Front-Page News from Burnet

This book tells the story (from front-page articles in the local newspaper) of a tiny rural town in the Texas Hill Country, and its roller-coaster ride through America's great depression. While Burnet was hit hard in 1932 by economic troubles elsewhere, the town experienced a boom while most of the U.S. was still suffering. The framework of modern Burnet was put in place during this amazing decade.

Natural resources, powerful politicians and the resilience of Burnet's population changed the course of this tiny ranching town's history in the middle of the Great Depression. When a private company's plans for an electricity-producing dam across the Colorado River went bankrupt in 1932, Burnet's economy was crushed. It wasn't until the fall of 1935 that the new Lower Colorado River Authority revived the project and Burnet's boom began. By the end of 1939, Burnet County had two new dams and lakes, two new state parks, two major highways (which intersected near the Burnet square) and a new courthouse, plus major improvements to the town's infrastructure and a profusion of new private homes. It also had a new congressman, who went by the initials LBJ, and many of the improvements were at least partly due to his influence in Washington. Read all about it as it happened, from weekly news articles in the Burnet Bulletin from 1929 to 1939.

John Hallowell "discovered his hometown" when he moved to Burnet, TX, in 1996. He has been studying its history ever since, and frequently publishing articles in area newspapers and magazines. He began compiling books (mostly from those articles) in 2017.