19th century Prior to the 20th century, much of the East Riverside-Oltorf area was part of the
Del Valle land grant, originally purchased from the government of
Mexico by
Benjamin Milam in 1825. The land grant was later deeded to Santiago Del Valle, a government official for
Coahuila y Tejas during the
Texas Revolution. In 1850, Hugh Tinnin purchased 500 acres of land south of the
Colorado River, west of the present-day Pleasant Valley Road. Approximately 100 slaves cut timber from the shore and built a large house and cabins in the present-day
Travis Heights. In 1854, Tinnin opened a
ford across the river, which became part of the
Chisolm Trail. The trail traversed the present-day Peace Point peninsula, Snake Island, then across the river to the present-day
Longhorn Dam.
20th century Until the mid-20th century, the East Riverside-Oltorf area remained largely rural and many vast plots of land were still deeded to the Del Valle land grant. In 1949, the
Austin Country Club opened on land purchased from the Del Valle grant. Golfer
Harvey Penick, a teacher at the Country Club, built a small cluster of homes facing the golf course along Penick Place. The land between Pleasant Valley Road and the Country Club was formerly a cattle farm owned by Fagan Dickson and
Roberta Crenshaw. In 1973, the Dicksons applied to redevelop their 497 acres into a sprawling
planned unit development divided into 25 sections, known as "The Crossing". The development included an extension of Lakeshore Boulevard from Pleasant Valley Road along the river to Montopolis Drive. The development that came to fruition was a handful of parcels bounded by Crossing Place and Faro Drive; Crenshaw later donated 30 acres to establish Roy G. Guerrero Park and sold the remaining land to developers to construct student housing. In the 1970s, the City of Austin partnered with the
University of Texas to construct off-campus housing for students between East Riverside and Lakeshore Drive. Following the closure of
Bergstrom Air Force Base in 1993, the demographics of the neighborhood began to change. In the 1990s, the East Riverside-Oltorf neighborhood became one of Austin's biggest ports of entries for immigrant households, primarily from Mexico,
Latin America, and Asian countries. Following the introduction of the neighborhood plan, the Lakeshore PUD and South Shore PUD, two mixed-use developments that replaced former
garden apartment complexes, were approved in 2007 and 2009, respectively. In October 2019, the Austin City Council voted to rezone 97 acres north of East Riverside Drive and east of Pleasant Valley Road to accommodate a massive mixed-use development on the site of five student apartment complexes. The proposed development, known as "River Park", would demolish the existing residences and construct 4,709 multifamily units, 600 hotel rooms, 4 million square feet of office space, 435,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and 60,000 square feet of medical and dental office space. ==Neighborhoods and Business Districts ==