BEE CAVES, TEXAS. Bee Caves (Beecaves or Bee Cave) is at the intersection of State Highway 71 and Farm roads 620 and 2244, twelve miles west of Austin in west central Travis County. It was named by early settlers for a large cave of wild bees found near the site. A post office opened there in 1870 with Martin V. Lackey as postmaster. By 1871 Wiley Johnson was operating a trading post at the settlement. In the mid-1880s the Bee Caves community had a steam gristmill, a cotton gin, a general store, a church, a school, and twenty residents. The population fell to ten in the early 1890s but rose to fifty-four by 1914. The post office at Bee Caves was discontinued in 1915, and mail for the community was sent to Cedar Valley. The Bee Caves school was consolidated with the Teck common school district in the 1940s and with the Dripping Springs Independent School District in Hays County in 1951. The population was reported at fifty from the 1940s through the 1980s. In 1990 it was 241, and it grew to 656 in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mary Starr Barkley, History of Travis County and Austin, 1839-1899 (Waco: Texian Press, 1963). John J. Germann and Myron Janzen, Texas Post Offices by County (1986).
Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl
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