Running tour · Austin

The Forty Acres

1.3 mi run

Open in Stride Stories

The stories on this route

1. LBJ Library

   Look at that plain block: ten storeys, clad in cream Italian travertine. This is the presidential library of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

2. Darrell K Royal Stadium

   Look at this huge bowl. It started in 1923, when athletics director Theo Bellmont and 30 student leaders proposed a concrete stadium to replace the wooden bleachers of Clark Field. Students and alumni paid for it. And the students dedicated it to the 198,520 Texans who fought in World War One. 5,280 of them died.

3. Blanton Museum

   Look at the small stone building with the coloured glass windows. It's called Austin, and it's the only building the artist Ellsworth Kelly ever designed.

4. Littlefield Fountain

   Look at the ship emerging from the stone wall: an eagle on the prow, winged Columbia with two raised torches, a soldier and a sailor. It's American forces sailing overseas in the Great War. But it started as something else. Regent George Littlefield proposed a memorial arch to the Confederate dead, and offered $200,000.

5. UT Tower

   Look up at the Tower: 307 feet, 27 floors, designed by Paul Philippe Cret and finished in 1937. Students used to order books here. They filled out paper slips, which went upstairs by pneumatic tube. The books came down an 18-story dumbwaiter. It proved ineffective. The lights work better.

6. Harry Ransom Center

   Look at the Ransom Center: an archive, library and museum, holding 36 million literary manuscripts, a million rare books and five million photographs. Harry Ransom founded it in 1957, and it moved into this building in 1972.

Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source