Best Texas Hill Country Towns

Distances in this guide come from the state's official references — the Handbook of Texas town entries, parks and park-service pages. Where no single official mileage exists, the guide gives an approximate drive time instead of arithmetic. Where a town can be delivered by a guided day trip instead of your own steering, we say which one.

The towns at a glance

What makes a Hill Country town

A limestone courthouse square, a German name on the water tower, a dance hall older than the state's oil industry and a river within walking distance of Main Street. The Hill Country's towns were planted by settlers in the 1840s and 1850s, and the best of them have changed less than anywhere else within an hour of a boomtown. People do not come here for attractions so much as for the texture: feed stores next to tasting rooms, smoke drifting from a pit room at eleven in the morning.

This guide covers the towns worth the drive from Austin, what each one is actually for, and — because not everybody wants to drive them — which ones a guided day trip will deliver you to.

Fredericksburg

The region's capital, 70 miles west of Austin, founded in 1846 by 120 German settlers brought over by the Adelsverein and named for a Prussian prince. Its wide Main Street — the whole downtown is on the National Register of Historic Places — runs for blocks of fachwerk storefronts, tasting rooms and Texas-German restaurants, and its wine corridor runs east of town along US 290 toward Stonewall and Hye, where the tasting rooms string out toward Johnson City.

Come for peaches from mid-May through mid-August, stay for the National Museum of the Pacific War, the Smithsonian-affiliated museum that grew from Fredericksburg native Admiral Chester Nimitz's hometown. Most visitors treat Main Street as the whole town. The smarter move is to book the morning there and the afternoon in a vineyard — nearly 100 wineries now operate in the surrounding country.

Guided days that deliver you here: the LBJ Ranch day trip gives you free time on Main Street between the ranch and Luckenbach.

Wimberley

Forty miles southwest of Austin, where the Blanco River and Cypress Creek meet under bald cypress trees. Wimberley is the Hill Country's water town. Its centerpiece, Jacob's Well — the artesian spring that feeds Cypress Creek and one of the longest fully submerged caves in Texas — is currently a look-don't-swim landmark: the county has cancelled swimming at the well until further notice, while the natural area around it stays open daily, free to visit, with no reservation needed.

The Blanco River still does the swimming honours, with rope swings and cypress shade, and the market weekends are an institution: Wimberley Market Days, Central Texas' largest outdoor market, runs the first Saturday of every month from March through December.

The town itself is a gallery-and-cafe square in the trees. What you remember is the water: cold, clear and green.

Luckenbach

A few miles east of Fredericksburg, a hamlet that is essentially a general store, a post office and one of the most famous dance halls in Texas, established as a trading post in 1849. Waylon Jennings put it in the national imagination with the 1977 hit "Luckenbach, Texas" — the one about back to the basics of love — and the town has been living up to the song ever since, which is to say: not very hard.

There is not much to do here, and that is the attraction. Under the oak trees, somebody is picking a guitar most afternoons, and the dance hall runs real country shows on the weekend. Population signage claims three residents, a figure the Texas Almanac disputes — either way, the crowd at the bar outnumbers the town.

Johnson City

Fifty miles west of Austin and the seat of Blanco County, best known as where Lyndon B. Johnson grew up — his boyhood home is part of the national historical park — and as the front door to the LBJ Ranch at Stonewall, where the Texas White House sits behind the Pedernales.

One note for 2026: the Texas White House itself is closed for restoration, with reopening expected in 2027, so the ranch experience today is the drive through the grounds and the storytelling around them. The ranch day trip that runs out of Austin handles the whole loop — Johnson City, the ranch, Fredericksburg and Luckenbach — in one eight-hour day with hotel pickup.

Marble Falls

The northernmost town in this guide, sitting on the Colorado River at US 281 in the heart of the Highland Lakes chain. Marble Falls is the lakes-and-bluebonnets base rather than a wine stop: lake time in summer, Main Street browsing year-round, and some of the region's best wildflower drives in spring — Burnet, thirteen miles up the road, brands itself the Bluebonnet Capital of Texas and throws a bluebonnet festival every April.

No guided day trip from Austin currently serves Marble Falls, which is precisely why it stays quiet: this one you drive. Pair it with a lakeside lunch rather than a second town.

Driftwood

The smallest stop on this list and, for barbecue pilgrims, the most important. Driftwood, past Dripping Springs on FM 1826, is home to the Salt Lick — the open-pit barbecue joint the Roberts family built stone by stone in 1967 and has been smoking in ever since, on a property you reach through live oaks and vineyards. It is bring-your-own-bottle, with the family's own winery cellar next door.

Driftwood Estate Winery up the road made this little corner the fastest barbecue-and-wine combo from Austin, which is exactly the loop the BBQ and wine shuttles run several days a week.

Gruene and New Braunfels

Forty-five miles southwest, New Braunfels is the German sister city on the Comal and Guadalupe rivers — home to the Comal Springs and the summer tubing industry they feed. Gruene (pronounced "green") is its historic district: 15 walkable acres on the Guadalupe with a gristmill restaurant, general stores and Gruene Hall, the 1878 dance hall that anchors the district.

Between the rivers, the springs and the hall, this is the Hill Country's water-sports corner. It is also, handily, on the San Antonio side — the San Antonio day trip drives through it on the way down I-35's scenic alternate.

Seeing them without driving

The two-lane roads between these towns are the catch — beautiful, empty of buses, and unforgiving after a tasting flight. Guided days solve that, and each serves a different set of towns: the ranch day covers Johnson City, Fredericksburg and Luckenbach, the BBQ and wine shuttles cover Driftwood and its wineries, and the private custom day — listed from New Braunfels — works the southern country around Gruene, New Braunfels and Fredericksburg. Marble Falls is the one you drive yourself.

The full comparison, with prices and what each ticket includes, is on our Texas Hill Country tours page.