From the Annals of the Capital City –  In 1839, the City of Austin was incorporated.  At the time the city had 856 citizens.   The site of Waterloo had been previously chosen for the Capital of the Republic of Texas moving from Houston to a more central but dangerous location.  The Texas Congress designated the name of the new Capital as Austin after Stephen F. Austin who was already revered as the father of Texas.  President Mirabeau B. Lamar assigned Judge Edwin Waller to lay out the plan for a capital city. Waller chose a 640-acre site on a bluff above the Colorado River, bordered by Shoal Creek and Waller Creek on the west and east respectively. Waller surveyed a square-mile plot with 14 blocks running in both directions.  The main throughway was designated as Congress Avenue by Lamar and ran from Capitol Square to the Colorado River. The streets running north-south were named for Texas rivers in geographical order. The east-west streets were named after native trees.  Downtown Austin retains much of this original design today.