7 Crazy Things You Should Know About the State Capitol in Austin
1. Largest in the country
The Texas State Capitol is the largest of any state capitol in the country. This is partly because Texans are on average two feet taller than people from other states, so the rooms had to be made larger with higher ceilings.
2. More amenities
Not only is the state capitol larger than others, it has many more amenities. Visitors can ride an actual bull in the rodeo room, shop for a cowboy hat in the Capitol store, ride horses through the lobby, ride the ferris wheel in the rotunda, and walk the expansive 2000 acre grounds complete with hedge mazes, paint ball gun battles, fifteen lakes with swans and paddleboats, a shooting range featuring the faces of local politicians as targets and much more.
3. Built as an annex to the Alamo
The state capitol was built as the “second Alamo” in case the original fell into enemy hands, which it did to Mexican forces in 1836. There are three underground levels designed to house, clothe and feed 200,000 troops in case another country, say Canada or Sweden, intends to invade Texas again.
4. Burned down in 1881
The Great Capitol fire enveloped the building in 1881 after young Johnny “Applepan” Stedirotsckyik dropped a match he was using to light firecrackers bought at a roadside stand earlier that week. His dad told him plenty of times, “Johnny, don’t let me catch you lighting off them firecrackers or I’m going to get the switch!” But Johnny never did listen and see what happened?
5. Paid With Bulls
The two guys who built the Capitol were paid with bulls. They rode the bulls north to Oklahoma and built their capitol and were paid in geese. They rode the geese and bulls to Nebraska where they built their capitol and were paid in corn. The whole bull, geese and corn caravan was stopped at the border to North Dakota by rifle-wielding troops. “What’s going on here, pardner?” one of the soldiers said.
“We came to build y’all a capitol building? What do you have to trade?” said the builders.
“How about some beef jerky and some old Sears catalogs?”
“OK, let’s get to it.”
6. Rotunda Echo
Perfectly circular, the Rotunda has one of the best echos of any rotunda in the world. Stand in the middle of the floor and shout, “Are you not entertained?” and the echo will reverberate through the building and down Sixth street, past drunken college students and roll across the West Texas plains to El Paso.
7. Petty Capitol size measuring
Rumor has it that the statue on top of the State Capitol was built just high enough to make the building taller than the US Capitol in Washington, DC, reflecting a long distrust of Eastern elites and their city slicker ways. As a further statement of defiance, the statue is a Romanesque version of Lisa Goldbullion, a member of the Wild Bunch Gang. She is best known for shouting during train robberies, “Welcome to Texas, y’all! It’s time to pay your guest tax!”
