7 Crazy Facts About Austin

 Austin, Texas. Live music, breakfast tacos, and a whole city that refuses to be normal.

Today we're counting down seven crazy facts that are true about one city on Earth, and only one. You won't find these anywhere else. Let's get weird.

#7: The tree that survived an attempted murder

Treaty Oak is a southern live oak that has stood for centuries, longer than Austin itself. In 1927, the American Forestry Association named it the most perfect specimen of a North American tree.

Then, in 1989, someone poured a powerful herbicide around its roots. The city went to war to save it: crews dug out the poisoned soil, treated the roots with sugar, and rigged up sprinklers to water it. A local man was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Much of the tree died, and today it's about a third of its old size. But the rest pulled through, and Treaty Oak is still alive. Talk about a tough Texan.

#6: A grocery giant saved by mops

In 1980, four young Austinites opened a single natural foods store and called it Whole Foods Market. Less than a year later, the 1981 Memorial Day flood, the worst in a century, tore through the city.

The store sat under about seven feet of water. The damage came to around $400,000, and they had no insurance. Customers and neighbors showed up with mops and buckets to clean it out, and the store reopened just 28 days later.

Thirty-six years after that, Amazon bought the company for $13.7 billion.

#5: A salamander found nowhere else

Austin's favorite swimming hole is home to a creature that lives nowhere else on the planet. Barton Springs Pool is a three-acre pool fed by natural springs, and the water stays near 70 degrees all year long. Robert Redford learned to swim there.

But the real celebrity is tiny. The Barton Springs salamander is only a couple of inches long, and it can only be found in these springs. It's been a federally protected endangered species since 1997, and it's a big reason Austin works so hard to keep this water clean.

Every time you take a dip, you're sharing the pool with one of the rarest animals in America.

#4: A Capitol paid for with land

The Texas Capitol was paid for with land. Not money. Land. When Texas wanted a grand new capitol in the 1880s, it traded the builders about 3 million acres in the Panhandle.

That land became the legendary XIT Ranch, once called the largest cattle ranch in the world. The building itself is clad in Sunset Red granite, and it stands more than 15 feet taller than the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

And Austin protects the view. Starting with a 1983 state law, Texas and the city set aside 35 protected Capitol view corridors, so no skyscraper is allowed to block the sightlines to the dome. Most cities let towers go wherever they want. Austin bends its whole skyline around one building.

#3: TV's longest-running music show

Austin is home to the longest-running music program in television history. Austin City Limits taped its very first pilot on October 17, 1974, starring Willie Nelson, and public television soon turned it into a series.

Since then, nearly every legend you can name has played that stage. The show has been enshrined as a Rock & Roll Landmark by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Fifty years later, it's still taping, still on the air, and still proving why Austin calls itself the Live Music Capital of the World.

#2: Lit by artificial moons

In 1894, Austin bought 31 giant iron towers from a factory in Detroit. Each one stands about 165 feet tall, and they once used carbon arc lamps to light up whole neighborhoods at once, like a full moon on a pole.

Detroit tore its towers down, and so did every other city. But Austin kept 15 of them, and today it's the only city in the world still holding on to its moonlight towers.

Movie fans know one too. "Party at the moon tower!" from Dazed and Confused was inspired by these.

#1: Bat City

Austin has the largest urban bat colony on the planet. Every summer, somewhere between 750,000 and 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats move in under the Congress Avenue Bridge, right in the middle of downtown. Guinness World Records made it official.

At sunset, they pour out from under the bridge in a giant swirling ribbon that stretches across the sky, heading out to eat tons of insects every night. Crowds gather on the bridge, on the banks, and on boats just to watch.

Austin didn't just accept its bats. It made them a tourist attraction. Welcome to Bat City.

So there you have it

1. A tree that survived an attempted murder
2. A grocery giant saved by mops
3. A salamander found nowhere else
4. A Capitol bought with land
5. The longest-running music show on TV
6. The last moonlight towers on Earth
7. Up to a million and a half bats

Only in Austin. Which one surprised you most? Let me know in the comments, and subscribe for more crazy facts.

Be sure to visit the YouTube channel 7 Crazy Facts for more great videos.

Learn about Austin Guided Tours.

Sources

• Mental Floss: The 1989 poisoning of Treaty Oak
• CNBC: How John Mackey started Whole Foods
• Indigo9 Digital: The 1981 flood and Whole Foods' growth
• Afar: Barton Springs Pool history
• Atlas Obscura: Barton Springs
• Austin.com: The craziest fact about the Texas Capitol
• KUT: How Capitol view corridors preserve the view
• Austin City Limits: History of ACL
• Time Out Austin: A brief history of the moonlight towers
• Guinness World Records: Largest urban bat colony