WELCOME TO ELONTOWN, USA

The small town of Bastrop, Texas (pop. 12,000), has become a home base for Elon Musk's business empire. What comes next is anyone's guess.

- JESSICA MATHEWS

OPEN FOR BUSINESS SpaceX is one of several Elon Musk enterprises that have planted stakes near Bastrop, Texas.

IT'S A 40-MINUTE DRIVE from Austin to the quintessential Texas ranch town of Bastrop, where cowboy hats, cowboy boots, and pickup trucks drift along frontier-style storefronts and main streets whose layout has changed little since the 1830s.

People who live in the 12,000-person town, home to 131 nationally registered historical sites, describe it as a rare preserve of Old Texas-a hunk of land that has managed to stay outside of Austin's grip and sprawling growth.

But that's changing, say the old-timers: Home prices are rising; ranchland and open fields are being replaced by gravel pits. And it's getting harder to find a parking spot at the only grocery store in town. The crowds are starting to skew younger. There's more live country music in the restaurants. And in this year's election, some "Kamala/Walz" yard signs popped up downtown alongside the "Trump/Vance" ones.

And then there's Elon Musk.

The world's richest person has made a growing homestead for his various businesses in Bastrop County. Starlink, a division of Musk's SpaceX that makes internet satellites, has a 500,000-square-foot manufacturing facility just 15 minutes away from Bastrop's historic downtown. Musk's tunneling venture, the Boring Company, has a research and development center, and social media site X (born in San Francisco as Twitter), will soon break ground on its headquarters here.