.M. Edwardy,” the Galveston News noted on March 1, 1885, the day before the laying of the capitol cornerstone. “It contains a lithograph picture of the state capitol.” The newspaper applauded it as “a model of lithographic work…gotten up with that taste and care which are characteristic of Mr. Edwardy in his advertising enterprises. The Souvenir will be circulated throughout the State and distributed at Austin on the occasion of laying the corner-stone.”

  With the building’s dedication approaching in the spring of 1888, vendors hoped to make money off the thousands of people expected for the event. “The carver and wood-workman who finished up the governor’s room at the capitol has purchased all the remnants, and is working them up into beautiful souvenirs, as mementoes of the state capitol,” the Austin Daily Statesman noted on May 6, 1888, ten days before the capitol dedication.

  The State Preservation Board, which curates some 3,500 original or reproduction items of historical significance in the capitol, has in its collection two small goblets made of pressed wood that were sold as souvenirs during the capitol dedication. Each bears a pasted paper label reading, “Capitol Building, Austin, Texas, May, 1888. This is to Certify that this SOUVENIR is Manufactured from the Remnants of the Lumber used for Finishing the Interior of the TEXAS STATE CAPITOL…Gus Wilke, Contractor.” Another early capitol souvenir was identified when it surfaced for sale on the Internet auction site eBay. That item, purchased by a private collector, was a small piece of cut granite bearing a label asserting that it was left over from the construction of the capitol. It, too, noted the name of the capitol contractor.

  This souvenir coin was distributed the week of the capitol’s dedication. Author’s collection.

  The preservation board and a few private collectors also had a white metal commemorative coin struck as a dedication souvenir. One side features a raised image of the capitol with the wording, “Capitol of Texas” rounded on the top and “Dedicated May, 1888” rounded on the bottom. The other side of the coin has an image of an array of flags behind a cannon and a pyramid of stacked cannon balls. The top says “Camp Ross” and the bottom says “Austin Interstate Drill.” Camp Ross was a large, if temporary, state militia bivouac on the south side of the Colorado River within a short march of the Congress Avenue bridge. The line about the drill referred to the maneuvers and “sham battles” the state troops held during the week of the dedication. Also sold were photographic prints of the new statehouse, suitably labeled “Souvenir…May 1888.”

  Another vendor sold copies of “The Texas State Capitol Grand Waltz,” a special composition written by Lenora Rives-Diaz for the dedication. At sixty cents each, five thousand copies quickly sold out, according to Austin Statesman coverage of the dedication. Even the newspaper got into the act, selling within hours ten thousand copies of a special capitol
dedication edition.

  The most common of the older capitol souvenirs are postcards, the earliest dating to the first decade of the twentieth century when it cost just a penny to send a card with a lithograph image on one side and space for a message and address on the other side. Postcard collectors have found dozens of Texas capitol cards. Far less common are vintage capitol postcards on which the sender actually wrote something about the statehouse itself. The preservation board has two such cards. One, mailed in 1906, was from a woman who had ascended the spiral staircase to the dome. “I climbed to the top of the dome on Sat. but I haven’t gotten over the effects of the trip yet,” she jotted on the card. Another woman, sending a card in 1916, wrote: “I climbed to the top of the Capitol dome…and was treated to a fine view of a small and not very nice city.” While e-mail and texting have practically killed off the sending of printed “Wish you were here” images, postcards of the capitol are still sold.

  A wave of Texas-related souvenirs hit the market in 1936 to capitalize on the Texas centennial celebration. A few, including a sterling silver ring, had images of the capitol, but most featured other Texas icons, particularly the Alamo. The majority of the items manufactured for sale bore the official seal of the Texas Centennial Exposition (which was held at the State Fair of Texas grounds in Dallas) and the dates 1836–1936. When the U.S. Post Office Department issued a three-cent Texas centennial stamp, at least one of numerous first-day-of-issue covers produced for philatelists featured an image of the state capitol.