Inside the headquarters of Texas Sub-scange of the government of the government of Elon Musk

After having fled the Silicon Valley for political and commercial reasons, Elon Musk built a company campus in Rural Texas – but his new neighbors have mixed opinions.

Half an hour east of Austin, in front of the airport, obstructed traffic begins to melt and the plains of the center of Texas open, leaving the city in full swing behind.

Somewhere along the main two -lane highway, a left turn takes the drivers on the road from the farm to marketing 1209.

Judicial deposits indicate that a large metal building completed in recent months will be X’s new head office, its social media platform.

At a short distance, a big logo of the boring company, Musk’s Infrastructure Company, is glued to the side of another headquarters. And through FM 1209, a fast growing spacex installation that manufactures Satellite Starlink Internet equipment.

Like most technology magnates, Musk had long since made Silicon Valley its house and headquarters. Once in favor of Democrats, its move to Texas is part of a broader world technological trend and also seems to reflect its own transformed ideological opinions.

Here, the field is (relatively) technological workers (relatively cheap and qualified as nearby Austin, local laws are favorable to development.

Of course, there are also political angles specific to this decision.

In July 2024, Musk said that he had left California after the state adopted a law prohibiting teachers from asserting the rules for notifying families when students’ gender identity changes.

Musk has a separate transgender daughter and spoken against what he calls “the awakened spirit virus” – that he describes in interviews as a divider identity policy-as well as ideas of anti-meritocratic and anti-graty discourse.

And so Musk increased the sticks and headed for Texas, a republican bastion and the fastest growth state in the United States.

In addition to the group of buildings near Bastrop in the center of Texas, he built a SpaceX installation in the County of Cameron, at the southern tip of Texas near the border with Mexico. SpaceX employees filed a petition to create a new city called Starbase. The measure will go to a vote in May.

The inhabitants of Bastrop have mixed feelings on development.

“It is almost as if we had a divided personality,” explains Sylvia Carrillo, director of the city of Bastrop, who has more than 12,000 inhabitants. “Residents are happy that their children and grandchildren have a job in the region.

“On the other hand, it may seem that we are overwhelmed by a third party and that development would quickly urban our region,” she said.

Although the development of the muscles is technically outside the limits of the city, it is close enough for the laws of Texas to give the government the government of Bastrop on development. And, underlines Ms. Carrillo, the musk buildings are just one example of many developments arising in a booming area.

“He is faced with a reaction that is not entirely of his own creation,” she said.

“But now that it is here and that things change quickly, it is a question of managing” questions like the prices of houses and land and the environment, “she says.

The musk compound is still quite naked. The highly named Hyperloop Plaza is located in the middle of the corporate buildings and houses the boring bodega belonging to the company, a bar, a coffee, a hairdresser and a gift shop.

A recent windy Sunday afternoon, a video game console had remained without play in front of a sofa near a demonstration of corporate t-shirts, while a few children rushed into a playground outside.

Bastrop developments are directly written in the accelerated pace of activity in central Texas, where cranes are perpetually loomed above the Austin horizon and the housing market is a subject of perpetual conversation.

The region has crossed various booms and busts of industry over the years, including the exploitation of wood and coal, explains Judy Enis, a volunteer guide at the museum and at the Bastrop reception center.

During the Second World War, tens of thousands of soldiers – and around 10,000 German prisoners of war – flocked to Camp Swift, an American army establishment north of the city.

“It probably had more impact than Elon Musk,” notes Ms. Enis.

The opinions of the magnate are mixed, to say the least, and inseparable not only of its policy but also opinions on economic development, in what is still a field with rural predominance.

Judah Ross, a local real estate agent, said that development has supervised the demographic growth that started following Austin boom and accelerated during the cocovio pandemic.

“I’m always going to be biased because I want growth,” said Ross. “But I love it here and I want to be part of it.

“If nothing else, what is good is the amount of jobs it brings,” he says. “In the past year, I sold people working at Boring and SpaceX.”

Alfonso Lopez, a Texan who returned to the state after working at Tech in Seattle, says that he initially chose Bastrop, thinking that he would be a little crazy about a house purchase and would move on.

Instead, he quickly became in love with the city, his mixture of local businesses and friendly people, and wants to stay.

Mr. Lopez is not a big fan of musk and criticizes some of his management practices and his policies, but admires the technology that his companies have built and is happy to live nearby as long as companies are good neighbors.

“As long as they do not spoil my water or do not dig a tunnel under my house and do not create a chasm, it is not bad,” he said, making a gesture around the metal hangar housing the Bode, the coffee and the bar. “I’m going to come here and watch a match.”

His concerns about water are more than theoretical. Last year, the Boring Company was sentenced to a fine of $ 11,876 (£ 8,950) by the Texas Commission on the quality of the environment after being cited for violations of water pollution.

The boring company initially planned to pour wastewater into the neighboring Colorado river, but, after the local pressure, signed an agreement to send the sludge to a wastewater treatment plant in Bastrop.

Water problems seem to have delayed the construction of houses, which could include more than 100 houses for Musk employees. However, the planned development of houses has failed to materialize. For the moment, the extent of the dwellings is a handful of temporary trailers behind the Bodega building, surrounded by a wall, hectares of the Texas plain and some horses to snack on the grass. Ms. Carrillo, the director of the city, said that any large -scale house building is at least a year off.

In November, SpaceX asked for a free trade area designation, which would allow it to move finished materials and products in and out of the Bastrop factory without being subject to prices – one of Donald Trump’s signature policies.

It is a common practice for manufacturers, and there are hundreds of similar areas across the country.

Local managers of Texas approved the proposal, saying that it will stimulate the local economy, despite a cost of the county estimated at $ 45,000 (£ 34,800) of income this year.

The company also obtains an injection of $ 17.3 million (13.4 million pounds sterling) from the Government of Texas to develop the site, a subsidy which, according to officials, is expected to create more than 400 jobs and $ 280 million in capital investment in Bastrop.

Few local residents wanted to directly criticize Musk when they stood face to face with a visiting journalist. But this is another online story, where sharper feelings shine.

“They will ruin everything nearby,” published a resident on a local online forum. “Nothing good comes with him.”

The BBC contacted SpaceX, The Boring Company and X for comments.

Ms. Carrillo, the director of the city, says that she did not regain personal anger on the part of the inhabitants provoked by Musk’s activities in Washington.

But to protect Bastrop, she says, the city has recently promulgated laws limiting the density of housing and providing for public parks-measures which, according to her, will keep the “historic nature” of the well-preserved city center while allowing growth on the outskirts.

Bastrop, she says, is a conservative and traditionally republican place.

“Her national stuff is not really registered,” she said. “Its companies have been good citizen companies, and we hope it will be able to stay like this.”