Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. Today’s fact remains true during full moons and those times when you can’t see the moon at all.
Austin, Texas is the only city in the world with functioning moonlight towers, or moontowers.
This is the second weekend of Austin City Limits, the music festival better known as ACL.
Every fall, hundreds of artists and what feels like approximately 26 million people (last year’s attendance was actually about 450,000) descend on the Lone Star State’s capital for some good tunes, fun vibes, and overpriced food items.
This year, Weekend 1 of ACL included a torrential rainstorm that turned the grass of Zilker Park into an absolute mud pit of a time.
While attendees tried to say they were having fun (I would too if I had paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket), I was very pleased to watch the festivities from the comfort of my home.
Also, to the people who were doing splits and cartwheels and faceplants in the mud, I hope your week has not been filled with bacteria.
ACL has been around since 2002, but there’s another Austin landmark that far predates it.
Back in the 1880s and 1890s, moonlight towers (or moontowers) became a trendy installation in U.S. cities. Austin built a collection of 31 towers beginning in 1895.
At the time, standard street-lighting was either too expensive or too impractical to install. Cities used moontowers, tall, scaling structures with arc lamps that could light up several blocks at once.
Over time, moontowers fell out of favor. Incandescent electric street lighting took hold, and most cities removed all their moontowers.
Austin is hanging onto (some) of theirs, though.
Today, you can still find 15 of these beauties around the city. They’re 165 feet tall, have foundations that are 15 feet wide, and can illuminate a radius of 1,500 feet.
The moontowers were recognized as Texas State Landmarks in 1970 and have gotten upgrades over the years. Notably, as of 2024, all of the moontowers have swapped out 400-watt bulbs and replaced them with more energy efficient 80-watt LED bulbs.
But which moontower is the most famous?
Perhaps the most popular moontower is the one at Zilker Park, coincidentally the site of ACL.
During the holiday season, the moontower becomes the base of a massive Christmas tree of lights, and people spin underneath it. How they do so without getting dizzy is beyond me. I envy them.
The Zilker moontower is also referenced in the movie Dazed and Confused, which features numerous Austin locales and shout-outs. Alas, the filming of the keg party scene was not done in Zilker Park. It was just a bit of movie magic trickery.
A documentary called The Last of the Moonlight Towers was released in 2017, illuminating the history of those iconic towers. I wish I could take credit for that wordplay, but KUT got there first.
You can also do a tour of the Austin Moonlight Towers, with handy maps like this one guiding your way.
And they all generally get rave reviews! Here’s a smattering of comments:
“Went to this moonlight tower. It was towering and moonlighty.”
“Not exactly a ‘must-see’ attraction; but for a tower with lights on it, it’s pretty great.”
“Accessible and visible, with not much else to say.”
If that doesn’t get you fired up for the weekend, I don’t know what will. And if you want to follow along with the ACL magic without attending, you can throw on a playlist or watch the festival live on Hulu.