Welcome to Elontown, USA: an unlikely Texas home base for Musk’s business empire

People who live in the 12,000-person town, home to 131 nationally registered historical sites, describe it as a rare preserve of Old Texas—a hunk of land that has managed to stay outside of Austin’s grip and sprawling growth.

But that’s changing, say the old-timers: Home prices are rising; ranchland and open fields are being replaced by gravel pits. And it’s getting harder to find a parking spot at the only grocery store in town. The crowds are starting to skew younger. There’s more live country music in the restaurants. And in this year’s election, some “Kamala/Walz” yard signs popped up downtown alongside the “Trump/Vance” ones.

And then there’s Elon Musk.

The world’s richest person has made a growing homestead for his various businesses in Bastrop County. Starlink, a division of Musk’s SpaceX that makes internet satellites, has a 500,000-square-foot manufacturing facility just 15 minutes away from Bastrop’s historic downtown. Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company, has a research and development center, and social media site X (born in San Francisco as Twitter), will soon break ground on its headquarters here.

Since moving into the area three years ago, Musk’s companies have become some of the largest employers in what has long been considered a commuter town, and signs of Musk-ification are spreading. Boring Company employees wearing “Tunnel Mars” T-shirts stroll past pickleball courts at Hyperloop Plaza. Inside the plaza’s hangar-like structure, housing high-end general store the Boring Bodega, a pub, and even a barber, vintage Musk memorabilia (like the $500 flamethrower the Boring Company once sold as a lark) are on display. And classes at Ad Astra, a Musk-owned Montessori school whose name alludes to the SpaceX founder’s dream of interplanetary travel, are expected to begin soon.

“I’ve been saying for months that it’s like a flying saucer landed…and a bunch of people got out,” Kay Rogers, an attorney in Bastrop, told me as we drove around the county in her car in March.

Questions remain, including how many…