Recreational Uses
Lady Bird Lake is a major recreation area for the city of Austin. Its banks are bounded by the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail, and businesses offer recreational watercraft services along the lakefront portion of the trails. Austin's largest downtown park, Zilker Park, is adjacent to the lake, and Barton Springs, a major attraction for swimmers, flows into the lake. Much of the landscaped beauty of the parks surrounding Lady Bird Lake can be credited to the former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, who, in the 1970s, focused her attention on the Town Lake Beautification Project.
The Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge spans the Lady Bird Lake and is home to North America's largest urban colony of Mexican Free-tailed Bats, with a summer population of 1.5 million bats. At dusk, from March to September, Austinites and tourists line the bridge and lake shore to watch the dramatic sight of the bats streaming out in their nightly quest for insects. Eight other bridges span the lake, including two pedestrian-only bridges.
The City of Austin prohibits operation of most motorized watercraft on Lady Bird Lake. As a result, the lake serves as a popular recreational area for kayaks, canoes, dragon boats, and rowing shells. Austin's warm climate and the river's calm waters, nearly 6 miles (9.7 km) length and straight courses are especially popular with crew teams and clubs. Along with the University of Texas women's rowing team and coeducational club rowing team, who practice on Lady Bird Lake year-round, teams from northern universities (including the University of Chicago, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Nebraska) train on Lady Bird Lake during Christmas holidays and spring breaks. Other water sports along the shores of the lake include swimming in Deep Eddy Pool, the oldest swimming pool in Texas, and Barton Springs Pool, a natural pool on Barton Creek which flows into Lady Bird Lake. Below Tom Miller Dam is Red Bud Isle, a small island formed by the 1900 collapse of the McDonald Dam that serves as a recreation area with a dog park and access to the lake for canoeing and fishing.
Music venues on the banks of Lady Bird Lake are home to a number of events year-round, including the Austin City Limits Music Festival in the fall, the Austin Reggae Festival and Spamarama in the spring, and many open-air concerts at Auditorium Shores on the south bank and Fiesta Gardens on the north bank. The Austin Aqua Festival was held on the shores of Lady Bird Lake from 1962 until 1998. The late Austin resident and blues guitar legend, Stevie Ray Vaughan played a number of concerts at Auditorium Shores and is honored with a memorial statue on the banks.
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