Mount Bonnell

About this audio guide

This guide to Mount Bonnell in Austin turns on a single summer afternoon in eighteen forty-four, when two Simpson children herding cattle near Shoal Creek vanished in sight of town. It follows the neighbors who chased the trail on foot up to this limestone rise, and what a scrap of torn fabric told them along the way. You will hear what the posse found here, and what later became of the boy who lived to tell it. Look west from the overlook toward Shoal Creek to trace the route they ran.