"We've paid up to $10,000 a month to heat a pool." That's Paul Slutes, manager of the City of Austin's Aquatic Division, talking about what happens if Big Stacy Pool ever loses the thing that makes it different from every other public pool in the city: a well.
Most people who swim laps at Big Stacy on a 45-degree January morning don't think about where the warmth comes from. They just notice that the water is somewhere in the 80s while the air isn't, and that this is one of the only places in Austin where that's true without a gas bill attached. The reason is a geothermal well drilled into the ground behind the pool when it opened in 1937, part of a Works Progress Administration project built with New Deal money. For nearly ninety years, that well has done the heating for free. It is now failing, and the city has already built the backup plan for the day it stops.
That backup plan is why the freebie you've been taking for granted might not stay a freebie forever, even if the pool itself never closes.
The Hole Behind the Pool
If you've swum at Big Stacy, you've probably never noticed the door behind the bathhouse that leads to what looks like just a hole in the ground. Slutes knows it as the entrance to the geothermal well, drilled deep enough to pull up water that comes out of the ground at 90 to 100 degrees before it mixes with city water and settles into the pool at something closer to 80. It's the same underground-spring logic that keeps Barton Springs a constant 70 degrees, except run in reverse: Big Stacy is the hot version.
The well's casing has degraded enough that the city won't risk cleaning it. Speaking in 2024, Slutes said that five or six years before that conversation, so somewhere around 2018 or 2019, aquatic division staff and well experts tried a high-frequency sound cleaning, the first attempt of its kind, and realized the casing was too fragile to survive it. Repairing the well isn't currently an option. Drilling a new one is something the city could consider, but nothing has been announced since. For now, the plan is to leave the failing well alone and let it keep working for as long as it can.
That's where the backup heaters come in. The city installed them as a contingency, and as of 2024 was still testing them annually without having switched them on for real use. The moment they are, Big Stacy stops being naturally heated. It becomes a metered utility, and Slutes has already priced out what that utility could cost in a bad month.
Here's what makes Big Stacy worth knowing before that happens:
- Built in 1937 as a Works Progress Administration project, part of a national historic district that also includes Fairview Park
- 33 yards long, six lanes, with depths ranging from 3.5 feet to just over 9 feet
- Free admission, every day except Mondays and days below freezing
- Naturally heated by the same well system since it opened, no backup heaters needed until now
Why the Well Matters More Than the Pool
The pool isn't going anywhere. What's fragile is the specific experience of swimming there in December for nothing, in water that's warm because the earth made it that way rather than because the city paid for it.
Sarah Marshall, program coordinator for historic preservation at Austin Parks and Recreation, has pointed out that Travis Heights and Fairview Park are both listed as historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places, and that the pool, its bathhouses, and its seawall all contribute to that district's historic standing. The natural heating isn't a footnote to that history. It's part of why the pool still feels like 1937 instead of a renovated amenity bolted onto an old neighborhood.
For Anna Strong, a Texas Parks and Wildlife botanist and regular winter swimmer, the appeal isn't nostalgia so much as economics. A free pool where you can swim laps or just float, she's noted, is something that's gotten rare. As of 2024 reporting, about 50 people a day were still showing up to swim through the winter months, most of them for exactly that reason: it costs nothing, and it's warm when nothing else outdoors is.
For Beverly Deutsch, a longtime Big Stacy swimmer, the pool has done more than keep her warm. After a stroke left her without the use of her right side and, for a time, her ability to speak, she started using the pool for physical therapy.
"You never completely recover, but swimming here helps."
That's not a marketing line. It's what a neighborhood pool can be when it's still running on the system it was built with, rather than a system installed to keep it running once the original one gives out.
The Walk That Comes With It
Big Stacy doesn't sit alone. It anchors the south end of the Blunn Creek Greenbelt Trail, a shaded, roughly one-mile path that connects it to Little Stacy Park to the north. The trail crosses Blunn Creek on the East Side Drive bridge, runs under one old bridge and over another locals have nicknamed the "Frank Lloyd Wright" bridge for its angular look, and passes one of Austin's old Moon Towers where East Side Drive meets Leland Street. It ends near Travis Heights Elementary, close enough to the pool that parking gets tight on weekends.
It's the kind of walk that works as a five-minute stroll or a longer loop depending on the day, and it's popular enough with runners that it shows up in local running routes as the connector between a Lady Bird Lake run and a cooldown through the neighborhood. In the fall, as the crowds thin out and the trail's tree canopy starts to change, it's one of the more reliable ways to see Travis Heights on foot rather than from a car window.
There's a small irony in the fact that the neighborhood's name and the pool's name both trace back to the same person. The pool was named for Big Stacy Park, which took its name from Gen. William Stacy, a Spanish-American War veteran who also happened to be the real estate agent who developed Travis Heights itself. The pool that's kept the neighborhood cool in summer and warm in winter for almost ninety years is, in a roundabout way, named after the person who platted the streets around it.
What This Means Heading Into Fall
Nothing about Big Stacy changes this week. The pool underwent its routine spring cleaning and maintenance closure back in May, reopened on schedule, and remains listed as open by Austin Parks and Recreation heading into the cooler months, with hours running through spring. If you live in Travis Heights and you're used to treating Big Stacy as your default cold-weather swim, that habit is safe for now.
What's worth sitting with is the fact that "for now" has a shelf life the city itself has already priced. The well could keep working for years. It could also fail this winter. Either way, the backup heaters are already plumbed in, tested, and waiting, and the day they get switched on for real is the day a piece of 1937 Austin quietly becomes a line item in a budget instead of a gift from the ground. Worth a swim while the well's still doing the work.
If you're the kind of person who notices things like this about a neighborhood, and wants to talk about what that says about living here, Meryl Hawk would love to meet with you.
