Mount Bonnell, Austin, Texas' Lover's Leap & tourist destination. (original) (raw)
Covert Park
3800 Mt Bonnell Rd, Austin, TX
30.3210°N, 97.7736°W
Elevation: 775 feet
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark
National Register of Historic Places
Mount Bonnell stone marker
TE Photo, July 2002
Historical Marker (Mt. Bonnell Rd., Mt. Bonnell Park)
Mount Bonnell
Rising 775 feet above sea level, this limestone height was named for George W. Bonnell, who came to Texas with others to fight for Texas independence, 1836. Was commissioner of Indian Affairs in Republic of Texas under president Sam Houston. Moved in 1839 to Austin; there published the "Texas Sentinel", 1840. Member Texan-Santa Fe expedition, 1841. Was captured but released in time to join Mier expedition, 1842. Was killed in camp on Rio Grande, Dec, 26, 1842.
Frontiersman W.A.A. "Bigfoot" Wallace killed an indian he met face to face while crossing a narrow ledge 50 feet above river, 1839. He also took refuge in a Mount Bonnell cave to recover from "flux", but was missing so long his sweetheart eloped.
In the mid-1800s Mormons built a mill on the Colorado river at foot of Mount Bonnell. Mill was destroyed by flood and the Mormons moved on west.
Mount Bonnell was site of picnics and outings in 1850s and 1860s. As it is today. Legend has it that an excursion to the place in the1850s inspired the popular song "Wait for the Wagon and We'll All Take a Ride". As a stunt in 1898, Miss Hazel Keyes slid down a cable stretched from the top of Mount Bonnell to south bank of then Lake McDonald below.
(1969)
View of Austin & Lake Austin portions of Colorado River from Mount Bonnell
TE Photo, July 2002
Mount Bonnell limestone steps
Photo Courtesy Chia-Wei Wang, August 2006
Leaping Lovers
by Mike Cox
"Austin's Lover's Leap is Mount Bonnell. Austin being notable for doing things its own, weird way, the story here is backward.
The woman who plunges to her doom from Mount Bonnell, a prominent feature above the Colorado River, is one Antonette, a European woman captured by the Comanches from the Spanish settlement of San Antonio. When her lover came to rescue her from the Indians, they killed him. Seeing that, Antonette opted for death.
The Austin story may be Texas' oldest example of a variety of the Lover's Leap legend. Newspaper writer and novelist James Burchett Ransom told the story for the first time in "Antonette's Leap and the Death of Legrand, or, A legend of the Colorado," in the Austin Gazette of March 18, 1840." more
View of Colorado River and Austin from Mount Bonnell
Photo Courtesy Chia-Wei Wang, August 2006
Mount Bonnell stone marker with view of the hills
Photo Courtesy Chia-Wei Wang, August 2006
Mount Bonnell Historical Marker
Photo by the 'State Historical Survey Committee' in Austin, Texas, Aug 4, 2008
Wikipedia
Covert Park Marker at the foot of Mount Bonnell
Wikipedia
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