Austin, Texas

Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of human habitation since at least 9200 BC. The area's earliest known inhabitants lived during the late Pleistocene (Ice Age) and are linked to the Clovis culture around 9200 BC (over 11,200 years ago), based on evidence found throughout the area and documented at the much-studied Gault Site, midway between Georgetown and Fort Hood. Excavations at the French Legation in downtown Austin revealed a site utilized during the Archaic period of North America, about 5,000 years ago. Artifacts dating to the Paleo-Indians period show possible use as early as 9,000 years ago.

Spanish colonists traveled through the area, though few permanent settlements were created for some time. The Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition of 1709 reached the Colorado River near today's Austin hoping to meet with the Tejas Indians (Hasinai). It was met by members of a number of Indigenous Peoples: Yojuan (AKA Yojuane), Simomo, and Tusonibi. Guides for the expedition included Indigenous Peoples they had encountered just previously living near San Pedro Springs: Chaularame, Payaya, Sana, Sijame, and Siupan. With orders not to cross the Colorado the expedition returned to Mexico.

In 1730, three Catholic missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in this area for only about seven months, then was moved to San Antonio de Béxar and split into three missions.

Many of the Indigenous Peoples the Spanish met on early expeditions, for example the Payaya, are classified as Coahuiltecan. Today Coahuiltecan descendants include Austin's Barton Springs among the four springs part of their creation story dating to prehistoric times; these springs are Comal Springs, Barton Springs, San Marcos Springs and San Antonio Springs. While there are many other tribes associated with Austin, Central Texas, of which Austin is a part, was not the long-term ancestral homeland of the ethnographically well-known Comanche, Kiowa, Lipan Apache, Waco (a branch of the Wichita) or even the Tonkawa, all having arrived in Central Texas just before or during the early European contact period.

During the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River. …

Austin, the southernmost state capital of the contiguous 48 states, is located in Central Texas on the Colorado River. Austin is 146 miles (230 km) northwest of Houston, 182 miles (290 km) south of Dallas, and 74 miles (120 km) northeast of San Antonio.

Austin occupies a total area of 305.1 square miles (790.1 km). Approximately 7.2 square miles (18.6 km) of this area is water. Austin is situated at the foot of the Balcones Escarpment, on the Colorado River, with three artificial lakes within the city limits: Lady Bird Lake (formerly known as Town Lake), Lake Austin (both created by dams along the Colorado River), and Lake Walter E. Long that is partly used for cooling water for the Decker Power Plant. Mansfield Dam and the foot of Lake Travis are located within the city's limits. Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin, and Lake Travis are each on the Colorado River.

The elevation of Austin varies from 425 feet (130 m) to approximately 1,000 feet (305 m) above sea level. Due to the fact it straddles the Balcones Fault, much of the eastern part of the city is flat, with heavy clay and loam soils, whereas the western part and western suburbs consist of rolling hills on the edge of the Texas Hill Country. Because the hills to the west are primarily limestone rock with a thin covering of topsoil, portions of the city are frequently subjected to flash floods from the runoff caused by thunderstorms. To help control this runoff and to generate hydroelectric power, the Lower Colorado River Authority operates a series of dams that form the Texas Highland Lakes. The lakes also provide venues for boating, swimming, and other forms of recreation within several parks on the lake shores.

Austin is located at the intersection of four major ecological regions, and is consequently a temperate-to-hot green oasis with a highly variable climate having some characteristics of the desert, the tropics, and a wetter climate. The area is very diverse ecologically and biologically, and is home to a variety of animals and plants. Notably, the area is home to many types of wildflowers that blossom throughout the year but especially in the spring. This includes the popular bluebonnets, some planted by "Lady Bird" Johnson, wife of former President Lyndon B. …

In the 2020 census, Austin had a population of 961,855. The median age was 33.0 years. 19.4% of residents were under the age of 18 and 9.5% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 102.0 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 101.4 males age 18 and over.

99.5% of residents lived in urban areas, while 0.5% lived in rural areas.

There were 410,868 households in Austin, of which 24.9% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 35.0% were married-couple households, 26.5% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 29.0% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 35.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 6.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

There were 444,426 housing units, of which 7.6% were vacant. Among occupied housing units, 41.2% were owner-occupied and 58.8% were renter-occupied. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.2% and the rental vacancy rate was 7.8%.

The 2000 census found that the median household income was US$42,689. The median family income was $54,091. Males had a median income of $35,545 compared to $30,046 for females. The per capita income for the city was $24,163. About 9.1% of families and 14.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.5% of those under age 18 and 8.7% of those age 65 or over. The median house price was $185,906 in 2009, and it has increased every year since 2004. The median value of a house which the owner occupies was $318,400 in 2019—higher than the average American home value of $240,500.

A 2014 study found that Austin was the only U.S. city with a fast growth rate between 2000 and 2010, with a net loss in African Americans. In 2014, Austin's African American and non-Hispanic White percentage shares of the total population were declining despite the total populations of both ethnic groups increasing, as their rate of growth was slower than that of the city's Asian and Hispanic or Latino communities. Austin's non-Hispanic White population dropped below 50% in 2005.

In the 2010 United States census, the city of Austin had a population of 790,390. …

The Greater Austin metropolitan statistical area had a gross domestic product (GDP) of $248 billion in 2023. Austin is considered to be a major center for high tech. Thousands of graduates each year from the engineering and computer science programs at the University of Texas at Austin provide a steady source of employees that help to fuel Austin's technology and defense industry sectors. As a result of the high concentration of high-tech companies in the region, Austin was strongly affected by the dot-com boom in the late 1990s and subsequent bust. Austin's largest employers include the Austin Independent School District, the City of Austin, Dell Technologies, the U.S. Federal Government, NXP Semiconductors, IBM, St. David's Healthcare Partnership, Seton Family of Hospitals, the State of Texas, the Texas State University, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Other high-tech companies with operations in Austin include 3M, Apple (the largest campus outside of Cupertino), Amazon, AMD, Apartment Ratings, Applied Materials, Arm, Bigcommerce, BioWare, Blizzard Entertainment, Buffalo Technology, Cirrus Logic, Cisco Systems, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, Dropbox, eBay, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Hoover's, HomeAway, HostGator, Indeed, Intel Corporation, Meta, National Instruments, Nintendo, Nvidia, Oracle, PayPal, Polycom, Qualcomm, Rackspace, RetailMeNot, Rooster Teeth, Samsung Group, Silicon Labs, Spansion, TikTok, United Devices, VMware, X (formerly Twitter), Xerox, and Zoho Corporation. The proliferation of technology companies has led to the region's nickname, "Silicon Hills", and spurred development that greatly expanded the city.

Tesla, Inc., an electric vehicle and electric power company has its corporate headquarters in Austin inside Gigafactory Texas, a large vehicle assembly plant which employs over 20,000 people. The company expects to eventually have a staff of 60,000 in the Austin area as production ramps up.

Austin is also emerging as a hub for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies; the city is home to about 85 of them. In 2004, the city was ranked by the Milken Institute as the No. 12 biotech and life science center in the United States and in 2018, CBRE Group ranked Austin as #3 emerging life sciences cluster. …

Austin is administered by an 11-member city council (10 council members elected by geographic district plus a mayor elected at large). The council is accompanied by a hired city manager under the manager-council system of municipal governance. Council and mayoral elections are non-partisan, with a runoff in case there is no majority winner. A referendum approved by voters on November 6, 2012, changed the council composition from six council members plus a mayor elected at large to the current "10+1" district system. Supporters maintained that the at-large system would increase participation for all areas of the city, especially for those which had lacked representation from City Council.

November 2014 marked the first election under the new system. The Federal government had forced San Antonio and Dallas to abandon at-large systems before 1987; however, the court could not show a racist pattern in Austin and upheld the city's at-large system during a 1984 lawsuit. In five elections between 1973 and 1994 Austin voters rejected single-member districts.

Austin formerly operated its city hall at 128 West 8th Street. Antoine Predock and Cotera Kolar Negrete & Reed Architects designed a new city hall building, which was intended to reflect what The Dallas Morning News referred to as a "crazy-quilt vitality, that embraces everything from country music to environmental protests and high-tech swagger". The new city hall, built from recycled materials, has solar panels in its garage. The city hall, at 301 West Second Street, opened in November 2004. Kirk Watson is the current mayor of Austin, assuming the office for a second non-consecutive term on January 6, 2023.

In the 2012 elections, City Council elections were moved from May to November and City council members were given staggered term limits In 2022 Proposition D moved the term of the Austin Mayor to coincide with Presidential election years, so Kirk Watson would only serve two years unlike his predecessor Steve Adler

Law enforcement in Austin is provided by the Austin Police Department, except for state government buildings, which are patrolled by the Texas Department of Public Safety. …