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Mopac: Than and Now
By BIRUTA CELMINS KEARL

The western boundary of Pemberton Heights is marked by the MoPac expressway, the ever-busier highway whose potential expansion helped spark the establishment of the Pemberton Heights Neighborhood Association. Its history goes back to the 1870s.

The rail line was originally called the International and Great Northern (I & GN) and it was the 2nd railroad in Austin. It arrived in December 1876 from Hearne and Palestine, five years after the first railroad (the Houston, Texas, and Central) chugged into town. The turreted I&GN depot was a stately structure at the southwest corner of Congress and Third. In 1925, the I&GN line became part of the Missouri Pacific lines, hence the nickname “MoPac.”

In April 1955 Mayor McFadden announced an agreement with the Missouri Pacific RR to acquire right of way for a planned West Side expressway – another MoPac. Described originally as a tree-lined inner city “boulevard” from Town Lake to Northland Drive intended to ease the crush of West and Northwest Austinites to and from downtown, planning for the expressway took a sharp change in 1966. At that time the city council, dismayed by increases in projected costs, went to the state highway dept to ask for financial help by making it a state funded expressway.  This opened the door for both north and south extensions, at first from US 183 to the southern city limits on the south (360 and Lamar), but later much further each way.

Opposition began in 1968 when the public found out about the changes in scope and it grew as planning progressed. Neighborhood groups expressed concern about further congestion on East-West arterial roads. Constant noise by an increase in speed and volume of traffic fueled the citizen activism. A City Council public hearing in June 1975 about the issue of ramps at Westover and other cross roads drew more than 800 residents to the Municipal Auditorium. The four-hour marathon session was considered to be the largest public hearings in the history of the city. The newspaper reported that citizen testimony was evenly divided on whether ramps should be opened or closed, despite such rhetoric as “if you turn your backs on West Austin, you’ll turn your backs on the hopes of America,” by former Senator Ralph Yarborough. UT professor John Gallery likened the movement of MoPac traffic along Westover, Enfield, or Windsor roads to “trying to channel the Atlantic Ocean into Waller Creek.”

The first section of MoPac, the expressway, opened in November 1975. Today MoPac is once again a rallying point for protection of neighborhoods along that highway as further expansions are considered.

[Pemberton resident Biruta Celmins Kearl is the Archivist/Administrator at the Austin History Center, the local history research collection of the Austin Public Library.]