UTLEY, BASTROP COUNTY AT-A-GLANCE
LOCATION
Located along Farm to Market Road 969, Utley is 7 miles northwest of Bastrop, 26 miles southeast of Austin, and 13 miles south of Elgin in western Bastrop County.
Utley is three miles northwest of Elon Musk’s industrial complex begun in 2020: SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Boring Bodega.
Utley is the community closest to “Snailbrook,” the industrial site where Elon Musk envisions “a sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River, where his employees can live and work.”
Utley, named for the wife of James Harvey Wilbarger, began as a commissary and trading post for Barton Hills and other plantations in the 1850s. Wilbarger and his father, early Texas surveyor Josiah Wilbarger, were both scalped by Comanches on separate occasions.
HISTORY
Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church was established in April 1864 by Silvie Story, William Hill, Martha Young, Paulie Johnson, Grant McBride, and Martha J. Hill with the help of the Rev. Joshua Brice, who conducted baptisms in the Colorado River.
Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church continues to serve African American families descended from enslaved people living in Utley area since 1830s (earlier?) Family names include: Bell, Collins, Hill, Hoodeye, Humphrys, Johnson, Jones, MacKey, Mc Bride, Patton, Story and Young.
Utley served the smaller African American communities of Cedar Valley and Union Hill with schools, post office, and a general store.
Texas A&M Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Andrea Roberts is leading the effort to map more than 550 Black settlements in the Texas Freedom Colonies Project.
Utley had a school for Hispanic students in the 1930s, The west half of Utley today is served by the Elgin Independent School District and the east half by the Bastrop Independent School District.
RECREATION/FILM/FILM/FOOD
Utley Bridge, one of the few public access points to the Colorado River, has been a popular fishing spot and put-in-point for canoeists and other paddlers.
Barton Hills Farm, a popular agritoursim site near Utley Bridge providing you-pick cut flowers and corn maze, closed when owner Bettie Barton Buchanan leased more than 300 acres to Travis Materials in 2020.
The 1996 film, Michael starring John Travolta, was filmed at the Utley gas station/general store building. Episode 509 of the TV series Fear the Walking Dead was also filmed there.
Several certified organic farms and food business entrepreneurs located in Utley because of its rural beauty and it has the highest quality farmland and water in Texas.