The History of Bee Cave, Texas

The city of Bee Cave had humble beginnings, and waswhat is now the crossroad of State Highway 71 and
nothing more than a small rural community for over 140Hamilton Pool Road. Travelers coming to and leaving
years. What started as an alternative to the city livingAustin regularly stopped here to exchange goods, get
of Austin slowly became a popular area to live andinformation, and mill cotton. The success of Mr. Beck's
later successfully fought against annexation by Austingeneral store led him to open a cigar factory and a
to become its own incorporation.cotton gin. The successful endeavors again increased
In the early 1850s, a man named Dietrich Bohls decidedthe size of a small town and paved the way for a
that Austin was becoming too large a city for him toUnited States Post Office to be opened in the
comfortably raise his children. The booming metropoliscommunity.
was quickly growing and as of 1850 had reached aAlong with the creation of a Post Office came the
staggering populace of 900 people. Bohls realized thatneed to come up with a name for their town. The
he would need to move from the city in order to givearea was lined with multiple hives and colonies of
his children the upbringing he desired for them. ThisMexican honeybees. Around the creek surrounding Mr.
would be the beginning of a tradition of resisting theBeck's home, there were large numbers of these
control of "big government" that has stayed with Beehives, which the locals referred to as caves. On a
Cave ever since.whim, Beck decided this would be a fitting name for
When Bohls made this decision lands west of Austintheir town, and named the post office "Bee Caves".
were still teaming with Indian activity. This meant thatHis small joke turned out to be quite fitting and stays
there were a few settlers willing to relocate to thiswith the town even now.
area, and as a result, it was relatively free of peopleBee Cave stayed an incorporated small community
living there. Bohls realized that this was exactly whatfor the next 110 years, happily considering itself a small,
he was looking for and set out to make a new homerural suburb of Austin. However in the 1980s, Austin
for his family.started a campaign to annex the surrounding
By the mid-1860s, western Travis County wascommunities. Some communities took this in stride and
becoming a very popular place for people wanting tolook forward to becoming a part of the thriving city, but
avoid the big city to live, yet still being close enough toBee Cave took pride in its history of resisting the
reap its benefits. Upon seeing what Mr. Bohls had donegovernment of Austin, and began a campaign to
to clear the land and make an idyllic setting for hisconvince the state government to incorporate its
family, a number of families decided to settle aroundvillage.
him, creating the first incarnation of the small town thatThe fight was not an easy one, but through the hard
Bee Cave would become.work of some impassioned local residents, and the
In the 1870s, Bee Cave had grown large enough torefusal to give up and simply be annexed, Bee Caves
become an attraction to entrepreneurs. Carl Beckgot its wish. In 1987, Bee Caves was successfully
arrived in the community and open to general store onincorporated, and officially resisted the annexation.