Austin Mill Pond’s history focus of talk Published 4:00 pm Saturday, October 4, 2025Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...Nearly 160 years of history along the Cedar River at Austin Mill Pond will be covered in one hour Monday night while overlooking the artificial lake. “Austin Mill Pond has a fascinating history as this stretch of the Cedar has changed dramatically over the decades whether that be its shape, water recreation or activity on its shoreland,” Ruzek said. By the early 1900s, the community started looking to create a park and waterbody shaped more like a lake, which led to the creation of Horace Austin State Park. This state park, however, eventually faded away until the late 1950s when the Austin community began opening park land there for commercial development. An area long considered by locals to be “unbuildable” became highly developed and, thanks to numerous record floods in the past 20 years, now is protected by an extensive system of earthen flood berms and flood walls.