Some childhood dreams DO come true. By the time Adam Woolley was nine years old, he knew that someday he wanted to create a town of his own, just like his great-grandfather’s hometown of Industry (the first permanent German settlement in Texas, near Brenham). When his fourth-grade teacher asked the class to write an essay on what they’d like to do when they grew up, Adam earned an “A” by detailing plans remarkably similar to what he has put together, thirty-four years later, in Bee Cave.

“My goal was never to build an Old West town,” he explains. “I was aiming for a Hill Country town – the kind of civilized, self sufficient community that European immigrants built when they came to Texas. I wanted a location close to an urban area where people could go to experience that lifestyle; one where people could just step off into an earlier time.”

It’s been a long, roundabout path from Woolley’s fourth-grade vision to his amazing little Hill Country town, but it has come full circle. “We took some detours,” he explains, “but it was sort of an insatiable urge, and eventually I had to do it.”

Adam Woolley grew up in West Lake Hills beginning in the 1960s, when the now-affluent suburb of Austin was a small rural community. “At first we didn’t have a cafeteria at school,” he recalls. “We had concrete picnic tables outside with chickens running around as we ate.” His father who grew up in east Texas, served as mayor of West Lake Hills in the late 60s, and began building unique homes there in the 70s. His mother, who grew up in Brenham, made frequent visits with the family to the nearby town of Industry. where her grandfather Herman Lahrmann had retired as a prominent rancher, businessman, undertaker, bank president, and a host of other endeavors. Adam gained an appreciation of early Texas culture while spending frequent weekends as a child in Industry. There, he also began collecting obsolete items from t ...

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