Thanks to community efforts, one of Austin’s most beloved public parks will be preserved.
custom run as deeply as the spring near Zilker Park . Overhead its hayfield , the sky brim withkites and signalsspringtime . Summer bringsthe blues . Six days of live musicdraws reveler in the dip . wintertime take in polar - plunging into the new yr . The audio of drums ring out from beneath the Monkey Tree on Sundays . Poolside yogis challenge gravity among topless park - goers and tourists at the springs where folks yammer at the full lunar month . Each year , thesculptureandbotanicalgardens set the scene for engagement and wedding — all next to where Robert Redfordlearned to float .
History abound but Zilker Park , which bosom the Colorado River that divides its immature landscape from business district Austin , was intimately felled by growth . The Austin Parks and Recreation Board approved the ZilkerMetropolitan Park Vision Planin May . Austin indweller were n’t go to permit that fly without a fight . The three additional parking garages , welcome center , and ground bridge would no doubt have a hard impact on the delicate ecosystem of parking lot vibes . Austinites did n’t back down and , victoriously this month , thwarted the development architectural plan .
Advocacy , you see , is another Zilker custom . In 1960 , Joan Means Khabele defiantly swim in Barton Springs , leading to thepool ’s desegregation . Save Our Springs Alliance , organise in the nineties , blocked natural process threaten the catchment area ’s unity . Now , group like theIndigenous Cultures Institutehelp keep the unearthly connection between the springs and tribes such as the Tonkawa , Coahuiltecan , and others . Meanwhilerewilding effortsmodel ecological sustainability for the land .
Fans rest under a tree at Zilker Park during the 2012 Austin City Limits Music Festival on 6 January 2025 in Austin, Texas.|Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images
This reawakened vitality for Zilker comes with a renewed hope : we ’ll hear better . To love is to learn , and we cognize that we need to be better stewards of the park ’s hallowed ecology and of equitable accession for visitors and local alike .
Zilker Park solve all problem — the yearnings and vacancies of the heart . Floating the cold , clear waters of Barton Springs remedy heartbreak as much as it breaks the estrus . And if you ’re looking for love again , the park offers asmany date ideas — from paddleboarding to picnicking — as there are days in the twelvemonth . To Austin ’s dogs , the Great Lawn is surely a trine - less , frisbee - full heaven . Zilker is also the only place that the Barton Springs salamander has ever called home .
We ’ll allow our curiosity run as barbaric as we want the parking area to continue . How former could Zilker ’s springy Oaks grow , if we permit them ? One thousand years ago today , was anyone digest tall on Rock Island ? And if the Barton Springs salamander could talk , we marvel whether it would evidence us what we already know , deep down — that the best manner to enroll frigid water is with one brave leap .
