Live in Zilker

Andrew Jackson Zilker passed the land around Barton Springs to the City in parcels from 1917, and in 1934 the park was named for him; it is now more than 350 acres. The neighborhood grew south of the park from the late 1920s, and the appraisal roll dates 721 of today's single-family houses to the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. This guide covers the City's Zilker planning area: Lady Bird Lake to Oltorf Street and South Lamar, the Union Pacific tracks to Azie Morton Road, Rabb Road and Barton Skyway, about 1.16 square miles. The park and the pool sit just across its western edge, Barton Hills lies across the same line farther south, and Bouldin Creek is across the tracks.

No neighborhood plan governs what gets built. Zilker is one of the four planning areas in the South Lamar Combined Planning Area, the only four in the city whose planning the City lists as suspended, so there is no adopted plan. No local or National Register historic district covers it, and the City lists five individual landmarks. SF-3 zoning covers 55% of the zoned land, and the HOME amendments now allow up to three homes on a single-family lot. The roll shows the result: of 1,273 dated single-family houses, 331 were built since 2010 and 118 since 2020, on a median lot of about 7,400 square feet. The City permitted apartment buildings for 1,334 homes between 2010 and 2019, nearly all on or just off South Lamar Boulevard and Barton Springs Road, and the census counted 9,153 residents in 2020 against 5,779 on the same blocks in 2010. The share of occupied homes that were rented rose from 52% to 65%.

A quarter of the ground drains toward the springs. The Barton Springs Zone covers about 181 acres on the west side, 24.5% of the planning area and 395 of its 1,279 house lots, and 124 of those lots sit over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. The Save Our Springs ordinance, passed by 64% of voters in 1992, caps impervious cover there at 15% of net site area over the recharge zone and 20% in the rest of the Barton Creek watershed, with no variances. It does not apply to a single-family house or duplex on a lot that existed on 1 November 1991, or to up to 8,000 square feet of impervious cover, so rebuilding a house on an old lot falls outside it; a new subdivision or a larger project on that side has to meet the caps. The floodplain is the easier map: neither the City's fully developed 100-year floodplain nor FEMA's touches a single house lot, only commercial and vacant lots on Barton Springs Road and South Lamar.

The price sits near Barton Hills and far above the city. The county's parcel layer states no year for its values, so this guide gives no median assessment. Zillow, which draws its own Zilker and counts condominiums, put the typical value at $894,665 in August 2026, against $898,378 a year earlier, $1,248,886 at the June 2022 peak and $353,565 in 2010. Its Barton Hills stood at $871,841 and its figure for the whole city at $497,418. On the 2025 rates a homestead at Zilker's figure owes the five taxing units about $15,183 a year, and the same house without the exemption about $18,309; the citywide arithmetic is on the Austin page.

The park next door is also a venue. ACL has filled Zilker Park since 2002 and on two weekends since 2013, with 75,000 people a day in 2025. In 2026 the Great Lawn closed from 21 September to 18 October, and the City tells festivalgoers there is no parking in the park or the surrounding neighborhoods. The City's vision plan for the park, whose draft floated up to three parking structures and a land bridge, was halted in August 2023 before it reached the Council, and the City's page still lists it as suspended. Day to day, MetroRapid 803 runs the length of South Lamar every 10 minutes by day on weekdays, and Route 30 runs along Barton Springs Road.

Worth knowing before you commit

Find out which side of the springs line the lot is on

395 house lots are in the Barton Springs Zone, 124 of them over the recharge zone

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• Check the address on the City's Barton Springs Zone and recharge zone layers before you plan to split a lot or build more than a duplex
• Visit on an ACL weekend: the City tells festivalgoers there is no parking in the surrounding neighborhoods, and the load-in starts in mid-September
• Confirm the elementary for the address: one block at the southwest corner goes to Barton Hills, not Zilker
• Work the tax out on your own price, because the seller's capped value ends with the sale

How Zilker got here

• 1917Andrew Jackson Zilker begins passing land around Barton Springs to the City, with further parcels in 1918, 1923 and 1931 and a last one in 1934, the year the park is named for him. The City calls them gifts; Wikipedia describes a series of sales whose proceeds he gave to a trust for the public schools.
• 1920sThe first houses go up south of the park in the late 1920s. The appraisal roll dates 129 of today's single-family houses to the 1930s, and its largest subdivisions here are Barton Heights, Rabb Inwood Hills and South Lund Park.
• 1929The kite festival that is now the ABC Kite Fest is first held; it still runs in Zilker Park every spring, free.
• 1940sIn the late 1940s the City takes land from Vincent Canizzo by eminent domain for what becomes Zilker Elementary School, and the rest, from Ann Arbor Avenue to Rabb Road, is split into the Canizzo subdivision. The appraisal roll dates 268 houses to the 1940s and 324 to the 1950s.
• 1959The first Zilker Summer Musical plays the Hillside Theater in the park, free, a run that reached its 68th year in 2026.
• 1961The City acquires Little Zilker Neighborhood Park, 4.57 acres on Bluebonnet Lane beside the school.
• 1985The Umlauf Sculpture Garden, 7.84 acres on what is now Azie Morton Road, becomes City property.
• 1992On 8 August voters pass the Save Our Springs ordinance with 64% of the vote. It caps impervious cover in the watersheds that feed Barton Springs at 15% of net site area over the recharge zone and 20% in the rest of the Barton Creek watershed, but not for a single-family house or duplex on a lot that existed on 1 November 1991.
• 2002The Austin City Limits Music Festival is first held in Zilker Park, as a one-weekend event.
• 2010The census counts 5,779 residents and 3,652 homes on the blocks of today's planning area; 1,664 of 3,174 occupied homes are rented. The City permits apartment buildings for 1,334 homes over the next ten years, nearly all on or just off South Lamar Boulevard and Barton Springs Road.
• 2013ACL runs on two consecutive weekends for the first time, as the Council had voted unanimously to allow in August 2012.
• 2014MetroRapid 803 begins in August, running along South Lamar Boulevard through the neighborhood on its way between Westgate in the south and the Domain in the north.
• 2018In April the Council votes unanimously to rename Robert E. Lee Road, the planning area's western edge beside Zilker Park, for Azie Taylor Morton, the first African American Treasurer of the United States, who had helped open Barton Springs to everyone.
• 2019The South Austin Museum of Popular Culture leaves the South Lamar building it had shared with Planet K for 15 years and reopens on North Lamar Boulevard as the Austin Museum of Popular Culture.
• 2020The census counts 9,153 residents and 5,849 homes; 3,449 of 5,316 occupied homes are rented. In November the City opens public engagement on a Zilker Park vision plan.
• 2022Zillow's typical value for Zilker peaks at $1,248,886 in June, against $353,565 in August 2010.
• 2023On 7 August, after three Council members say they cannot support it, the interim City Manager halts the Zilker Park vision plan before it reaches the Council; its draft had floated up to three parking structures in the park and a land bridge. On 7 December the Council adopts HOME Phase 1, allowing up to three homes on a single-family lot.
• 2024With the Joan Means Khabele Bathhouse at Barton Springs Pool under construction, the pool's cash entries and kiosk purchases move to the Zilker Cafe building from 30 May.
• 2025In November the school board votes to close ten schools, among them Becker Elementary across the tracks, whose zone is split between Galindo and Zilker Elementary. Zilker, Barton Hills, O. Henry and Austin High are not on the list.
• 2026The Great Lawn closes from 21 September to 18 October for ACL, held on 2 to 4 and 9 to 11 October. Zillow's typical value stands at $894,665 in August, against $898,378 a year earlier.

What the map does not show: the park closes in pieces every fall. In 2026 the Great Lawn was closed from 21 September to 18 October and seven of its parking lots for most of that time, though the pool, the greenbelt and the Butler Trail stayed open. The lake is for paddling; swimming and wading in it are illegal.

Elsewhere in Austin, not Zilker

The free option is the Butler Trail, a 10-mile loop around Lady Bird Lake reached at Butler Shores, and beyond the pool the Barton Creek Greenbelt.