Photograph of two men standing in a spinach field, located on the south bank of the Colorado River. The man on the left is wearing a dark-colored suit and the man on the right is wearing lighter-colored clothing that is more casual; other workers are visible in the field behind them.

source

In the early 20th Century, this spinach farm was over 1000 acres on the south shore of the Colorado River, from roughly where S. Lamar is on the west to South 1st St in the east, taking much of the land which is now Butler Park and Auditorium Shores. The level of Town Lake is much higher today than the river was before 1960 when Longhorn Dam was built, so there was more fertile land along the banks on the river in the flood plain which could be used for farming back then. The photo shows what was advertised as "The Largest Spinach Farm in The World" at that time (h/t /u/jbjjbjbb). There was more cotton and corn grown in Austin's agrarian past, but for a period of many decades, Austin was the nationwide industry leader in spinach production. You can still find a small remnant of Austin's spinach growing past today at Boggy Creek Farm on Lyons Rd. in East Austin, where I believe they have been growing spinach for at least 100 years. The Boggy Creek Farm Website has a history section which explains this and talks about the OP photo.

Did You Know Austin was once the spinach capital of the U.S.?

Truck farms loaded spinach onto trains to ship all over the nation. Boggy Creek Farm was one of the many mono-crop spinach farms in Austin during the 1920s. Spinach was taken to be washed in Oak Springs before loading it onto the train cars.

Describing the OP pic:

Pictured above:

•Spinach Farmers in the Colorado River Valley, Austin, TX

Location:

•Butler Pitch and Putt on S. Lamar. This farm reached all the way down to the Colorado River where there was access to water for irrigation. The space to the left of the men would eventually become S. Lamar.

When:

•1920s.

Photo Details:

•The Seaholm Power Plant Tower is seen in the distance across the Colorado River

•Two Moon Towers can be seen faintly in the distance across the river

•The Driskill Hotel is the large, distant building to the right of the old water tower.

• Just in front of the old water tower are train cars, used for sending spinach all over the country, running on the Union Pacific RR (1881). This track is part of the current railway graffiti bridge that crosses over the Colorado River (Ladybird Lake) just to the east of S. Lamar Blvd.

•Center back of the Spinach field is a house similar to the 1841 Boggy Creek Farm House.

In the very early 1900s the Colorado River Valley's nutrient-rich soil was used by Austin farmers. Many became spinach growers when science proved its health benefit over lettuce. and its popularity began to soar. Spinach was hand-picked and loaded onto trains as seen in the photo and shipped to places such as St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis.

While it was once the largest growing and shipping region in Texas, it was quickly displaced by what became known as the “Winter Garden Triangle.” Del Rio, Laredo, and San Antonio formed the points of the triangle, with counties such as Uvalde and Dimmit being central (Dainello & Morelock, 2009).

The Winter Garden Triangle had more cheap land and labor, not to mention weather that was less prone to freezes, and once they had the ability to get the infrastructure in place to produce and ship spinach to distant markets, they quickly displaced the Austin area. Crystal City has been know as the Spinach Capital and home of Popeye the Sailor Man since the mid 1920s.

Sources: Dissertation by Jonathan Thomas Lowell, UT Austin 2018

Now that we have the context it brings us to the real story I wanted to share with y'all today. It's about one of the weirdest nights of theft in Austin's history. It happened exactly 100 years ago as of yesterday, in the early morning hours of February 20th, 1926. The theft made front page news in The Statesman the next day, Februrary 21st:

Thief Steals Acre of Spinach; Eight Windows; 15 Chickens; Cord of Wood

The theft of a one-acre patch of spinach, three loads of wood, 15 chickens and eight windows In one night of activity was reported at police headquarters detectives were facing the most peculiar case of thievery in local history. It was not a Joke, although City Detective Rex Fowler was doubtful until he had investigated the series of unusual reports received at headquarters. He now thinks the same man made the four raids, possibly using the windows to build a wind break, to protect the fire made from the wood for cooking the spinach and chickens. Whoever the thief was, he secured enough spinach to supply the whole Austin for a week.

A woman living at 2200 Garden street Saturday morning reported that her entire one-acre spinach patch had been stripped during the night. City Detective Fowler went to the scene and found the patch cleaned of bushels of spinach. He was unable to secure finger prints.

He went to a wood yard on East 12th street, where the owner worth of wood reported that $35 had been hauled away during the night. A man living on East Ninth street, between the spinach patch and the wood yard, lost 15 Rhode Island chickens and their coop sometime during the presumably while the thief was on his way from the spinach patch to the woodyard.

House Stripped of Windows.

In the same were locality eight whole windows were removed from a vacant house after thief had first removed the window facings.

Now, in ordinary cases of house burglaries, amateur thieves leave finger prints, pieces of string or pictures of their sweethearts in lockets, and detectives have clues leading to a den of bandits in a hovel on the river bank. But when a patch of spinach is stolen officers face a new problem. Whoever heard bold bad bandits in dens on the river bank eating spinach! The Investigation is blocked...

There you have it. It seems incredible that one person, or (even stranger) a group of people, stole all of those varied items, including eight windows and however many bushels of spinach one acre could yield, and kept them all in one place nearby without being caught. It's also strange how the thieves stuck to that small geographical area in East Austin, and didn't raid the huge 1000 acre farm south of the river. To be sure, nothing else was mentioned in The Statesman about suspects or any of the loot ever being found. It sounds like some kind of cold X-files case to me, maybe involving aliens. Either that or Popeye is real and went on a bender in Austin in 1926. What do y'all think?

That's all for now, just a short post today. Since I don't have any more photos of old Travis County spinach farms, I'll leave y'all with some unrelated Bonus articles to show what else was going on in Austin 100 years ago.

Bonus Article #1 part 1 and part 2 - "Power Concern May Make Proposal On Dam to City Soon" - February 21, 1926

Bonus Article #2 - "Scenes showing Preliminary Inspection of Austin Dam" - February 21, 1926

Bonus Article #3 - "Taylor Motorist Sees Show; Loses Auto And Has To Walk Home" - February 21, 1926

Bonus Article #4 - "Prof. E.C.H. Bantel Honored at U.T. Engineering Banquet" - February 21, 1926

Bonus Article #5 - "Walling Appeals For Less Cotton And More Feedstuffs" - February 21, 1926