McKinney Homestead

Southwest of Austin, on the north bank of Onion Creek near McKinney Falls, lie the ruins of a mid-nineteenth-century homestead and mill. The district includes a two-story cut-limestone house that burned in the early twentieth century, two stone cisterns south of the house, and the remains of a mill cut into limestone bedrock, with a millrace, dam footings and machinery mounts. Thomas F. McKinney, born in Kentucky in 1801, came to Texas as one of Stephen F. Austin's early colonists. His firm, McKinney and Williams, supplied men, money and ships to the Texas cause during the revolution. He later served in the legislature and moved to Onion Creek around 1850 to 1852, where enslaved labor built his house, stone fences and the area's first flour mill. The Civil War and cotton speculation ruined him. Archeological digs in 1974 revealed intact foundations, a wheel pit with turbine parts, and large unexcavated deposits. The ruins were stabilized in 1976.