PARK, TEXAS. Park is at the southern end of County Road 196 on the northeastern shore of Cedar Creek Reservoir (Lake Fayette) in eastern Fayette County. It was established during the early 1860s and named for the park-like appearance of the oak grove in which it was located. It served as a cultural and trade center for the small farms on the slopes between Baylor and Cedar creeks. Because of the proximity of other trade centers, it never grew beyond a few stores, a dance hall, and a population of fifty, which it still reported in 1940. When the lake was constructed to provide cooling water for the coal-generated Fayette Power Project of the Lower Colorado River Authority,^qv it flooded most of the neighboring farmland and left the grove, one business, and the dance hall on a peninsula. During the 1980s the LCRA and the city of Austin cooperated in building boat-launching facilities and extensive parking areas at the edge of the lake; thousands of fishermen and boaters avail themselves of the facility each year. In 1990 the population of Park was reported as twenty-two. The population grew to forty-seven in 2000.

Jeff Carroll