These Texas Towns Have The Best Views In The State

The best views in Texas are concentrated in a few small but mighty towns. Think canyon rims, desert plateaus, Hill Country springs and Gulf Coast magic. In places like Marfa and Port Aransas, you’re never far from a trailhead, overlook, swimming hole, or pier that stops you in your tracks. This guide to the most scenic Texas towns shows you where to stand for the kind of sky, water, and rock that turns an ordinary Texas road trip into a lifetime snapshot.

Canyon

Canyon is defined by places you can stand inside, not just look at. About ten miles east of town, Palo Duro Canyon opens abruptly, its walls dropping hundreds of feet into exposed layers of red clay and limestone. From the rim, the scale is immediate. Trails descend toward the canyon floor, where cottonwoods line the creek and the Lighthouse formation rises from the earth with a shape so precise it feels engineered rather than eroded. The rock’s narrow base and heavy crown make it a destination you move toward slowly, watching its proportions change step by step.

Back in town, the landscape is equally immersive. Back in town, Creek House Honey Farm and its Honey Buzz Winery extend the canyon experience in a different way, pouring mead made from their own Texas honey on a 100-acre hilltop overlooking Tierra Blanca Creek, with shelves of beeswax candles and local products lining the tasting room. As evening approaches, many visitors head back toward the canyon for the Texas outdoor musical, staged directly against the rock wall in a natural amphitheater carved by erosion. Before or after, locals gather at Palace Coffee Company, a small but well-known stop where conversations revolve around trail conditions and sunset timing rather than menus.

Fort Davis

The road into Fort Davis climbs steadily into the Davis Mountains, and the payoff comes quickly at Davis Mountains State Park, where overlooks frame long, unobstructed views across a volcanic basin. Shaped by volcanic eruptions roughly 35 million years ago, the mountains here rise in dark, angular ridges broken by narrow canyons and grass-filled valleys. From the park’s trails, you can trace the land’s rise and fall clearly; no haze, no development, just distance shaped by rock and height. Nearby, Fort Davis National Historic Site sits low in the valley, its stone buildings positioned exactly where water, terrain, and military necessity once intersected, making the landscape itself part of the story.

That same geography draws visitors upward again toward the McDonald Observatory. The drive climbs above town, opening wider views with each switchback, until the basin below becomes a defined bowl of ridges and plains. Night programs here are precise and visual, using powerful telescopes and the region’s elevation to reveal detail rarely visible elsewhere in the state. Back in town, the day often ends at Hotel Limpia, where travelers gather for a meal in a building that has anchored Fort Davis since the early 1900s.

Marfa

Marfa is a town where you engage with place deliberately, often by driving straight out of it. Just east of town, the Marfa Lights Viewing Area pulls visitors to the edge of U.S. 90, where the highway drops into open desert framed by the Chinati Mountains. The lights appear low on the horizon, sometimes steady, sometimes splitting or drifting, and the experience hinges on patience and distance rather than spectacle. Back in town, that same sense of scale is formalized at the Chinati Foundation, where massive installations by Donald Judd occupy former military buildings. The art is inseparable from its setting: concrete forms aligned precisely with the land, light, and sightlines of the surrounding desert.

From there, Marfa’s commercial landmarks feel intentionally sparse. Ballroom Marfa hosts rotating exhibitions and film programs that draw directly from regional themes, often using the building itself as part of the work. Meals often anchor at Jett’s Grill inside the historic Hotel Paisano, where green-chile cheeseburgers and chicken-fried steak come with the bonus of eating in the same courtyard where the cast of Giant stayed while filming in the West Texas desert. Nearby, Wrong Marfa anchors the town’s retail core with art books and locally made goods.

Wimberley

Wimberley is built around water and limestone. At Blue Hole Regional Park, Cypress Creek slows into a clear, spring-fed bend shaded by tall bald cypress. The swimming area is carefully managed, entry limits, rope swings removed, banks stabilized, so the experience stays focused on the water itself, cold even in August and visibly moving over pale limestone. A short drive from the square, Cypress Falls Swimming Hole on Cypress Creek offers a broad, spring-fed pool backed by Eagle Rock and a low waterfall, with day-use wristbands, kayak and tube rentals, and a lodge-side bar turning it into Wimberley’s classic all-day swim spot. The well’s depth and steady flow explain much of the Hill Country’s geology in one glance, making it less a swimming spot than a lesson in how this landscape works.

Back in town, elevation replaces water as the draw. The climb up Old Baldy leads to a compact platform overlooking treetops, creek corridors, and low limestone ridges, a clear read of the Edwards Plateau’s contours. On weekends, visitors filter through Wimberley Market Days, where Hill Country craft, antiques, and food stalls fill a long-established trading ground. Meals often land at Wimberley Cafe, a long-running local institution that ties daily life to the steady flow of visitors.

Port Aransas

The South Jetty is where that motion is easiest to read in Port Arnasas: cargo ships slide through the channel from the Gulf toward Corpus Christi while waves break hard against stacked granite blocks, throwing spray into the air. Pelicans line the rocks, unfazed by the traffic, and anglers work the current where saltwater meets structure. A short walk away, the Port Aransas Beach stretches wide and driveable, its firm sand and shallow surf defining how people actually use the coast here, fishing rods planted near trucks, surf rolling in clean lines rather than dramatic drops.

The Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center shifts focus from open water to the marsh. The raised boardwalk cuts directly across wetlands where roseate spoonbills, herons, and alligators appear at eye level, not hidden behind barriers. Back near the harbor, a few spots anchor daily life. Virginia’s On The Bay sits directly over the water, serving Gulf shrimp and redfish while boats idle just below the deck. Closeby, the historic pier extends into the surf, its length offering one of the clearest reads of tide, wind, and horizon in town.

No matter whether you’re watching shadows slide across Palo Duro, tracing constellations above Fort Davis, or standing in Gulf wind at Port Aransas, Texas looks different from these smaller places, and better for it. Pick one, point the car in its direction, and give yourself enough time to stand still and actually look. The views will do the rest.