STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Elon Musk has been spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C. He's appeared in interviews with President Trump in the Oval Office and has said he leads the Department of Government Efficiency, although a White House legal filing denies that the presidential aide actually directs it. At the same time, Musk does lead businesses, including government contractors, in other parts of the country. And these days, the heart of his personal empire is not California but rural Texas. The Texas Newsroom's Lauren McGaughy went there.
LAUREN MCGAUGHY, BYLINE: There's no use in arguing - the city of Bastrop is dang cute. There's a quaint little main street. Victorian-era homes dot downtown like oversized gingerbread houses. The town's salon is even called the Best Lil' Hair House in Texas. It's mostly farms and ranches out here in Bastrop County, and the population has barely broken 100,000 for more than a century. That's why it's hard to believe that just outside of town is the economic epicenter of one of the world's richest people.
PAUL PAPE: Elon Musk.
SYLVIA CARRILLO-TREVINO: Yay, Mr. Musk is here. Yay, yay, yay.
MCGAUGHY: Elon Musk. He's moved nearly all of his companies to Texas in the last few years. But nowhere is Musk's business power more concentrated than at his massive corporate compound in rural Bastrop County. Here at a sprawling 600-acre site, you can find a SpaceX Starlink manufacturing facility, the home of Musk's tunneling firm, The Boring Company, and the Hyperloop Plaza, a minimart, bar and playground for the public. Locals said Bastrop's rural identity is exactly why Musk chose this area to build. Bastrop is just a 45-minute drive from Austin, with its tech workforce and big city amenities. But it's largely unincorporated, meaning Musk is subject to fewer development and environmental rules. Paul Pape was the county judge here until a few years ago. He says Bastrop County was ready for explosive growth. Elon Musk just lit the fuse.
PAPE: He's a rare breed and brought sort of a new energy to development in Bastrop.
MCGAUGHY: According to legal filings and SpaceX company reports, Musk is expanding his presence in Bastrop County in 2025. He's going to double the size of his SpaceX facility here. The new headquarters for social media company X will open here soon. And then there's Snailbrook, a company town Musk wants to build here for his local employees. Bastrop's city manager Sylvia Carrillo-Trevino thinks Snailbrook could be way bigger than previously projected, thousands of homes instead of hundreds. Probably later this year, she says Snailbrook will tap into the local wastewater line, allowing it to further develop.
CARRILLO-TREVINO: We're such a welcoming, small-town community. And then you add Elon to the mix. The - for lack of a better term - free advertising that we've gotten about him being in our midst, I think, is the entire driver.
MCGAUGHY: Carrillo-Trevino estimates Bastrop will grow by 42% in the next five years. Fully half of that growth, she thinks, is due to Musk's influence.
CARRILLO-TREVINO: If Elon thinks Bastrop is cool, it must be cool.
MCGAUGHY: All of this growth means home prices here have gone up and traffic has gotten worse. Musk's businesses have also been fined for environmental violations. The area has resisted attempts to be annexed into the city of Austin, which is politically more liberal, and locals want to preserve Bastrop's idyllic rural environment and small-town culture. I met Rachael Tolbert on Main Street in Bastrop.
RACHAEL TOLBERT: I live in the country, so I'm pretty unaffected by the changes personally. And hopefully it'll stay that way.
MCGAUGHY: If Musk's plans for the area come to fruition, that may be wishful thinking. For better or worse, change is coming.
For NPR, I'm Lauren McGaughy in Bastrop, Texas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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