10 Most Neighborly Towns In Texas

Texas takes its hospitality seriously. In Granbury, it looks like a courthouse square that was the first in Texas listed on the National Register of Historic Places, still busy with festivals most weekends. In Gruene, it's a tin-roofed wooden hall that has been booking bands since 1878. At the pier in Port Aransas, local fishermen and longtime residents share space with visiting tourists who gather to watch the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico. For a warm welcome as big as you might expect, these small towns in Texas are worth the trip.

Fredericksburg

German settlers founded Fredericksburg in 1846 and named it after Prince Frederick of Prussia. The town they built in the Texas Hill Country still carries their influence in the bakeries and stone buildings along the main street, known locally as the Magic Mile and lined with wine tasting rooms and German restaurants. The surrounding Hill Country wine region counts more than 75 wineries and tasting rooms, which puts Fredericksburg at the center of Texas wine country. The National Museum of the Pacific War, dedicated to Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, who was born here, is one of the finest military museums in the country. Enchanted Rock State Natural Area sits 17 miles north of town, a pink granite dome rising 425 feet above the surrounding landscape with hiking trails and views across the Hill Country in every direction.

Granbury

An hour southwest of Fort Worth on the shores of Lake Granbury, this town of roughly 12,000 people has one of the best-preserved historic squares in Texas. The Hood County Courthouse, a three-story Victorian building topped with a Seth Thomas town clock, anchors a square that was the first in Texas to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The restored Granbury Opera House, in an 1886 building on the square, still stages live performances through the year. The surrounding streets are full of independent shops and restaurants that give the downtown a lived-in warmth. Lake Granbury wraps around three sides of the historic center, putting boating and waterfront dining a few steps from the courthouse square. The town's annual Granbury Wine Walk draws visitors from across North Texas every spring.

Salado

Too good to be true is a phrase that comes to mind in Salado, a small central Texas town midway between Austin and Waco. Its main street of art galleries and limestone storefronts looks designed specifically to make people slow down. Established in 1859, the town hosted Sam Houston, who gave his anti-secession speech from the balcony of the Stagecoach Inn. Cowboys driving herds up the Chisholm Trail stopped here, too. The Salado Museum preserves that history in a well-curated collection, and the creek-side walking paths are among the most pleasant in the state. Every November, the Salado Scottish Gathering and Highland Games fill the town with pipe bands and Highland athletics, a tradition that has now run for more than sixty years.

Boerne

About 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, Boerne has built a reputation as one of the most welcoming towns in the Hill Country. The Cibolo Nature Center is a 110-acre preserve on the edge of town, with free admission and walking trails that run past a marsh and a set of dinosaur tracks. Just outside town, the Cave Without a Name has offered guided tours since it opened to the public in 1939, and its stalactite and stalagmite formations are among the most impressive in Texas. Main Street is anchored by the Ye Kendall Inn, a historic hotel operating since 1859 with a wraparound porch and a courtyard full of live oak trees, which makes it one of the most atmospheric places to have lunch in the state. The Guadalupe River nearby offers tubing and fishing through the warmer months.

Wimberley

Few towns in Texas have cultivated a community identity as strong as Wimberley, a small Hill Country town between Austin and San Antonio. It has spent decades drawing artists and musicians who wanted a slower pace without giving up good food. Jacob's Well Natural Area, an artesian spring that plunges into an underwater cave system, remains one of the most remarkable natural sites in the state. Blue Hole Regional Park, a spring-fed swimming hole shaded by ancient bald cypress trees on Cypress Creek, is the kind of place that makes people rearrange their schedule to stay an extra day. The town square hosts Wimberley Market Days, one of the largest outdoor markets in Texas, on the first Saturday of each month between March and December. Local art and live music fill the streets for the day.

Port Aransas

Port Aransas sits on Mustang Island on the Texas Gulf Coast, and it has stayed friendly and community-minded despite being one of the most visited beach destinations in the state. Port Aransas Beach stretches for miles with free public access, and the town pier is a gathering place where local fishermen and longtime residents share the same railing. The University of Texas Marine Science Institute runs public programs and a visitor center that explains the ecology of the Gulf Coast in plain terms. Dolphin watching tours leave from the harbor daily, and the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center on the edge of town draws serious birders from across the country. The town sits on the Central Flyway, one of the most important migratory bird routes in North America.

Rockport

Rockport has been an art colony since 1948, when the painter Simon Michael moved to town and opened a school that drew students from across Texas. That creative tradition has never left. The Rockport Center for the Arts, which grew out of Michael's circle of students, hosts rotating exhibitions and workshops that give a town of 10,000 people unusual cultural depth. Each fall, Rockport becomes one of the country's most important wildlife destinations when the whooping cranes arrive at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge up the coast. The entire wild migratory flock winters there, roughly 540 birds at the last survey, which makes this one of the rarest birds in North America. Rockport Beach Park, the first Blue Wave certified beach in Texas, is calm enough for kayaking and paddleboarding and popular with families year-round. The downtown waterfront is lined with seafood restaurants and galleries, and the marina is the kind where shrimping boats still outnumber pleasure craft.

Marfa

No town in Texas is quite like Marfa, a remote high desert community of around 1,800 people in far West Texas that has somehow become one of the most talked-about art destinations in the country. The Chinati Foundation, established by minimalist artist Donald Judd in the 1980s, occupies a former military base on the edge of town and houses large-scale permanent installations that draw art world visitors from around the world.

Prada Marfa, a permanent installation built to look like a boutique stranded on the desert highway about 25 miles northwest of town, has become one of the most photographed roadside landmarks in America. The Marfa Lights Viewing Area, east of town on the highway toward Alpine, draws visitors most evenings to watch the unexplained lights that have been reported in the desert since the 1880s. Despite its unlikely fame, the town has stayed small and welcoming, with a main street of good restaurants and independent shops.

Jefferson

Jefferson was once the most important inland port in Texas, a booming riverport city in the 1840s and 1850s that shipped cotton and goods across the country via Caddo Lake and the Red River. The collapse of the river trade left it largely frozen in time. Today, it is one of the best-preserved 19th-century towns in the state, with nearly 100 historic landmarks packed into a downtown of about 2,000 people. The Jefferson Historical Museum, housed in a former federal courthouse from 1888, covers the town's steamboat era and Civil War history in impressive detail.

Caddo Lake State Park, just outside town, opens onto one of the largest flooded cypress forests in the country, with Spanish moss draped over ancient trees and alligators visible from the canoe trails that wind through the bayou. The town is also known as the Bed and Breakfast Capital of Texas, and its concentration of restored antebellum homes turned guesthouses gives it an atmosphere that is hard to find anywhere else in the state.

Gruene

Gruene, pronounced "Green," is technically a historic district within the city of New Braunfels, but it has its own identity so distinct that most people treat it as its own town. Gruene Hall, built in 1878, is the oldest continuously operating dance hall in Texas. It is a simple wooden building with a corrugated tin roof where George Strait and Lyle Lovett both played early in their careers, and where local bands still take the stage every weekend.

The Guadalupe River runs directly below the hall, and inner tube rentals from local outfitters make floating the river one of the most popular summer activities in central Texas. The Gruene Historic District is a compact collection of restored 19th-century buildings housing antique shops and restaurants, and it can be walked comfortably in an afternoon. The Gruene Mansion Inn, a Victorian bed and breakfast on the bluff above the river, is among the more distinctive places to stay in the Texas Hill Country.

Warm Weather and Even Warmer Welcomes

Texas has no shortage of friendly places, but the towns above turn that friendliness into something a visitor can feel within the first few minutes of arriving. A conversation at the Granbury Opera House or a hike out to Jacob's Well is the kind of welcome that lands and sticks long after you've left. In these sweet spots, you'll find communities with a heart the size of Texas.