Elon Musk's companies are awful neighbors, rural Texas residents say
BASTROP COUNTY, Texas (Austin Business Journal) — Since Chap Ambrose and his wife bought 10 acres up on a hill in Bastrop County in 2013, their favorite memories are the times they've spent outdoors with their two children.
There are views of the Colorado River. Daily encounters with deers, hogs and coyotes. Barbecues around the campfire. Afternoons shooting arrows, digging in the dirt for bugs and watching the seeds they've sown grow. All while sleeping in their own beds.
That lifestyle is now in jeopardy.
Around a year and a half ago, Ambrose's wife noticed a group of unfamiliar people in dress shirts on the farmland directly across Walker-Watson Road from their home. It turned out that they belonged to one of the many companies of billionaire Elon Musk, whose increasingly Austin-centric business empire includes Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink and Twitter.
Industrial buildings now dominate the Ambroses' idyllic rural views, and the quiet is often interrupted by the sounds of heavy machinery. Their daily commutes to and from school are alongside 18-wheelers, Teslas and concrete trucks flying down Farm to Market Road 1209.