Montopolis

Travis County has had two locations named Montopolis that differ in their formation and location. The original Montopolis was a Republic of Texas era town established by Jesse Cornelius Tannehill. Tannehill’s time in Texas preceding Montopolis is well established. He came to Texas with his family in 1828 and first settled near Caney Creek in Matagorda County. By 1829 Tannehill was in Bastrop County as a member of Stephen F. Austin’s “Little Colony.” In 1836 during the Texas Revolution the Tannehills and other families fled Bastrop as part the Runaway Scrape. Following the war, the Tannehills lived in Huntsville and later in La Grange until 1839.

In 1832 while in Bastrop, Tannehill received a headright league on the north bank of the Colorado River, east of and adjacent to what would become Austin, and that became the location of the Montopolis townsite. Planning and surveying of the 800-acre townsite started in 1838, and Jesse Tannehill moved his family to the Montopolis tract in early 1839. George W. Bonnell, who recorded his "Observations" while traveling through the Texas frontier in 1838, provided this description while traveling up the Colorado: “[July 24th we then reached] the intended scite [sic] of the new town to be called Montropolis [sic]. It is on the east bank of the river, and tolerably pleasantly situated. Some 15 or 20 men are now at work at this place, who expect to have each a cabin erected in a few weeks." Three miles farther Bonnell reported arriving at another “new town”: Waterloo.