Every Austin swimming spot has a personality built around temperature. Barton Springs is famous precisely because the water stays cold enough to make you gasp, even in August. That's the whole appeal: shock, then relief. Big Stacy Pool, right next to Travis Heights Elementary, works on the opposite principle, and almost nobody outside the neighborhood seems to know it. The water there sits close to 80 degrees whether it's a 105-degree afternoon in July or a 40-degree morning in January. It is heated not by a boiler or a pump system but by an underground well, the same spring source that has kept it running since the WPA built it in 1937.
That single fact changes what the pool is for. It's not where you go to cool off in the punishing way Barton Springs promises. It's where you go because the water is going to feel the same today as it did in April and will in November, and because it costs nothing to find out.
A pool built for reliability, not relief
Big Stacy is a 33-yard, six-lane pool with a shallow end at 3.5 feet and a deep end just over 9 feet, and admission has never cost a cent. That combination, a heated pool that's also free, is unusual enough in Austin that it gets called out specifically as one of the city's only public pools that is both heated and no-cost. Most Austin pools either charge admission or shut down once the weather turns. Big Stacy does neither, and that changes who shows up and when.
The city does close it for one stretch every year. In 2026, Austin Parks and Recreation shut the pool down from May 9 through May 17 for its annual spring cleaning, the only scheduled interruption most years. Outside of that window and the occasional hard freeze, the pool runs on a rhythm that has less to do with the calendar than you'd expect.
That rhythm shows up in the hours themselves. Austin's 2026 schedule for Big Stacy lists three separate hour blocks: one running May 18 through 31, another from June 1 through July 16, and a third from July 17 through September 30. If the water temperature drove the schedule, you'd expect it to loosen up as the heat peaks and tighten again once it breaks. Instead, the changes track something else entirely: how many lifeguards Austin has certified and staffed at any given point in the swim season. The pool doesn't get more comfortable in July. It just gets more supervision.
A neighbor doing laps at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday in August isn't chasing a cold plunge. They're doing the same thing they'd do in February: showing up to water that hasn't changed, at a pool that's never asked them to pay for it.
The walk that connects two parks and doesn't stop for weather
Big Stacy Pool sits at the south end of a corridor that most residents never think to name, but that shapes how a lot of Travis Heights actually spends a weekend. The Blunn Creek Greenbelt Trail links Little Stacy Park at the north end to Big Stacy Park at the south, running along East Side Drive and crossing the creek on foot bridges rather than parking lots. AllTrails clocks the loop at roughly one mile with 88 feet of elevation gain, an easy half hour to an hour depending on how many times you stop.
What makes the walk worth naming isn't the distance. It's what's along it:
- A surface that alternates between poured concrete and crushed granite, so it never turns to mud after rain the way a dirt trail would
- Metal interpretive markers in front of specific trees, useful if you've ever wondered what separates an elm from a cedar elm along the same stretch
- A pedestrian bridge locals have nicknamed for its Frank Lloyd Wright-adjacent lines, along with a second crossing where the trail passes under a road bridge instead of over it
- One of Austin's remaining Moon Towers standing over a section of the path
- A turnaround point at Travis Heights Elementary, where parking gets tighter simply because it sits closest to the pool
None of this requires a car or a plan. It's the kind of route that gets used the same way in December as it does in July, because shade from the tree canopy and a creek that runs year round make it usable regardless of season. That consistency, not scenery, is the actual draw.
The loop now ends at a table
For most of this pool and trail's history, the walk ended where it began, or maybe at a car parked near the elementary school. As of this year, it has a new stop. The Greek Bar opened February 26, 2026, at 534 E. Oltorf St., a short walk from the Blunn Creek trailhead and well within range of anyone finishing a loop with an appetite.
It's a family-owned spot from husband-and-wife team Dimitri Karabinas and Daphne Greer. Karabinas, whose family is from Greece, previously founded VINES Grove Wine Bar in Florida. Greer built her résumé as general manager at the Peacock at Austin Proper and at Juniper Austin before deciding Austin needed more Mediterranean cooking than it had. The kitchen is led by executive chef Brian Beach, who came from the Greek restaurant Kokkari. For the space itself, the couple worked with Architectural Digest-featured designer Luke Havekes to build something around original saltillo tile and terra cotta, with a covered back patio for the months when eating outside in Travis Heights is still comfortable after dark. The restaurant runs 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, with weekend brunch service in the works.
It's a small addition in the scheme of a neighborhood, but it lands at exactly the point where a lot of foot traffic already exists. A trail that already connected two parks and a free heated pool now connects to dinner too.
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Big Stacy Pool | Free admission, 33 yards, 6 lanes, 3.5 to 9+ feet deep, water near 80°F year round |
| 2026 closure | Annual spring cleaning, May 9 to 17 |
| Blunn Creek Greenbelt Trail | About 1 mile, 88 feet of elevation gain, connects Little Stacy Park to Big Stacy Park |
| The Greek Bar | Opened February 26, 2026, at 534 E. Oltorf St., open Tuesday to Sunday, 4 to 10 p.m. |
What the loop actually tells you
The version of Travis Heights that shows up in most write-ups leans on words like charming and eclectic, and leaves it there. What the pool and the trail actually demonstrate is narrower and more useful: this is a neighborhood where the best-used piece of infrastructure is the one built to ignore the weather. Big Stacy doesn't get more appealing in a heat wave the way Barton Springs does, and it doesn't shut down in a cold snap the way an unheated pool would. It just keeps running, free, at the same temperature, connected by a trail that floods less than most and shades better than most, with a new place to eat at the end of it.
If you already live here, none of this requires a plan. The loop is there on a Tuesday morning and a Saturday evening alike. If you're the kind of person who reads a neighborhood by what its residents actually use rather than what gets written about it, that consistency is the tell.
David Aceves and the team at Ace Team ATX spend as much time walking these streets as writing about them, and we're always glad to talk Travis Heights with anyone curious about the neighborhood, whether you're already here or just trying to understand how it actually lives day to day.
