“I remember when …” seems to be a common response when you tell someone you reside in the Lake Travis area. There are lots of folks who may not live here now, but fondly remember spending quality time here back in the day.
What’s funny is most of these stories revolve around Randalls. For example …
“I remember when The Chair King was Randalls …”
“I remember when the Randalls was the Lakeway Rodeo.”
Whaaa? There was a rodeo in Lakeway?
“I remember when Randalls was AppleTree.”
Okay, you win!
In order to paint an accurate picture of what the area truly looked like, we consulted with Lake Travis resident, real estate broker, and entrepreneur Cassie Ford. Her family moved to the Lakeway area in 1981 when she was a kid.
If you’re one of those people who likes to wax nostalgic about the glory days of Lake Travis, feel free to help us fill in the blanks with your own memories.
If you’re new to the Lake Travis area, sit back, grab a cup of coffee and take an entertaining journey with us on this Throwback Thursday!
Where was Randalls?
As we mentioned, a great way to test anyone’s knowledge of the area is to figure out where Randalls was located in their story. Yes, Randalls was originally located where The Chair King is now, as many of you may know.
Lakeway Rodeo
If someone remembers when the Randalls was Lakeway Rodeo Arena, they have a pretty firm understanding of what “back in the day” looked like in LT.
At that time the area was known as Schramm Ranch and the rodeo venue entertained the Lakeway community for eight years with professional rodeos, concerts, dances and BBQs.
Piggly Wiggly
What’s Cassie’s Randalls-esque memory?
She laughs, “Randalls was there, but it was called AppleTree,” a supermarket chain that preceded Safeway’s ‘Randalls.’
“Before that, there was only one grocery store in Lakeway and it was a Piggly Wiggly in the Lakeway Plaza shopping center where Achieve Physical Therapy and Jasper’s is now.”
Horses & muddin’
Cassie remembers when the City of Lakeway added their no livestock policy in the greenbelt because she used to ride her horses through that area (which is now Bella Montagna) to let them drink water from the lake.
She also remembers Steiner Ranch as a functioning cattle ranch with no homes in sight, just 5,200 acres of rolling green pastures with cattle and horses.
According to Cassie, a popular pastime back in the day was going mudding in what’s now Rough Hollow. (Yes, we giggled at that too.) She remembers, “the rope swing was in that lake cove and everyone parked their boats in there. It was so much fun!”
Football fail
We know Lake Travis High School has an amazing football program now, but it wasn’t always that way.
Cassie, who was a Cavalette at LTHS laughs, “Our football team was terrible! Our band just played on the track and never took the field. Back then, we would only win 1-2 games in an entire season.”
Want more #TBT fun factoids about life in Lake Travis? Here ya go:
- FM 620 was a 2-lane highway with no turn lanes or shoulders
- There were no stop lights in the Lake Travis area; the first stop light was at 620 and Lakeway Blvd.
- Whataburger used to be a Dairy Queen
- Sandy’s Hamburger Hut was the first and only fast food spot
- Everyone loved to party on Flagship Texas, a 250-person charter ship that was in Lakeway Marina
- Rosie’s Tamale House was the only Mexican restaurant in the area; it was located at the corner of FM 620 and Hwy 71 (formerly Springhill) and the wait for a table was hours long
- After LTHS football games, everyone went to Jim’s in Oak Hill for greasy comfort food
- One of the best restaurants in the Lake Travis area was called Barbara Ellen’s featuring country cooking and delicious homemade rolls
- If you wanted to go shopping, you drove to Barton Creek Square
Over to you — do you have a #TBT memory to share with us? Let us know in the comments on Facebook.
What about Vincent’s? That was the best place. It was a floating dive restaurant (on a barge) where Johnny Fins was. Vincent’s was the best spot. It had live music, decent food and great swirls- margarita with a swirl of sangria. You could boat up to it or walk the long walkway by Hurst Harbor marina. After Vincent’s burned down (there were a lot of rumors about that), they built Sam Hills. It was never able to capture the crowd that Vincent’s did because it tried to be something we didn’t want. Same thing with the prior Carlos and Charlies. It was never as good as the original restaurant that flooded in 1991. It was rebuilt as something much fancier than it should have been.
Awwww. I wish it were the same today as it was then. Small town, friendly folk, trees, less than 100 chain stores and a rodeo arena. Aww the good old days I never got to experience.
If only I had a time machine…..if only!
My father, Jim Madry used to manage the Tejas Country Store on Lakeway Drive for Col. Gribble and Jim Berry after he retired from the Air Force. That was in 1976. Folks would come in and buy our fresh M-G eggs my dad and I would pick up in town & the small bottled cokes. We sacked our own ice also. In the back of the store we had a hardware and liquor store. And actually folks did not always pay cash, we had hand written accounts where folks could just sign for their goods. Celebrities like Alan Shepard, Dan Rather and Tom Landry were known to stop in when they were visiting. We were the only store for miles prior to Appletree. I could go on and on about back in the day, LOL.
The Country Store was great!
Back in the day, Hippie Hollow was free! There was no Travis County Park or parking. You’d park along Comanche Trail and hike down thru the woods.
Does anyone remember Taco Marina?
My boyfried, Jason Luther, who is my husband now, worked there. It was the only pizza, etc delivery in Lakeway.
1981 we bought property and built a home in the Homestaed. There wad no grocery of any kind except in Oak Hill or Westlake. The closest all nght pharmacy was the HEB at burnet and koenig lane. 620 was a skinny two lanes, there were only 75 homes in the homestaed and no one on Lakeway knew where it was. No uplands no spanish oaks…There was only one soccer field over near World of Tennis and The only other kid friendly spot was Dragon Park which had maybe two homes backing up to it.
The concrete plant was where the plant nursery is now. The only business open after 7 pm was the Exxon at the front of Lakeway. Spells lumber and hardware now a rent a car place near the spot where the Dixon flooring place is now
Hudson Bend road had a restaurant at the corner called La Hacienda. The circle K which is now Exxon was originally where Ruckers tires is then it moved to the opposite corner before being transformed into the Tiger Mart.
The school district had just splirt from the Dripping Springs ISD to form our own Lake Travis ISD
“Before that, there was only one grocery store in Lakeway and it was a Piggly Wiggly in the Lakeway Plaza shopping center where Achieve Physical Therapy and Jasper’s is now.”
Technically, that area wasn’t yet *in* Lakeway, nor was Lakeway an incorporated municipality. I’m not sure when the change occurred, but at least through the ’90s Lakeway was inside Austin’s ETJ, and everyone there used “Austin, TX 78734” as their formal address.
I first visited Lakeway before I can even remember: in the early 1970s as a toddler. My grandparents bought a vacation home in Lakeway shortly before I was born, and growing up we drove down from Dallas to spend most of the summer there. In the mid-1980s my parents wanted to relocate to Austin, and despite it being “out in the sticks” at the time, they ended up buying a house in Lakeway.
To add to your #TBT list:
1. 620 wasn’t the only two-lane highway; Bee Caves Rd. (a.k.a. 2244) was also two lanes almost the entire way between Loop 360 and 71! And for good reason: heading west from Westlake, there was practically nothing on 2244 after you passed the turnoff for the County Line restaurant (which has remained in the same place but expanded considerably, much like the Oasis).
2. When we first moved there, LT only had one elementary and one middle school, and they were both located in the same place: the spot on 620 that now houses the “new” Lake Travis Elementary. (The original elementary-school building was torn down a loooooooong time ago, and LTMS was housed entirely in portable buildings by the time I got there.) My first two years at LTHS were in the “new” building, at what is now the *middle* school; my second two years were in the “newer” building (the current one, which has since been expanded beyond recognition).
3. Going *really* far back, I still remember when Lakeway before The Hills or the entire area around Yaupon Golf Course was built out! IIRC Yaupon opened in the early ’80s, and The Hills made its debut a year or so before we moved down there. (The Hills sat largely empty of homes for a number of years as a result of the S&L scandal that devastated the Texas economy in the late ’80s.) If I’m recalling correctly, back then the *only* way to get into Lakeway was via Lohmans Crossing Rd. – and by that I mean what’s now the “Spur,” starting where the Chair King is located.
The section of Lakeway Blvd. — which back then was still called World of Tennis Blvd. — extending from its intersection at Lohmans Crossing (where the Lakeway Service Station still sits, though back then it was still a full-service garage) to 620 was built in conjunction with Lakeway’s first major “expansion,” with the addition of the entire area on and around Yaupon.
4. I’m not even sure what it houses now, but well into the 1980s the only “commercial” area in Lakeway proper (aside from the Lakeway Inn and World of Tennis) was the Lakeway Country Store, which sat in the same building adjacent to the Lakeway Police Station. The building itself looks roughly the same: it’s the one right on Lakeway Dr. in front of the strip mall that houses Cafe Lago (which itself was built circa 1985). Believe it or not, that same building also housed the Lakeway Dental Office! Or, rather, it did back then: they relocated it to the rear strip mall a few years later, where they stayed for a good 20 years before moving into the *considerably* nicer building across the street from the church.
5. World of Tennis Blvd. hit a dead-end at Flamingo Rd. At some point in the 1990s it was “extended” to incorporate the Estates at Lakeway Hills development, but that was only a loop (and through a gated entry at that). It wasn’t until much later that Rough Hollow was finally built out, with its main entrance added adjacent to the World of Tennis complex. IIRC it was intended to be developed much earlier than its final construction date, at some point in the ’90s — even by the time we moved there in 1985, the “newer” areas around Yaupon and back off of Hurst Creek Rd. were starting to fill up — but the S&L crisis pretty much put a stop on everything for a good five years.
6. Not to belabor the point, but the S&L crisis also put to an end some of the more “fanciful” plans for the new LTHS building (the one still there, but back when it was first being constructed). The slowdown in the Texas economy resulted not only in significant declines in LTISD’s projected student count, but also cut its anticipated budget by a wide margin. Texas school districts were, and still are, funded primarily by property taxes, and the S&L scandal resulted in property values throughout the area plummeting. On the other hand, some of the plans for the high school were a *bit* much by any margin; it was originally slated to have its own planetarium!
7. When it first opened in ’88, LTHS housed a total of under 500 students, all of whom parked in the ample parking lot right next to the building itself. (All of the old parking area now sits underneath LTHS’s various expansions over the years.) Its original athletic facilities consisted of a basic indoor gym, a football field, a baseball field and … well, that’s it! The golf and tennis teams practiced at The Hills and World of Tennis, and I don’t think we even *had* a swim team back then (let alone anything along the lines of lacrosse or its current sports offerings).
8. Finally, it still blows my mind how much the area across 620 from “old” Lakeway and LTHS has been developed. I’m really not kidding when I say there was almost *nothing* there at the time. From the LTMS cafeteria students had an unobstructed view of the entire area all the way to Steiner Ranch (which, as someone already mentioned, was still a literal *ranch* back then). It wasn’t till *long* after I graduated that Lakeway itself “jumped across” 620, let alone expanding all the way to Bee Cave (which itself barely existed, either – obviously its mall wasn’t there, but nor was much else aside from Rosie’s and the general store where 71 hits 2244).
We moved to Lakeway in 1987 – when everyone was so friendly and helpful! We’ve seen the same changes, and love to play the “remember when” game with those who have been here just as long, or share the changes with newcomers. Remember driving over the dam and hoping your mirrors don’t get knocked off? Now we have so many great restaurants and activities in Lakeway that we don’t have to go “into town”!
So sad how everything has changed… I was a lifer at lake travis and had lived there since the early 90’s sadly not ad Ling as everyone els considering I’m on 27, however I do remember there was only 1 bank in Lakeway lol my mom and I would started counting and now there are 10 haha. My family was the first family to settle in Bee Caves in the 1800’s, the Bohls family. You can see what’s left of their homes by the heb across the bridge, and my family has original pictures of that area. It’s amazing to see how different the land is, not gonna lie it’s kinda sad too…