Posted: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 08:05 AM - 27,373 Readers

By: KEYE TV

The Hill Country city of Jonestown has one main attraction: Jones Brothers Park on the North Shore of Lake Travis. It used to be a popular destination for boating, fishing and swimming, but that was before the drought. The park has the only public boat launches on the North Shore, and they've been out of commission for two and a half years.

The once busy park is almost desolate now. A sign warning swimmers of no lifeguard at the beach is the least of the worries there, because there's no water.

Lifelong resident and City of Jonestown Parks and Recreation worker Karl Babyak says this part of Lake Travis is usually full. Having it empty is sucking the lifeblood of Jonestown dry.



Babyak says, "Ninety-nine-point five percent of all our revenue has gone away." He says boat launch fees made the city a lot of money in the past, but now he only gets an occasional pavilion rental at the park. Walking from one of the three boat ramps to where Lake Travis used to flow, is walking on dry and parched earth. Even a small creek that usually flows has run dry. You can walk for a quarter of a mile and still not see water from any of what used to be shoreline at the park.

What you do see is stairs leading to nowhere and land-locked docks in an area where 25 feet of water should be. To even get a boat in, you'd have to go a dozen miles down the road, and launch off the rocks.

David Watson bought his lakefront home in Jonestown more than 10 years ago.

"I'm just a water person. I have jet skis and boats and things like that, and now they sit in my yard instead of on the dock where they should be," Watson says.

He has a picture of what the view from his home used to look like, when the lake was full. Rows of boats used to line the Easy Street Marina next door to his house. Now, the marina is belly-up.



Watson says, "It's very depressing. A lot of people pay good money to be out here at the lake and have waterfront property, and you can't even see water from where we are."

If you look down the cliffs you can see some pools of water that are cut off and not even deep enough for boat owners to pull their boats out. To rebound here in Jonestown, the water would have to rise more than 20 feet. The lowest boat ramp at Jones Brothers Park can barely open if Lake Travis reaches 645 feet. It is 624 feet right now.

"It's gonna take a hurricane to be able to fill on up again," Karl Babyak says.

Ironically, a flash flood last September hit Jonestown hard. It destroyed many of the docks and devastated the now-closed marina. Despite that flood, folks in Jonestown say they've never seen it this dry and the water this low on their section of Lake Travis.

By Chikage Windler

*  Story Contributed by: KEYE TV