Confession: One of my nerdy hobbies is to spend time cruising through the Austin newspaper archives, digging up relics from the history of the city’s business community.

It’s how I found Michael Dell’s first ad (back when his company was called PC’s Limited), Kendra Scott’s first trunk show (back when she was selling handmade earrings from a tea box around town), and other historical novelties from a time that seems almost impossibly remote now, and yet, was just a moment ago in the grand scheme of things.

My particular favorite is when I stumble on something that seems mundane, but actually points to some big drama that helped shape the city we know today.

And that’s exactly what I’ve got for you here.

Exactly one hundred years ago yesterday, this blurb (below) ran on the back page of The Austin American, right between a city council meeting notice, and the curious case of one Lieutenant Albert Rumsey in California, who had been sentenced to fifteen years in San Quentin for, “getting drunk and forgetting his navy discipline,” but had developed a new variety of prize-winning dahlia in the prison gardens that was so beautiful people successfully petitioned to have him released more than a decade early.

Apparently dahlia’s were something of a craze back then.

Now, compared to the lieutenant, this note about a community garden may seem like the second most interesting botanical story of the day.

But hidden just beneath the surface is a surprising story: A feud between two local millionaires (both named George Washington), the catastrophe that left Austin without electricity for months, and a battle to relocate UT’s historic campus that you can still see with your eyes to this day.

So buckle up, buttercup. Because I’m about to give you all the weekend trivia you need to irritate awe and amaze your friends over drinks…

Back in 1889, the hottest issue of the Austin mayoral election was a dam. The details here aren’t particularly important, but as a point of historical curiosity you may be interested to know that this was such a hotly contested topic that proponents of the dam actually put forward their own candidate – a man named John McDonald. He won, other pro-dam candidates swept eight out of ten city council seats, and for decades, the body of water we know as Lake Austin today was actually called Lake McDonald, because his dam created it.

Construction began in 1891, and when it was finished two years later the Great Granite Dam was one of the largest in the world, stretching nearly 1,200 feet across the Colorado, and towering at 60 feet tall.

Two years after that, its electric plant went live, and began sending power to three modern marvels: The city’s water pumps, the iconic moon towers, and a growing network of streetcars to ferry people around.

His name was George Washington Brackenridge, and he was a banker in San Antonio (among other things, as people in those days so often were). He’d bought 500 acres just downstream of the dam with a plan of selling it to factories that would take advantage of the new water power available once the dam was built.

Alas, it was not to be.

Part of the problem seems to have been the dam itself. According to this wonderful piece from The Austin Postcard, it struggled to meet its power demands almost from the start.

But more importantly, just a few years after it was built, in the spring of 1900, torrential downpours sent water surging eleven feet over the top of the granite blocks. It was too much, the dam burst, and the aftermath left Austin without water service for more than a month. It was five months before the street cars were running again, and the moon towers stayed dark until the following year.

For ages, Brackenridge’s 500 acres sat empty.

I mentioned earlier that in addition to banker, Brackenridge was several other things. One of those was regent at UT. In fact, he’s the longest-serving member of the board there, and held a role for 25 years from 1886 to 1910.

In 1910, he deeded the vacant land by the river to the university, and later (1919-ish) as the school was growing, he made a push to relocate campus from the initial 40 acres in the center of town to the 500 by the river he’d handed over.

Enter our second millionaire.

His name was George Washington Littlefield, and you may recognize it from the Littlefield Mansion, which sits on UT campus today, or from the Littlefield Fountain (also at UT), or the Littlefield Dormitory (you get the picture).

Back then, most of those didn’t exist. Littlefield was a banker and a cattleman, who had just retired from his role as president of the American National Bank (which itself was headquartered in the “Littlefield Building,” one of Austin’s first “sky scrapers” at a whopping nine stories tall; it’s the one you can still see right next door to the Driskill, which… fun fact… Littlefield also happened to own for a while – he actually installed the first electric lights there).

In the spring of 1920, drawings were submitted to the university for Littlefield’s fountain. He died in November of that year, but in his will, he bequeathed much more, including the budget for the new Main Building (the UT tower), under the condition that the campus stay in place for at least eight years.

Sensing an opportunity, the other George continued to push for the move. But he died a month later in December of 1920.

People on all sides were surprised by his will, which dedicated funds to educational scholarships, but specifically excluded university buildings or infrastructure. It was contested for years, with everyone from family to UT leadership testifying to different versions of what Brackenridge wanted, before ultimately, it was executed as he had written it.

“The clear victors in the contest, therefor, were Texas students,” wrote Mary L. Kelley in her book on Texan philanthropy. “As an advocate of, ‘the intellectual equalization of man,’ Brackenridge had posthumously provided for an educational fund to aid ‘deserving young citizens of the United States.’ And the legal instrument he employed to accomplish this philanthropic purpose was a permanent trust fund… the first of its kind in Texas.”

The UT campus remains in its iconic location on the hill, complete with the buildings and monuments that share Littlefield’s name. And Brackenridge’s name lives on too, via buildings of his own, and via UT’s Brackenridge Field Laboratory, an 85-acre chunk of that land by the river.

Today, BFL is a research area – home to nine green houses, more than a dozen distinct ecosystems, and 18,000 square feet of world-class lab space. But mostly, the surrounding land is left alone to grow trees and wildflowers, and to study the effects of habitat restoration.

You can volunteer for certain research projects there. And on a few nights each year, they host Science Under The Stars, a free public lecture series held outdoors on the land that Brackenridge gifted.

The very same land mentioned in our newspaper clipping.

…Aside from the fact that I’m a sucker for a millionaire feud. I love this story because so much of it flies in the face of over-simplified new-age stereotypes.

These guys were millionaires. Bankers. “Old rich white guys,” I believe is the modern parlance. And yet, they were also two of the greatest supporters of women in university at a time when that wasn’t common. As far back as 1897, Brackenridge built the University Hall for UT’s female medical students out in Galveston, and he used his wealth and banking influence to establish loan programs for women studying medicine, law, and architecture. Meanwhile, UT’s Littlefield Hall was built specifically for freshman women, and it remains precisely that way to this day.

They found themselves on opposite sides of the civil war earlier in life (Littlefield for the south). And yet even that doesn’t allow for a simple judgement. For Brackenridge – a literal Lincoln appointee – made his first fortune as a war profiteer, buying cotton direct from confederate farmers and shipping it from Mexico to New York in order to skirt Union export bans. Meanwhile, Littlefield who fought for the Confederates, and was injured badly, bequeathed his former slave, Nathan Stokes, a cottage and spending money for life in his will. Stokes outlived him by almost twenty years.

The two are a reminder that real life is interesting. Far more interesting and complex than we can typically glean from the headlines.

Especially, a boring back-page headline about a local garden in an empty patch of land.