It is a swath of land on the southwestern tip of the Hurst Creek Arm of the Colorado River, nestled in the heart of Lakeway. It boasts about 2,000 feet of beach front and unfurls into the city to reveal playground equipment, a dog park and hiking trails.

This April, Lakeway’s City Park turns 25 years old. On any given day, weather permitting, people fly kites along its beach, bring their dogs to play in the dog park, fish, hike the trails and relax.

But before it became one of Lakeway’s signature recreation attractions, the 64 acres of land on the shores of the Colorado River drove a wedge between those who wanted it to be a park and those who thought it would invite immoral behavior and raise property taxes to untenable heights.

In 1991, the land was still federally owned and managed by the Resolution Trust Corp., according to Lewis H. Carlson’s book “Lakeway: A Hill Country Community.”

Though the land was appraised at $714,900, the city of Lakeway made an offer to purchase it for $375,000 in May 1991. By June 1991, a special election to approve the purchase passed by a razor-thin margin of 19 votes.

Frieda Albert, who has lived in Lakeway since 1985, remembers being shown the land prior to the creation of City Park.

“I was a backdoor neighbor with Veronica Bennett, who was a City Council member at the time City Park became an object of desire,” Albert said. “In fact, she secretly took me to view it. She was very much in favor of it. … I thought, ‘This looks like a great thing to me.’”

It was George Blume, who at the time was a member of the Lake Travis Chamber of Commerce, who first discovered the waterfront acreage for sale, Carlson writes. Blume was looking for parkland and spoke with then-Mayor Cole Rowland, Bennett and then-City Administrator Sam Huser after seeing a “for sale” sign on Hurst Creek Road. All three were keen on the idea.

But before the deal could be brokered between city officials and the RTC, a fierce battle emerged between those wanting the land for a park and those against it.

Proponents of the park cited the land’s undeniable beauty and potential for enjoyment by residents for generations to come.

On the other end of the debate, people spun hyperbolic narratives about an inevitable surge in drug use, rapes, muggings, traffic and assaults.

Anti-park factions ramped up their rhetoric in the run-up to the June 1991 election, even circulating a flyer throughout town stating residents should “Vote no to Lakeway’s Hippie Hollow!!”

Among other city leaders, Blume and Bennett did their best to tamp anxieties, and the vote to purchase the land ultimately went through on June 22, 1991.

One more major battle over the park emerged, fueled in part by the land’s former owner, Jeff Sandefer, who sold the property for $2 million to an Austin developer who reportedly planned to install condos there.

The efforts of Sandefer and other park opponents led to another special election in August 1992 to sell the land, but that result was much more decisive, with 1,286 citizens voting to keep the land against 736 voting to sell.

The initial emergence of support for the park would prove to be just the first wave of proponent activity, even amid a formidable campaign to squash it. The park was officially dedicated on April 9, 1994.

For a more detailed history of Lakeway’s City Park, read Lewis H. Carlson’s book “Lakeway: A Hill Country Community.”