BASTROP — It’s almost impossible to escape news about Elon Musk these days.
As his Department of Government Efficiency slashes federal spending, the world’s wealthiest man is asserting his national and international influence on an unprecedented scale. When he’s not posting on X about European politics or California wildfires, he’s targeting DEI and foreign aid and reportedly catching some shut-eye in offices next to the White House.
More than 1,500 miles away, at the heart of his business empire in the Lone Star State, Musk’s influence is more subtle — for now.
For years, Musk has been amassing his economic power in Texas.
He’s moved most of his businesses here and broken ground on huge projects in Austin, near Brownsville and outside Waco. Nowhere is Musk’s business power more concentrated than at his corporate compound in rural Bastrop County, about 45 minutes from downtown Austin.
And this year, Musk’s presence in the area is set to explode, raising hopes and sowing concerns about what the Elon effect will mean for Central Texas.
The new headquarters for social media platform X is being built here, and it looks to open soon. SpaceX, his aerospace company, will more than double its size next door. And then there’s Snailbrook, the company town Musk is building at the compound. The Texas Newsroom has learned that the Musk “utopia” is likely to restart development by year’s end — and may be even more massive than previously reported.
Musk himself is not a fixture in Bastrop.
But, with an assist from lenient county development rules, his investments are helping transform this corner of rural Texas. Musk brings with him jobs, tourism and media attention — along with worries about environmental degradation and cultural change for Bastrop, which prides itself on being the quiet, bucolic foil to nearby Austin.
For better or worse, locals say, change is coming.
“If Elon thinks Bastrop is cool,” City Manager Sylvia Carrillo-Trevino said, “it must be cool.”
Why Bastrop?
Driving east out of Austin, the strip malls and housing developments of the city quickly drop away. Once you reach the Bastrop County line, the land seems to flatten out and open up.
It’s mostly farms and ranches out here. When Austin came knocking to annex part of the county in the mid-1980s, Bastropians fought it off. Locals talk about it like it happened yesterday, as though the city’s gaping maw is still eager to gobble up their rural idyll.
Development is ramping up here. Housing developments and shopping centers are popping up. But, most of the county remains unincorporated. The three main cities — Bastrop, Elgin and Smithville — together boast fewer than 30,000 people.
Against this backdrop looms Musk’s corporate compound. At the crossroads of FM-969 and 1209, along a small bend in the Colorado River, its sleek, shining slate of buildings jut out of the leafy countryside.
There’s a reason Musk chose this area. It’s easier to develop in rural Texas, where the state has given county officials few ways to stop growth. David B. Brooks, who wrote a book on Texas county laws, called rural development rules here “the wild, wild West.”
“If somebody wanted to put in a business that nobody liked, [county officials] have no authority to adopt a zoning ordinance like a city does,” Brooks said.
Musk also found an eager partner among Bastrop County officials.
They supported his move to bring the Boring Company, his tunneling venture, to the area in 2021. He then broke ground on a SpaceX facility here and the Boring Bodega, a food mart, bar and community space open to the public. Once Musk chose the area, just a few miles from his Tesla gigafactory in Austin, there was no going back.
“They were in a hurry. They wanted things done yesterday, and if not yesterday then today,” said Paul Pape, a former county judge in Bastrop. Musk’s people didn’t cut corners, he said, but county officials also didn’t put up roadblocks.
Pape sees Musk and other business leaders interested in the area as a way for Bastrop to grow without being consumed by their bigger, urban neighbor: “We didn’t want Austin to be in control of Bastrop’s future.”
According to a Texas Newsroom analysis of property records, Musk’s companies have now amassed more than 600 acres just along this stretch of road. Some of the land was purchased in the last few months, leaving him room to expand.
X, SpaceX and Snailbrook
If his plans for 2025 bear out, Musk will need the room.
SpaceX’s 700,000-square-foot facility will more than double in size, according to a progress report the company released last year. Earth movers and other construction equipment already dot the site, and trucks hauling materials race down the two-lane road nearby.
Here, SpaceX produces Starlink kits, individual devices that let people access the internet remotely. This year, Starlink wants to make their kits available to new customers in countries in West Africa, Central and Southeast Asia and South America.
To make this growth easier, SpaceX has applied to be a part of the federal Foreign-Trade Zone program. This may let the company avoid paying some taxes and tariffs on goods it handles at the site.
County leaders backed SpaceX’s request, they told The Texas Newsroom, acknowledging it would mean they will lose about $75,000 over two years in tax revenue. But Musk has never asked for other tax abatements here, they said, which he’s gotten for developments in Austin and Brownsville.
The newest addition to Musk’s corporate compound is X.
Last summer, amid a break with California over transgender rights, Musk announced he was moving X Corp. to Texas. The social media company’s longtime home in the famed Market Square building, an art deco behemoth occupying an entire San Francisco city block, was swapped for a temporary HQ in an East Austin office park.
The Austin space is now up for rent.
According to legal filings, the social media company’s permanent home is in a nondescript industrial building next to the Boring Bodega.
The X building now appears to be nearing completion. During a recent visit, cars and trucks were parked in a staff lot around the side of the warehouse. “No trespassing” signs were tacked up on a low rock wall outside.
Ad Astra, a private school funded by Musk’s nonprofit, recently opened around the corner from the compound.
But perhaps Musk’s most mysterious development in the area is Snailbrook.
The fact that he wanted to build an entire town for his local employees went viral when the Wall Street Journal wrote about it in early 2023. Word was Musk’s lieutenants wanted to elect a mayor and formally incorporate the town.
But, since then, there appears to have been little growth onsite. There are still just a handful of mobile homes, a warehouse — and lots of open farmland.
Then, last month, news broke that Musk wanted to create his own town near Brownsville at the site of SpaceX’s rocket launch site. So is Snailbrook dead?
Not so fast, says Carrillo-Trevino, the city manager. According to her, Snailbrook is still happening but the development cannot grow much until it taps into the area’s local wastewater line under a deal between the city, SpaceX and local utility Corix.
Carrillo-Trevino estimates that is still about a year away.
“It’s just waiting,” Carrillo-Trevino told The Texas Newsroom during an interview in Bastrop late last month.
Plans obtained by the Wall Street Journal showed Snailbrook would have 110 homes for company employees. Carrillo-Trevino believes it could end up being 10 times that big.
“Think about how many acres he has,” she said. “It’s thousands [of homes] that could fit there.”
Mixed reviews for Elon Musk
Stroll down Main Street in the city of Bastrop and you may not know Musk’s corporate complex is a 10-minute drive away.
There’s no X-sponsored playground here. Few locals who don’t work for the company have ever met, or even seen, the elusive Musk. The one obvious mention of his name on the street was found on the cover of his biography at the local bookstore.
Nearly three in four Bastrop County voters chose Donald Trump to be president. The area is decidedly conservative. But local reviews about Trump’s new right-hand man were mixed.
Rachael Tolbert lives 15 minutes down the road in Smithville.
“I love that he’s bringing business our way,” Tolbert said. “But I wish it didn’t come with the political climate that he seems to bring with him everywhere he goes.”
She added: “I’m pretty unaffected by the changes personally. And hopefully it’ll stay that way.”
That may be wishful thinking.
Carrillo-Trevino says Bastrop is on track to experience 42% growth in the next five years.
People move to the area because of lower housing costs, less traffic and the natural beauty afforded by the Lost Pines Forest. They come here, she said, because the city reminds them of old Austin.
They’re also coming for Musk. Carrillo-Trevino attributes about half of the promised growth to the draw of him and his companies.
But she said there’s a “fine line” between welcoming Musk and giving him unfettered access to their land. With his businesses tapping into their wastewater system, Carrillo-Trevino said the city will soon have more oversight over how he is developing in the area.
Protecting the river is key, she said. Musk has already been fined for environmental violations at his companies in Austin, near Brownsville and here, in Bastrop.
“He’s dumping into the Colorado and that’s upstream from us,” Carrillo-Trevino said. “That’s a major tourism and environmental factor for us. I don’t want to get in a kayak on, you know, downstream of a poopy river.”
But Pape, the former county judge, said Musk is and will be a net positive. Local leaders are equipped to handle concerns about growth, like traffic and affordability, he added.
“I don’t think Musk and his industries are going to really change what makes Bastrop County special,” he said. “I don’t call them problems. I call them opportunities.”
