10 Most Breathtaking Towns In Texas
The most breathtaking towns in Texas tend to have one unforgettable feature at their heart. In Wimberley, it is a spring-fed swimming hole cold enough to enjoy through a brutal August. In Alpine, it is a desert perch high enough for cool nights under a sky thick with stars. In Blanco, it is rows of lavender coaxed from stubborn limestone soil that grows little else with ease. Each of the ten towns below sits somewhere just as memorable, and each has a walkable downtown close by, so a visit rewards both the drive out and the hours after.
Dripping Springs
The centerpiece near Dripping Springs is Hamilton Pool, a collapsed grotto in the Texas Hill Country where a waterfall spills into clear green water below a half-dome of limestone. Thousands of years ago the roof of an underground river caved in and left the pool and its shaded alcoves behind. Travis County requires a reservation to visit, and staff sometimes close swimming when bacteria levels run high, so it pays to check ahead.
Couples marry here often enough that locals bill the town as the Wedding Capital of Texas, and the Pound House Historical Farmstead and Prospect House are among the venues where ceremonies take place. Historic Mercer Street is the older core of town, a short row of shops and restaurants where Vintage Soul sells home goods and antiques. On the edge of town, Dripping Springs Ranch Park is the site of rodeos and horse shows.
Fredericksburg
German immigrants founded Fredericksburg in 1846, and that heritage still shows in the food, the architecture, and the calendar. Wineries and peach orchards fill the surrounding hills, and the tasting rooms along and near Main Street have made the town one of the busier weekend destinations in the Hill Country.
Downtown stays walkable, and the kitchen at Der Lindenbaum serves schnitzel and sausage in a restored limestone building. Around the December holidays, traditional German Christmas decorations and a lighted pyramid go up in the Marktplatz, and crowds turn out for the seasonal market. Visitors staying the weekend often book the Hoffman Haus, a cluster of cottages a few blocks off Main.
Lockhart
Barbecue is the reason most people drive to Lockhart, which the state legislature named the Barbecue Capital of Texas in 1999. Three historic smokehouses carry that reputation: Kreuz Market, Smitty's Market, and Black's Barbecue, the last of which has run under the same family since 1932.
Beyond the pits, the Caldwell County Courthouse stands at the center of the town square, an 1894 building whose turrets and mansard roof make it one of the most photographed courthouses in the state. Shops and cafes fill the storefronts around the square, and the whole downtown district is worth a look on foot once you have eaten.
Wimberley
Wimberley is built around water, and the best of it sits inside Blue Hole Regional Park: a spring-fed swimming hole shaded by cypress trees, with rope swings over deep green water that stays cool through the summer. Staff cap swimmer numbers in the warm months, so reservations are worth booking early.
A short drive away, Jacob's Well Natural Area protects a deep artesian spring that feeds Cypress Creek and drops into a flooded cave system reaching more than a hundred feet down. Swimming there is restricted, but the trails and overlooks stay open. For the widest view of the valley, hikers climb the 218 stone steps up Old Baldy to a flat summit with a 360-degree look across Wimberley and the surrounding Hill Country.
Downtown, Wimberley Square gathers shops, restaurants, tasting rooms, and live music into a few walkable blocks.
Alpine
Alpine sits in the high desert of far West Texas near Big Bend National Park, at roughly 4,500 feet, high enough that the summer heat eases at night and the dark skies fill with stars. Gene Autry's Deep in the Heart of Texas put the region's big skies to music, and they hold up in person.
The downtown is worth walking. Front Street Books is a local favorite, and a mural covers the side of its building, one of many painted walls that reward a stroll through town. Murphy Street Provisions and The Thimble of West Texas round out the small run of shops, and Sul Ross State University stands on the hillside above them.
Jefferson
Jefferson made its money as a steamboat port before the Civil War, when goods moved through here by way of Caddo Lake and the Big Cypress Bayou. Cypress trees still line the water, and the brick-paved business district preserves the lodging, restaurants, and storefronts from that river-trade era.
Tours are the easiest way into the town's history: a narrated trolley, a ghost walk after dark, and a self-guided walking route through the historic district. Two of the old homes take overnight guests, including the Azalea Inn, built in 1873, and The Benefield House, set in a Victorian home downtown.
Marble Falls
Marble Falls sits on the Highland Lakes chain, and much of the town's outdoor life happens on Lake Marble Falls. In the hills to the northwest lies the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge, established by federal biologists in 1992 to conserve nesting habitat for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler and the black-capped vireo, a songbird that recovered enough to leave the endangered list in 2018.
Hidden Falls Adventure Park covers 2,100 acres of rugged Hill Country terrain open to ATVs and dirt bikes. Closer to the water, Lakeside Park is a family favorite, with a swimming pool, sports courts, barbecue pits, and a boat ramp onto Lake Marble Falls.
Blanco
Blanco is a cattle and ranching town of about 2,000 in the Hill Country, and while the wider region is better known for wine, Blanco is a beer town. Real Ale Brewing Company brews here, and its taproom is a local fixture.
Lavender grows here too. Robb Kendrick and Jeannie Ralston planted Texas's first commercial lavender farm, Hill Country Lavender, just outside Blanco in 1999 after a trip to Provence convinced them the limestone soil and hot, dry summers would suit the crop. During the June bloom, visitors can cut their own from the rows, and growers bring the harvest to the town square each summer for the Blanco Lavender Festival.
Dublin
Dublin, in North Central Texas, plays up its name with a giant shamrock at the edge of town, an annual St. Patrick's Day festival, and businesses like Lucky Brewing. The Irish theme is the hook, but the town's deeper claim to fame is a soda.
From 1891 until 2012, the bottling plant here produced Dr Pepper longer than any other, and its workers held to the original cane-sugar recipe well after other bottlers switched to corn syrup. Now called Dublin Bottling Works, it still runs tours, and staff pour more than a dozen cane-sugar sodas at the restored soda fountain. Three museums round out the town, among them the Ben Hogan Museum, named for the golf champion who grew up here, and the Dublin Rodeo Heritage Museum, which covers the sport's local history.
Navasota
An hour northwest of Houston, Navasota sits among enough trees to feel a long way from the city. The Texas Legislature named it the Blues Capital of Texas in honor of Mance Lipscomb, the sharecropper and songster who was born here and whose statue stands downtown on La Salle Street.
Boutiques, antique shops, and a couple of long-running kitchens fill the compact downtown. Pitmasters at Best Thing Smoking turn out the barbecue, and cooks at Carroll's Giant Burger, a fixture on La Salle Street since 1966, grill the burgers.
Where These Towns Land
What ties these ten together is not scenery in the abstract but a single anchor in each: the swimming hole at Wimberley, the smoke at Lockhart, the bottling line at Dublin, the lavender rows at Blanco, the dark desert sky at Alpine. Some of these towns fill their squares with wine or German heritage, others with rodeo or river history, but each gives a visitor one concrete reason to make the trip and a walkable downtown to fill the rest of the day.
