For most of Austin’s history, water was less a lifestyle perk than a civic problem to be solved. The Colorado River gave the city power, beauty and a bit of unpredictability in roughly equal measure—especially before a system of dams helped tame the floods that had long made the river both useful and volatile. In the 1890s, Austin tried to impose order with the original Austin Dam, which creating Lake McDonald—a reservoir along the same stretch of water that would later become modern Lake Austin.

The project was grand and optimistic, the sort of engineering gesture that suggested a young city imagining itself on a larger scale. Then came the flood of 1900. The dam failed. The lake vanished. The river reasserted itself.

That difficult childhood is part of what makes Lake Austin’s current identity so striking. The waterway that once resisted existence has become one of the city’s clearest markers of wealth. Last year, four of Austin’s top ten residential sales, including the year’s highest trade at $16.9 million, sat along its banks, where privacy, proximity and water combine into an elite category unique to the city.

The Next Landmarks Are On The Water’s Edge

The current market suggests that category is only becoming more expensive. A nine-acre waterfront estate at the aptly named 2503 Edgewater........

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