Cedar Park, Texas (unnamed copywriting)

Cedar Park, Texas, and inner ring suburb of Austin, is not only one of the first towns of Williamson County, it is one of the oldest settlements of Texas as a whole. In fact, due to its location on the water of Brushy Creek, it has been found in an archaeological dig that they are our remnants of many different settlements on the location, dating back to almost 5000 BC.

Cedar Park as we know it today was initially founded as a fort for the Texas Rangers in 1836. This fort is widely believed to be the first building ever constructed in Williamson County. The Rangers, however, will only occupied the fort for two months before they were called away to Bastrop to help settlers escape from Indian attacks. When Rangers returned in 1837, they found that the fort had been burned to the ground, and they were forced to rebuild. Two years later, a few miles north, one of the worst massacres in Texas history, the Webster party massacre, occurred. This massacre was enough to scare off potential settlers for the next 10 years, and as a result the area was slow to grow.

After enough time passed, the massacre was forgotten and settlers started to trickle in. The area remains sparsely populated until the 1870s, when the area became well known for its cattle industry. One of the first Parents of the area was named George Washington Cluck, the man who later would found the town of Cedar Park.

In 1871, Cluck and his family completed a massive cattle drive to Abilene, despite constant attack from Indians and rustlers. Upon their successful return, the family purchased 320 acres of land on the Creek, and began to build a much larger log home. Other families came and began to populate the area around his home, and this was the beginning of what is now Cedar Park. Initially, the residents decided on the name Running Brushy for their settlement and it remained the name until 1882 when it was changed to Bruggerhoff. At this point the Austin Northwest railroad purchased some land from Cluck, and establish a station here.

This railroad station is what would cause the small community to boom into a thriving city. Around this time residents started to complain about the name of their town, saying it was too hard to pronounce and too hard to spell. Upon urging from the residence, Cluck changed the name to Cedar Park and opened a one acre walking park directly across from the station. This park was a radio or destination for residents of Austin to take day trips and enjoy the beauty.

Cedar Park continued to grow as a neighboring community to Austin all the way until the late 1900s. In the late 80s, as Austin was attempting to annex neighboring communities, Cedar Park was incorporated, and officially became one of the largest suburbs to Austin. In 1990, the population of Cedar Park was approximately 10,000. Due to its proximity to Austin and Austin's booming growth, by the last census, the population had grown to over 90,000.