Bee Caves, Texas (unnamed copywriting)

The city of Bee Cave had humble beginnings, and was nothing more than a small rural community for over 140 years. What started as an alternative to the city living of Austin slowly became a popular area to live and later successfully fought against annexation by Austin to become its own incorporation.

In the early 1850s, a man named Dietrich Bohls decided that Austin was becoming too large a city for him to comfortably raise children. The booming metropolis was quickly growing and as of 1850 had reached a booming populace of 900 people. Bohls realized that he would need to move from the city in order to give his children the upbringing he desired for them. This would be the beginning of a tradition of resisting the control of "big government" that has stayed with Bee Cave ever since.

When Bohls made this decision lands west of Austin were still teaming with Indian activity. This meant that there were a few settlers willing to relocate to this area, and as a result, it was relatively free of people living there. Bohls realized that this was exactly what he was looking for and set out to make a new home for his family.

By the mid-1860s, western Travis County was becoming a very popular place for people to avoid having to live in a big city, but still being close enough to one to reap its benefits. Upon seeing what Mr. Bohls and done to clear the land and make an idyllic setting for his family, a number of families decided to settle around him, creating the first incarnation of the small town that Bee Cave would become.

In the 1870s, Bee Cave is had grown large enough to become an attraction to entrepreneurs. Carl Beck arrived in the community and open to general store on what is now the crossroad of State Highway 71 and Hamilton Pool Road. Travelers coming to and leaving Austin regularly stop here to change goods, get information, and mill cotton. The success of Mr. Beck's general store led him to open a cigar factory and a cotton gin. The successful endeavors again increase the size of a small town and pave the way for a United States Post Office to be opened in the community.

Along with the creation of a Post Office came the need to come up with a name for their town. The area was lined with multiple hives and colonies of Mexican honeybees. Around the creek surrounding Mr. Beck's home, there were large numbers of these hives, which the locals referred to as caves. On a whim, Beck decided this would be a fitting name for their town, and named the post office "Bee Caves". His small joke turned out to be quite fitting and stays with the town even now.

Bee Caves stayed and are incorporated small community for the next 110 years, happily considering itself a small, rural suburb of Austin. However in the 1980s, Austin started a campaign to annex the surrounding communities. Some communities took this in stride and look forward to becoming a part of the thriving city, but Bee Caves took pride in its history of resisting the government of Austin, and began a campaign to convince the state government to incorporate its village.

The fight was not an easy one, but through the hard work of some impassioned local residents, and the refusal to give up and simply be annexed, Bee Caves got its wish. In 1987, Bee Caves was successfully incorporated, and officially resisted the annexation.