Pease Park (officially Pease District Park ) is an urban park in central Austin, Texas . Paralleling Shoal Creek west of downtown , the park is frequented by University of Texas at Austin and Long-View Micro School students and, formerly, by disc golf enthusiasts. Every spring it plays host to the annual Eeyore's Birthday Party celebration, a favorite event for Austin's hippie subculture dating back to the 1960s.
7-428: The parcel of land that is now Pease Park was named after and donated to the city of Austin by Texas Governor Elisha M. Pease and his wife in 1875. The land remained undeveloped until the city and civic organizations cooperated to beautify the park in 1926, building entrance gates, restrooms, and other amenities. Further improvements were made later, including the installation of a group of long concrete picnic tables by
14-536: Is typically attended by thousands, filling the park with activities. Pease Park was the site of a popular disc golf course running along Shoal Creek. On January 1, 2011, the park's disc golf course was closed indefinitely due to environmental impact problems. Elisha M. Pease Elisha Marshall Pease (January 3, 1812 – August 26, 1883) was a Texas politician. He served as the fifth and 13th governor of Texas . A native of Enfield, Connecticut , Pease moved to Mexican Texas in 1835. He soon became active in
21-705: The Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and the construction of a hike-and-bike trail connecting the park to the city's larger trail network in the 1950s. On October 16, 2019 ground broke on the US$ 15 million dollar 10 acres Kingsbury Commons, the most significant upgrade to Pease Park in a century, as part of a larger Master Plan. Construction concluded in June 2021. Since 1974 Pease Park has hosted Austin's annual Eeyore's Birthday Party event, with music, costumes, games and drum circles . The event
28-525: The " Pease River " after the governor. During the American Civil War , Pease sided with the Union. He nonetheless enslaved several people; census records show ten enslaved people living and laboring at Pease's Austin plantation in 1860. After the war, he became a leader in the state Republican Party and was appointed as the civilian governor of Texas in 1867 by General Philip H. Sheridan , who
35-582: The Texas independence movement and after the Texas Revolution began, Pease became the secretary of the provisional government. He served as the assistant secretary at the Convention of 1836 but was not an elected delegate to the Convention. After independence had been won, Pease was named the comptroller of public accounts in the government of the new but temporary Republic of Texas . Following
42-644: The annexation of Texas to the United States, Pease was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1845 and reelected in 1847. In 1849, he ran for the Texas Senate from District 11 ( Brazoria and Galveston counties) but lost to John B. Jones who was sworn in on November 5, 1849. Pease contested the election, was declared the winner, and was sworn in four days later on November 9, 1849. Pease first ran for governor in 1851 but withdrew from
49-515: The race two weeks before the election . He was elected in each of the next two elections, 1853 and 1855 . As governor, he paid off the state debt and established the financial foundation that the state would later use to finance its schools and colleges. In 1856, surveyor Jacob de Córdova of the Galveston, Houston, and Henderson Railroad Company named a newly discovered river in West Texas
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