Site of Temporary Texas State Capitol of 1880's
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built, 1882-1883, to replace the previous capitol, which had burned in 1881. Until the building was completed, the orphaned Texas government conducted business in the county courthouse and jail across Congress Avenue. The three-story brick building -- third Texas capitol in Austin -- was used five years. During this time it witnessed the passage of strong legislation to aid education and to halt fence-cutting, which, in 1883, had exploded into a range war. Governors John Ireland (1883-1887) and Sul Ross (1887-1891) both served in this building. In 1883, the University of Texas held classes here for its 218 students until campus facilities were complete. On another occasion, cattle baron Charles Goodnight loaded $100,000 in cash in a wheel barrow and had it hauled to the capitol to force settlement of a land dispute, but officials refused his offer. After the present capitol was finished, 1888, this structure was used as home of Austin High School, studios for music teachers, and for various offices. When it burned, Sept. 30, 1899, curious spectators sat on the fence around the new capitol to watch volunteer firemen, hampered by low water pressure, fight the blaze. The old building was razed soon after and the bricks were used in structures throughout Austin. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After fire destroyed the previous statehouse in 1881, Texas built this three-story brick Temporary Capitol in 1882–1883, the third capitol to stand in Austin. During its five busy years it saw legislation to fund education and to halt the fence-cutting that had erupted into a range war, hosted the first classes of the University of Texas, and even witnessed cattle baron Charles Goodnight wheel in $100,000 in cash to force a land settlement. After the grand new Capitol opened, the building served as a high school and offices until it, too, burned in 1899.
Why it matters
The temporary capitol was the improvised seat of Texas government during a formative decade, its story braiding together statehouse politics, the birth of a university, and the last convulsions of the open range.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early 1880s, Texas had put Reconstruction behind it and settled into the restless energy of the Gilded Age. Austin was still a young capital on the edge of the frontier, a river town where legislators in frock coats did business only a short ride from open range and cattle trails.
The decade was one of rapid change. Railroads were pushing across the state, barbed wire was beginning to slice up land that had always been open, and a growing population demanded schools, roads, and the machinery of a modern government. It was, in short, a moment when Texas was deciding what kind of place it wanted to become.
Against that backdrop, the loss of a statehouse to fire was more than an inconvenience. A government that suddenly had no permanent home still had to govern a fast-changing state, and it needed somewhere to do it right away.
People & events
When fire destroyed the previous capitol in 1881, the state government was suddenly homeless. For a time, the business of Texas was carried on in the county courthouse and jail across Congress Avenue — an improvised arrangement while a replacement went up in 1882 and 1883.
The three-story brick building that resulted was busy from the start. Within its walls, lawmakers passed measures to strengthen public education and to stop the cutting of barbed-wire fences, a conflict that had flared into a full range war in 1883 as ranchers clashed over who could close off the land. Governors John Ireland and Sul Ross both served here during these years.
Two stories from the building capture the era. In 1883 the young University of Texas held its first classes here while its own campus was being finished. And on one memorable occasion the cattleman Charles Goodnight had a wheelbarrow loaded with a hundred thousand dollars in cash hauled to the capitol to force a land settlement — an offer officials refused. When a grand new Capitol opened in 1888, the old building found new life as a high school and offices before it, too, burned in 1899.
Its place in the American story
The story of this temporary capitol is really the story of a young state government improvising its way through a decade of enormous change. Across America in these years, growing states were building courthouses, universities, and statehouses at a furious pace, and fire — in an age of wood, coal, and lamplight — repeatedly interrupted that work.
It also marks a turning point on the land itself. The fights over fence-cutting were part of a national drama: the closing of the open range. Barbed wire and property lines were replacing the free-roaming cattle economy, and the legislation passed in this building was one small front in that larger transformation of the American West.
And in hosting the first classes of a new state university, the building sat at the beginning of another national trend — the rise of public higher education as states invested in institutions meant to serve ordinary citizens for generations.
If you visit
You will find yourself in the heart of downtown Austin, along Congress Avenue, within sight of the great pink-granite Capitol that eventually replaced this modest brick predecessor. The temporary statehouse itself is long gone, so what you are visiting is the memory of a place rather than the building.
Stand on the avenue and picture the scene: a courthouse and jail pressed into service as a government office, a three-story brick statehouse a short walk away, and the daily traffic of a frontier capital moving between them. Imagine the crowd that gathered in 1899 to watch the old building burn, some of them perched on the fence of the new Capitol grounds.
It makes a rewarding first stop on a walk through historic Austin. From here you can continue up to the present Capitol and its grounds, letting this vanished building set the stage for the grander one that outlived it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John Ireland
- · Sul Ross
- · Charles Goodnight
Related events
- · Fence Cutting War of 1883
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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On September 15, 1883, the University of Texas held its very first classes in the Temporary Capitol on this site, and 52 of the 218 original students enrolled in the new Law department. They studied under two towering figures of Texas jurisprudence: former governor Oran M. Roberts and former state supreme court justice Robert S. Gould. Graduates of that first class went on to notable careers, including Albert Sidney Burleson, later U.S. Postmaster General.
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