Chris Walker
@WalkerATX • 6,140 subscribers
Asst. News Director @FOX7Austin Murrow-winning reporter, anchor & Emmy-winning producer, EP. Texas Tech & SFA alum. Texas native. Austin/Texas history nerd.
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The Waterline in Austin is the tallest building in Texas and this morning it made its own weather. The skyscraper is acting as an 'artificial mountain' forcing moist air upward to create its own private cloud cover through a process called urban orographic lift. Cool! FOX 7 Austin
Chris Walker419,556 次观看 • 2 个月前
It’s 1987 in Austin, and you’re just learning that the city buried an entire creek from the downtown map 📽️ THE DEATH OF LITTLE SHOAL CREEK AUSTIN, Texas (FOX 7 Austin) — Hidden beneath the glass and steel of downtown Austin lies a forgotten world where the city’s natural history remains preserved in the dark. While thousands of residents walk or drive atop the pavement daily, few realize they are traveling over a vanished landscape that was once a central feature of the city's early geography. The decision to erase this creek from the surface was finalized exactly 110 years ago today. On April 27, 1916, Austin City Council officially voted to encapsulate Little Shoal Creek, approving a $50,000 project to redirect the water into a massive subterranean tunnel. The move effectively "entombed" the waterway, allowing the city to pave over the natural banks that had once hosted landmarks like the 1905 Gilfillan House, which originally stood as a waterfront estate. Before it was forced into the shadows, Little Shoal Creek was a surface-level stream that originated from a natural spring on what is now the University of Texas campus. From its source, the water cut a path south through the city, flowing along Nueces and San Antonio Streets. This natural corridor served as a landmark for early residents until the 1916 project began the process to permanently redirect the flow into the dark. As the city grid expanded, the engineering was so massive that workers didn't bother tearing down the original stone bridges that spanned the creek. Instead, they built the modern streets directly over them. While the entrance to the system is modern concrete, the deeper one ventures into the darkness, the more the past reveals itself. These hand-cut 19th-century limestone arches—which once carried horses and buggies across the water—still stand 35 feet below the surface before the tunnel finally dumps out into the active Shoal Creek channel near the Google Building. While the historic limestone sections remain a silent testament to early Austin craftsmanship, the modern concrete portions of the drainage system have taken on a new, vibrant identity. These sprawling concrete corridors have become a labyrinth for Austin’s graffiti artists, with decades of colorful tags and massive murals covering the walls. This hidden gallery has become a centerpiece of the city's underground culture; many Austin youth now use these modern sections as a destination for secret raves and parties.
Chris Walker75,545 次观看 • 1 个月前
