Betty Ann Beutel Brown

Betty Brown was the co-founder of the Zilker Park Posse, a grassroots coalition that grew up in 1978 as resistance to planned high-density development near Austin’s iconic Zilker Park. Organizing through the Barton Hills – Horseshoes Bend Neighborhood Association and other allies, Brown and her colleagues successfully fought off encroachment on the Park, defeated the Barton Skyway Bridge, created a moratorium on development in the Barton watershed, fought sewer lines extensions, and pressed for the City’s passage of the 1980 Barton Creek Ordinance, the region’s first major water quality standards. In 1979, as the Zilker Park Posse split off to become a Political Action Committee, Brown helped organize the Save Barton Creek Association, and served as its first president. In challenging powerful developers to protect the local watershed and aquifer, Brown’s efforts can be linked to the 1990 “uprising” against the Barton Creek PUD and subsequent rise of the Save Our Springs movement.