If the ACL Music Festival�was a city, it would would rank No. 7 in Texas, far behind El Paso but�well ahead of Arlington.

That�s if you count the total attendance of 450,000 in 2015, although obviously a lot of those are repeat customers.

It�s hard, then, to recall that as late�as the 1930s, much of the 350-acre park���donated, in a complicated deal, by Andrew Zilker beginning in 1917���was stubbornly�rural.

RELATED: MORE PRE-ACL PICTURES OF ZILKER PARK.

In fact, the Great Lawn was used to feed Austin�s poor in the Great Depression. Workers harvested the vegetables grown there and delivered them for free at the City Market, an open-sided concrete structure that stood at East Seventh Street and East Avenue (now Interstate 35).

RELATED: STRIKE OUT INTO�HIDDEN ZILKER PARK.

The heart of the park, of course, is Barton Springs, named for William �Billy� Barton, who staked out his cattle ranch there in the 1830s. Zilker later used the springs for his ice-making enterprise.

Much of the work on the park that ones sees today was done during the Great Depression by Civil Works Administration, one of those New Deal jobs programs. And you can detect the 1930s and �40s�in the art-deco and modern-influenced gateway, bridges and bathhouse.

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