Austin, Texas Map 1885 City Plan - Austin, Colorado River, Waller Creek

Reuben W. Ford, a surveyor whose work is regarded as the most definitive record of Austin, Texas, from the second half of the nineteenth century, produced this revised map of the city in 1885, apparently intended for Morrison & Fourmy's Austin City Directory of 1885-86. No copy of the map has been found bound into an actual surviving directory, and the sheet is itself extremely rare, with no example recorded in OCLC beyond a reference in the Texas State Library and Archives and a photostatic copy noted at the Austin History Center. As originally surveyed in 1839, Austin had been bounded by the Colorado River, West Avenue, North Avenue and East Avenue, a compact grid that Ford's 1885 survey substantially expanded. Ford's work stands as the authoritative record of the city's growth at exactly the moment Austin was pushing beyond its original townsite boundaries.

The map shows Austin's original plan extended northward and eastward, reaching the lands northeast of Waller Creek owned by C.F. Compton and the George Sampson Farm, and east beyond Chamber's Mill on the Colorado River. Ford's survey added 52 new blocks to the city's north, extending to Magnolia Avenue, now Martin Luther King Boulevard, along with roughly eight additional blocks along the Colorado River at the mouth of Waller Creek. This expanded grid was later published as Ford's Topographical Map of the City of Austin, issued by Phineas De Cordova, cementing Ford's survey as the reference point for the city's plan through the rest of the century. San Antonio, further south along the state's central corridor, and Houston, the state's principal Gulf Coast port, both anchor Austin's place within Texas as a young but rapidly organizing state capital.

This map makes a natural gift for an Austin family tracing roots to the city's earliest expansion beyond its original 1839 townsite, or for a Texas transplant now settled in the capital who wants to see exactly how the streets they walk were first laid out. Its extreme rarity, with no known surviving directory copy and only a handful of institutional references, gives it real weight for a serious Texas map collector. It's supplied unframed and available in the full range of sizes, from a compact print to a large-format piece for a study or office wall.