Hornsby Bend

Location: Hornsby Bend, TX (~9 miles east of Austin on FM 969, at the Colorado River)
Anchor Site: Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory / Austin Water Center for Environmental Research

The Hook

The oldest settlement in Travis County was founded by a surveyor who staked out his own homestead before Austin existed — and it’s now a working sewage treatment plant that happens to be one of the best birding sites in Texas. In between, a woman’s dream saved a scalped man’s life, and a war party carrying a white flag turned out to be a trap.

Key Facts

Reuben Hornsby (1793–1879): soldier, surveyor, one of Stephen F. Austin’s earliest colonists; surveyed his own headright at the site in 1832, east of the Colorado River, thirty miles north of Bastrop
Hornsby’s settlement predates the city of Austin (founded 1839) — making Hornsby Bend the oldest continuously recognized settlement site in Travis County
August 1833: Josiah Wilbarger was scalped and left for dead by Comanche warriors near Walnut Creek; Sarah Hornsby dreamed of his location and insisted a rescue party go find him — they did, and he survived
May 14, 1836: a band of ten to fifteen Comanches approached Hornsby’s field carrying a white flag; two men, John Williams and Howell Haggard, were speared and shot down in the ambush that followed
A post office operated at Hornsby Bend from 1856, was discontinued during the Civil War, reopened in 1886, and closed for good in 1901
The Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant was built in 1956–58 to process Austin’s sewage sludge; birders discovered the ponds’ waterfowl in 1959 and the site has since logged over 350 recorded bird species
Reuben Hornsby is buried at the family cemetery on the property beside his wife Sarah

Story / History

Reuben Hornsby arrived in Texas by steamboat in 1830, contracted with Stephen F. Austin for a grant in the “upper colony” near the future site of Austin, and — being a trained surveyor — picked out and platted his own headright at a wide bend of the Colorado River. He built there in 1832, seven years before Austin was founded as the capital. For a stretch of the early 1830s, the Hornsby cabin was the westernmost Anglo settlement on this part of the frontier, which made it both a waypoint for travelers and the first place trouble would find.

Trouble found it in August 1833. Josiah Wilbarger and four companions stayed the night at the Hornsby cabin before riding out the next morning along Walnut Creek, where they were ambushed by Comanche warriors. Wilbarger was shot, speared, and scalped, then left for dead — but he didn’t die, and by his own account (retold for the rest of his life) he lay paralyzed but conscious through the entire scalping. That night, Sarah Hornsby dreamed of a naked, wounded man sitting beneath a tree. She described the location to her husband and insisted a party go look. They found Wilbarger there, alive, and brought him home to recover — one of early Austin’s most durable ghost-and-survival stories, still retold on haunted-Austin tours today.

The Hornsbys’ luck ran out with a different kind of deception less than three years later. On May 14, 1836 — weeks after the fall of the Alamo and the Texan victory at San Jacinto — a band of Comanches approached men working in Hornsby’s field carrying a white flag, the universal signal of peaceful parley. It was a ruse. John Williams and Howell Haggard were speared and shot in the ambush that followed. The frontier east of Austin remained a live combat zone for years after Texas independence was won on paper.

The settlement Hornsby founded persisted quietly for over a century as farmland — a post office, a couple of general stores, a school that eventually consolidated with Dunlap’s. Then, in the 1950s, the City of Austin built a sewage sludge processing facility on the bottomland along the river. It should have been the end of the story for Hornsby Bend as a place anyone would visit. Instead, the nutrient-rich ponds turned out to be one of the best bird magnets in Central Texas — migratory waterfowl along the Central Flyway found the site almost as soon as it opened, and by the 1960s it had a devoted following among birders that has never stopped growing. Today it’s studied and managed as both a working biosolids plant and a research partnership with UT and Texas A&M, hosting well over 350 recorded species on land that Reuben Hornsby surveyed for himself two centuries ago.

Nearby Historic Sites (FM 969 Corridor)

The land along FM 969 east of Austin — encompassing Hornsby Bend proper, the Decker community, and the Colorado River’s great horseshoe bend — is among the oldest continuously occupied territory in Travis County and is largely invisible to most Austinites.

El Rincon / Hornsby Cemetery (10696 FM 969, ca. 1836) is one of the oldest sites in the county. The Hornsby family were among the first Anglo settlers in this part of Texas; their land on the south bank of the Colorado was established during the Republic era, and the cemetery predates Travis County itself. An adjacent Mexican-American cemetery (El Rincon / Hornsby-Mexican Cemetery) reflects the area’s layered settlement history. An Official Texas Historical Marker stands near the entrance.

The ca. 1850 McArthur-Sneed-Simnacher House (9501 Sherman Road) connects directly to Austin’s civic founding: Nicholas McArthur, who built the house, was a contractor who helped construct the first Land Office Building in Austin in 1851 — the building that recorded the land grants that made the Republic function. McArthur died that same year before it was complete; his father-in-law James Doyle finished the job. The house passed through the McArthur, Sneed, and Simnacher families across nearly 170 years; Frances “Fannie” Sneed Simnacher, who inherited it, lived to 103 and died in 2016. The property remains in agricultural use and is NRHP-eligible.

The Decker United Methodist Church (8304 Decker Lane, 1901–1902) anchors what was once the Decker community — a distinct rural settlement with its own cemeteries (Decker Swedish Evangelical Free Church Cemetery; Decker Community Methodist Cemetery) and social life, now absorbed into east Austin’s sprawl. An 1880s Queen Anne parsonage sits behind the church, possibly separately eligible for the National Register.

Thunderbird Farm (9500 FM 969) is a mid-20th-century agricultural complex on two large parcels between Bantom Woods Bend and Imperial Drive. The TxDOT survey found multiple structures NRHP-eligible under Criterion A — a ca. 1945 residence, stone entrance gate posts, a commissary, a swimming pool, a barn, and water infrastructure — as a collective record of large-scale farming operations in eastern Travis County in the 1940s–1960s.

A short distance north, the State School Farm Colony operated from 1934 until the 1990s on the north bank of the Colorado River at FM 969 and Decker Lane. It housed male residents of the Austin State School (originally the State Colony for the Feebleminded, opened 1917) who worked farm operations extending onto the river’s south bank. The campus buildings are now part of KIPP Austin Academy of Letters.

The Rock Quarry Missionary Baptist Church (10411 FM 969, ca. 1940) is NRHP-eligible for its role in the African-American community of eastern Travis County.

Historic Battles

The May 1836 white-flag ambush at Hornsby’s field is a small but telling episode of the frontier war that continued in Central Texas for years after San Jacinto: independence didn’t end the conflict with Comanche bands contesting the Colorado River corridor, and a “peaceful” approach could still be a trap. The 1833 Wilbarger scalping nearby (Walnut Creek) belongs to the same period of sustained, low-grade frontier violence around the earliest Travis County settlements.

Local Legend

Sarah Hornsby’s dream is told, depending on the teller, as either a lucky coincidence born of frontier anxiety or as something closer to premonition — repeated so precisely, on a second night, that her husband couldn’t talk her out of sending men to check. Wilbarger himself apparently believed something uncanny had happened; he lived another eleven years with the scar and told the story often. Take it as you like — it’s one of the oldest ghost stories associated with the Austin area, and it’s rooted in a real, documented survival.

Insider Tips

The Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory (part of the Austin Water Center for Environmental Research) is free and open to the public, with trails around the ponds — check ahead, since it operates on a working treatment plant’s schedule and access rules
Bring binoculars regardless of season; the ponds draw different specialties in different months, from wintering waterfowl to shorebirds on migration
The contrast is the tour material here: a National Register–adjacent pioneer homestead site that is now, functionally, a sewage plant — lean into that juxtaposition rather than downplaying it
Pairs naturally with Webberville (10 min east) and Manor (15 min north) for an East Travis County frontier-settlement loop

Annual & Seasonal Events

Spring (Mar–May)

Spring shorebird and songbird migration (April) — one of the strongest birding windows of the year at the ponds

Summer (Jun–Aug)

Resident wading birds (herons, egrets) are consistently visible around the ponds through summer

Fall (Sep–Nov)

Fall waterfowl migration begins arriving (October–November) as ponds cool

Winter (Dec–Feb)

Peak wintering waterfowl season (December–February) — the single best window for volume and diversity of species

Logistics

Tour stop duration: 45–60 minutes for a walk around the ponds; less for a drive-by/overlook stop
Parking: Free lot at the Center for Environmental Research entrance
Nearby stops: Webberville (10 min east), Manor (15 min north)

Sources

Texas State Historical Association — Hornsby Bend, Texas: tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hornsby-bend-tx
Texas State Historical Association — Reuben Hornsby: tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hornsby-reuben
Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine — “In Unlikely Places”: tpwmagazine.com/wildlife-conservation/sewage-plant-wildlife-mecca-hornsby-bend/
Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory — hornsbybend.org/about
Austin Ghost Tours — “First Ghost Story in Texas”: austinghosttours.com/first-ghost-story-in-texas/

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