Texas isn’t the first state you’d expect to hold the line on public nudity. It did though—once, in one place, on a slab of limestone west of Austin. Hippie Hollow is the only legally recognized clothing-optional public park in the state, and it survives because the right people, at a handful of decisive moments, declined to shut it down.
The Place
A steep shoreline on the north side of Lake Travis, thirty minutes west of downtown Austin. There’s no sand. The slope is rock, and you pick your way down it to reach the water, farther in the dry years when the lake sits low. Cedar and oak above, open water below, the Hill Country running off in every direction.
The Story
Hippie Hollow exists because of a dam. The Lower Colorado River Authority broke ground on Mansfield Dam in 1937, impounded the Texas Colorado River, and created Lake Travis—a sixty-five-mile reservoir with a ragged shoreline the LCRA was obligated to open to the public. Most of those access points became boat launches and swimming beaches. The old McGregor goat ranch, all steep rock ledges, was useless for any of that. So it sat undeveloped: a graded parking lot and a path down to the water, free and unsupervised.
