Find out what City Council was up to 100 years ago this week
When Austin City Council meets this week to represent the interests of all Austinites, they continued a heritage that goes back to 1840, when the city elected its first mayor. One hundred years ago on April 15, 1912 Austin City Council was meeting and taking care of business.
“The old volunteer corp”
Today, Austinites can take pride in the heroic men and women who serve as paid professional firefighters. But that pay wasn’t much for Harper Nations, who was hired as a firefighter with monthly wages of $70. The Austin City Council approved Nation’s hiring at its April 15 meeting that year, and appointed him as Assistant in operation of Chemical Fire Apparatus. Nations was brought on during a time of change. Under Mayor A.P. Woodridge, volunteer firefighters were to be replaced with paid ones. By 1916, the Austin Volunteer Fire Department, after 58 years of service, was officially disbanded. Nations remained onboard. The unknown author of the “Official History - Austin Volunteer Fire Department” heralded the change as a benefit to the city:
- “The new department, under the capable management of the men who received their early training as members of the old volunteer corp (sic.) already ranks as one of the best in Texas,” it reads. “Common sense teaches that it should reduce the fire insurance rate here very materially.”
"Big, intelligent teams"
Today’s big, noisy fire trucks and heavy equipment would have wowed the firefighters of 1912, who mostly fought fires from horse and buggy teams. At the April 15, 1912 meeting, the City Council approved the payment of $500 to Colorado Hose Co No 2. The money would be used to purchase a motor-propelled fire apparatus.
The apparatus was the first motorized fire truck to arrive on the Austin scene, according to Austin History Center records. Two trucks were motorized before World War I, according to “He Recalls Fire Horse,” a 1960 article by Betty MacNabb. Fire horses were picked for size, strength, speed and intelligence and went through a six-month training period before they were allowed to pull the carts or the engine. McNabb in her article quotes Marcus Yancey, who joined the department in 1916:
- “That’s when all the hose carts were drawn by the horses – big, intelligent teams, mostly bays,” Yancey said in that 1960 article. “…When the firebell rang over in the old East Side station, it tripped a drop, and the doors to the horses’ stalls flew open. The firehorses would run out and get under the harness, and stand there waiting until a fireman could snap a bridle and collar on them, and they were ready to go.”
For More
City Council today is just as interesting as it was 100 years ago. Detailed meeting information is available online at the Council Meeting Information Center. The historic photos and documents cited in this article were provided by the Austin History Center. The history center’s extensive document library is open to the public. Transcripts from recent and distant past City Council meetings are available on the Austin City Council Meeting Archives page.