The world's richest man is developing a company town outside Austin, Texas. Like the industrialists who came before him, Elon Musk may learn it’s hard to create (and sustain) a utopia. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members An aerial view of Elon Musk's Snailbrook community in Bastrop County, Texas. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Snailbrook and who is building it?
If you open your Maps app and you type in Snailbrook, Texas, you will get nothing but a prompt. Do you maybe want Scenic Brook, Texas or Springbrook, Texas? Snailbrook is not a town just yet. It is currently under construction outside of Austin. The builder, one Elon Musk, says Nailbrook will be a company town for employees of his boring company and ex and etc.
He has plans for it to be, quote, utopian, which... I mean, it's got a long way to go. It's got a lot of rough edges and it's definitely nothing that you would call like a utopia. So far, it's just 15 trailers.
Coming up on Today Explained, Elon Musk takes us back to the days of the company town, whether we care to go or not.
I don't see the draw personally to wanting to go out in the middle of nowhere and then live in a tiny trailer.
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It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Ronnie Mola is a senior correspondent at Sherwood News who recently took a trip to Texas.
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Chapter 2: Is Snailbrook living up to Elon Musk's vision?
It's got like a center of commerce and, you know, different businesses and things like that, different attractions for the workers. So I decided to go down there and check it out.
Is Snail Brook living up to Elon Musk's vision for it?
Absolutely not. I mean, it's got a long way to go. When you get to Snailbrook, when you drive either from Austin or from Bastrop Town, all of a sudden you start seeing these giant buildings. And these are factories for Elon Musk's companies. There's the SpaceX Starlink facility, which is going to be over a million square feet. There's these metal buildings for the Boring Company.
And then behind the boring company, behind this chain link fence that's obscured by these green slats, that's where the entire residence of the town is so far. There you'll find, you know, 15 or so gray and tan trailers, a little... pool, a gym, and it's mostly empty most of the time. Then there's the center of commerce. It's called Hyperloop Plaza.
That's got two different giant metal buildings, kind of like you'd house livestock in. One of them is where the stores are. That's where the boring bodega is. I described it as sort of a tiny Whole Foods. You could get drinks with adaptogens or the olive oil that everyone uses on Instagram. The squeeze bottle ones? The squeeze bottle ones. So there's also a pickleball court and a playground.
It also appears to be residential grade playground stuff, so something you'd buy at Walmart or Target. It's always broken, the locals were telling me. When I was there, a ladder going up one of the structures had been broken, and they put a two-by-four on it to kind of keep it together. There was a bolt coming out of another one, so it was really shaky.
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Chapter 3: What amenities and features does Snailbrook offer?
You could shake the whole thing, and you'd get sunburned because there's no sunshade. There's a candy shop for some reason in addition to the bodega. as if you needed more snacks, his and hers barbershop. But I tried to get my hair cut, but it wasn't open any of the times I was there. And I tried to make an appointment online, and it said there were none available.
They're also building a pottery studio. This is an approximation of what I guess he thinks a town is like. There's going to be a doctor's office there, entertainment area, which is really just a couple of TVs and some Nintendo Wii's. And, you know, I just went and hung out in there. Are there people there? So not many, especially in the morning. Not many people.
It gets a little bit like slightly more trafficked around lunch and after work. As far as, you know, signs of life, not too many, at least not yet.
Is the idea that the town is under construction, we're still building it, but at some point people will move there. Like, what is the actual plan to populate this place?
I mean, it's always hard to tell. Elon Musk and his companies would not talk to me. SpaceX declined to comment, and then Boring Company and X didn't respond to comments. Presumably, they are going to eventually build those 110 single-family homes that are not trailers.
But in the meantime, I've found other plans that show they're going to build another 20 homes, but those look like they're going to be trailers as well. You know, something you could throw up very quickly that isn't very permanent, that's cheap and easy. He's also building a school there. There's a Montessori school that they finally got permits to open at long last.
And originally they said they were going to accept 50 students. They're only accepting 16. So this is supposed to eventually be a place where the people who work at his companies can also live and go out with their kids and send their kids to school and go get a beer afterwards or go to the food truck or go to maybe a restaurant or get primary care. But It's very much a work in progress.
And these things sort of take time. But Elon Musk has more money than God. And, you know, he started this back in around 2021. You know, if he wanted to, he could put up some houses. You know, what was so interesting to me is I'm looking across from this broken playground, you know, with the two by four sistered against the ladder to keep it, you know, to keep your kids from falling through.
And across the way, you see the Starlink facility where they're manufacturing satellites that go into outer space and that allow people around the world to get, you know, high-speed internet access.
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Chapter 4: How does Snailbrook compare to other company towns?
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Snailbrook face in development?
So you have all sorts of different types of employers. Some of them are very community-minded and things like that, and they have other guys just trying to make money. And so the range of conditions in company towns was pretty wide. A lot of times they're trying to get started. So if they're trying to hire 100 employees or 200 employees, they need to build housing pretty quickly.
And so it's usually pretty much the housing looks pretty much the same. They try to design the towns and things like that. And then they try to improve things, the good employers. try to put in things like YMCAs and swimming pools, and they have a baseball team and things along those lines.
But they're also providing the sewers and the store and the housing, and also a lot of times they're providing the security as well.
Are there any American towns that started as company towns before? but we don't know that?
Chapter 6: Is Snailbrook a desirable place to live?
There are actually quite a few, because usually what happens is the town starts out as a company town, and then say what happens is another mine moves in nearby, or maybe three or four mines move in nearby, and then what happens is you develop an independent town. in and amongst all the company towns. And so that allows you to expand.
And so probably a number of towns in West Virginia that weren't too deep into the mountains actually became independent towns, actually building off of the fact that there were several company towns around. And once you get that kind of situation, the company often sells off the housing.
There are a couple of perils here. The company has a lot of power. The town is often isolated. In early American company towns, what sorts of negative consequences did we see?
Well, I think one of the biggest problems is that the possibilities of labor strife go up. Oh, yeah. And one of the reasons is, if you just think about it, normally if you're mad at your grocer, you're mad at your grocer, but that doesn't influence your attitude towards your employer, or your landlord, or something like that.
But if your landlord, your grocer, and everybody else, and the policemen are all... hired by the company and also the hospital or the medical doctors and stuff. Well, then, you know, if you're mad at one, you're mad at everybody. Most of the towns actually didn't have bad experiences necessarily, but you do get situations where things just really go badly.
The Ludlow situation in Colorado in 1913 and 1914 was an example where Standard Oil owned the town. It was a coal mining town and things. It actually was a pretty nice town, actually, if you look at it. They had a lot of nice amenities and things along those lines because usually big companies actually provided better amenities.
Then they had a strike, and after about six weeks, the company wanted to bring in other workers, which meant that they pushed workers out of their houses. And so that's always a really bad situation, as you can imagine. And then you have pickets, and people are protesting and stuff. And you could be there, and you could have a car backfire, and all of a sudden people start shooting.
And then it goes really badly from there. And so then they had a situation where eventually they called in the troops and the troops, they actually ended up attacking a mining tent town and like 13 women and children died in a fire. I mean, it was just horrible. That was known as the Ludlow Massacre. So that's kind of like the worst thing that can possibly happen.
What are some examples of when it goes right and what tend to be the circumstances when it goes right?
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Chapter 7: What are the potential benefits for employees living in Snailbrook?
Well, certainly. I mean, if he's really planning on having SpaceX be there for quite some time, I imagine they're going to build good quality housing. And these days you can build good quality housing in nice neighborhoods and have it be variable as well. It depends on who he's trying to house and how expensive it is.
And, you know, one of the questions, is he building the housing and going to sell it or is he going to build it and have people rent it? And then once the community is close enough to Austin that all sorts of other things are going on, then you'd sell the housing to people because that's typically what happens in those kind of settings.
Well, I think the company town was really important for developing areas that were relatively isolated. And then what happens is in a number of places where the activity actually expands and you have the same kind of things around it or you have complementary industries that develop, then what happens is the company town becomes a thriving town that's independent.
They sell off the housing and everything goes along. So I think that's a feature of it. It's not how every place developed, but it's certainly how isolated places developed, I think.
Price Fishback. He's a professor at the University of Arizona. Victoria Chamberlain produced today's show. Matthew Collette edited. Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christen's daughter are our engineers. And Laura Bullard is our fact checker. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.
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