United States · Texas · Austin
Jollyville, Austin — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Jollyville grew from an 1866 blacksmith shop into a neighbourhood of north Austin, Texas, strung along US 183 on the limestone of the Jollyville Plateau.
About Jollyville
Where to stay in Jollyville
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Jollyville keeps its rooms on the Research Boulevard frontage of US 183, where extended-stay blocks stand between office parks and the residential streets behind them. Nothing here is walkable. If your reason to be in north Austin is a job on that corridor or family in the neighbourhood, the arrangement suits you and the car does the rest.
For a full-service hotel, the cluster around The Arboretum at Great Hills sits a few miles south on the same road, still inside Austin. Downtown Austin, about a dozen miles further, is the honest answer for anyone who came for the city rather than the suburb.
About Jollyville
What are the main landmarks in Jollyville?
Jollyville has two landmarks worth a stop, and both are state historical markers rather than buildings. The first stands on Pond Springs Road, where the Thompson home served as a stage stop, and records that John Jolly founded the community in 1866 with a store and a blacksmith shop. The second marks Jolly Cemetery.
Jolly and his wife set aside that ground off Spicewood Springs Road and were buried in it, and five citizens of the Republic of Texas lie there with the Strode family, who settled the area in 1841; burials ran from 1872 to 1929. Anything larger is elsewhere in Austin, a few miles south on Research Boulevard.
What is the history of Jollyville?
Jollyville began as a land grant, taken up in 1841 by Henry Rhodes on the open ground known as Live Oak Prairie. The name came later. John Jolly bought 160 acres in 1866, ran a store and a blacksmith shop, and gave land for a school and for the cemetery where he was buried; the school merged with the one at Pond Springs in 1903.
Twenty families lived here in 1960. Austin then spread north across the Travis County and Williamson County line until the old village lay inside the city limits, and the census dropped Jollyville from its roll of places.
Where is Jollyville?
Jollyville sits on the Jollyville Plateau in north Austin, on Rattan Creek and US 183, astride the Travis County and Williamson County line. Anderson Mill lies west.
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Updated September 2026