About this tour
Cedar Park doesn't look like a railroad town anymore, but the tracks are the whole reason it's here. In the 1880s a rail line pushed out from Austin into the cedar-covered hills, and a spur off it hauled the famous pink granite quarried at Granite Mountain down to build the new State Capitol. The depot that survives is now the home of the Austin Steam Train, whose excursion trains still roll on the old line. Around it, the markers tell the harder story of the "cedar choppers" — the poor hill families who cut and cleared the tangled Ashe-juniper brakes for fence posts and a living. This drive links the depot, the granite story, and the cedar-cutting heritage the town grew out of.