Austin Mill Pond’s history focus of talk – Austin Daily Herald

Nearly 160 years of history along the Cedar River at Austin Mill Pond will be covered in one hour Monday night while overlooking the artificial lake.

Cedar River Watershed District outreach coordinator Tim Ruzek, a local historian, will give the free, hour-long “Flood Walls in a Former Swamp” presentation featuring old photos and maps at 6 p.m. at the Austin Public Library’s west-end workshop area overlooking Mill Pond. 

“Austin Mill Pond has a fascinating history as this stretch of the Cedar has changed dramatically over the decades whether that be its shape, water recreation or activity on its shoreland,” Ruzek said. “Even today, a major apartment complex is being built on what used to be a big bend of the river flowing into Mill Pond until the 1960s.”

For decades, this area was known as a “swamp land” and covered more land than Austin Mill Pond does today. By the early 1900s, the community started looking to create a park and waterbody shaped more like a lake, which led to the creation of Horace Austin State Park.

This state park, however, eventually faded away until the late 1950s when the Austin community began opening park land there for commercial development. With the construction of Interstate 90 through Austin – just upstream from Austin Mill Pond – more low-lying pastureland and wetlands near Mill Pond were acquired and opened for developing a commercial district, including Austin’s first indoor mall built dredged river material.

An area long considered by locals to be “unbuildable” became highly developed and, thanks to numerous record floods in the past 20 years, now is protected by an extensive system of earthen flood berms and flood walls.