Located ten miles southwest of Austin in southwestern Travis County, the small community of Manchaca owes its name to the nearby Manchaca Springs, where José Antonio Menchaca once camped. Early in its history, the area was served by two post offices, but it was not until the arrival of the International-Great Northern Railroad in 1881 that Manchaca began to thrive. With the new rail connection came a third post office, now spelled Manchaca (pronounced “Manshack”), and the population grew to seventy-five residents by 1884. In subsequent decades, the community added a school, a hotel, and a Methodist church, and it became the focus of a common school district. However, the population declined sharply in the 1970s, falling to just thirty-six residents.
Local development in the mid-1980s brought new growth to Manchaca, and its population surged to 4,700 by 1990. However, the numbers fell again to 2,259 by 2000. In late 2018, developers began to bring new homes to the area, but the population has yet to return to the heights of the 1990s. Despite these fluctuations, Manchaca has maintained its sense of community, with its schools joining with Oak Hill in 1961 to form a rural high school district before eventually being annexed by the Austin Independent School District in 1967. Today, Manchaca remains a small but vibrant community with a rich history and promising future.
