A two-story limestone storefront with white iron balconies beside a smaller stone building on a street in Fredericksburg.
Carol M. Highsmith / public domain via the Library of Congress
Texas · Region

Fredericksburg, Kerrville & the Hill Country

Fredericksburg's Vereins-Kirche and Main Street, the Pacific War museum, LBJ's ranch and boyhood home, Luckenbach, Kerrville, Comfort, Bandera and Lost Maples.

13 places to explore

This is the German Hill Country. In May 1846 a wagon train of 120 settlers came up from New Braunfels to found Fredericksburg, on a site John O. Meusebach had chosen above the Pedernales. The Vereins-Kirche served for fifty years as church, school and meeting hall. In 1847 Meusebach and Comanche chiefs including Buffalo Hump and Santa Anna made the treaty that let the settlers into the San Saba country, and it was ratified in Fredericksburg. Chester Nimitz was born there in 1885, and the National Museum of the Pacific War stands on Main Street.

East along US-290 is Lyndon Johnson's country. He was born near Stonewall in 1908, and the national historical park has two districts 14 miles apart: his boyhood home in Johnson City and the LBJ Ranch, reached with a free permit from the neighboring state park. Luckenbach, a dance hall and store on Grape Creek, won its fame after Hondo Crouch bought it in 1971.

South and west the rivers lead. Kerrville grew on the Guadalupe around Charles Schreiner's businesses. Comfort was a town of freethinkers, and its Treue der Union monument honors Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862. Bandera outfitted herds for the Western Trail and later took in dude-ranch boarders. Junction sits where the two Llanos meet, and bigtooth maples color a canyon of the Sabinal at Lost Maples.

What to See in Fredericksburg, Kerrville & the Hill Country

13 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Natural Areas

Bigtooth maples in orange and gold fall color beneath a blue sky at Lost Maples State Natural Area.

Lost Maples State Natural Area

Vanderpool

A canyon of the upper Sabinal where a relict stand of bigtooth maples turns color each autumn, a sight that drew crowds up a gravel road long before there was a park.

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The dark arched mouth of the old railroad tunnel in a cut of layered limestone at Old Tunnel State Park, with a small pool below.

Old Tunnel State Park

Comfort

A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.

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The Pedernales River spilling over smooth layered limestone at Pedernales Falls, with a wooded bluff behind.

Pedernales Falls State Park

Johnson City

The Pedernales stepping down over layered limestone east of Johnson City, a river that can turn from a placid stream to a torrent in minutes.

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Historic Sites

A small stone building with a tin roof and an old wagon under its shed, beside a large oak at Fort Martin Scott.

Fort Martin Scott

Fredericksburg

An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.

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The stone front of the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera, with a wooden door, an old bell on a post and a ramp to the entrance.

Frontier Times Museum

Bandera

A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

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The South Llano River at Junction, running between gravel banks and green trees below a pale limestone bluff.

Kimble County Historical Museum

Junction

A free county museum in Junction, the town at the meeting of the North and South Llano, with the papers, photographs and tools of a ranching county.

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The white frame boyhood home of Lyndon B. Johnson in Johnson City, with green shutters and a front porch, on a green lawn.

Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park

Johnson City

The Johnson City district of the national park: the Victorian house where Lyndon Johnson grew up, and the stone barns his grandfather built in the Johnson Settlement.

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A weathered wooden farm wagon with iron-rimmed wheels standing on fallen leaves by a split-rail fence at the Sauer-Beckmann farm.

Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site

Stonewall

A state park on the Pedernales opposite the LBJ Ranch, with a working Texas-German farm kept as it was around the First World War and the permit desk for the ranch tour.

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The white Nimitz Hotel on Main Street in Fredericksburg, with long porches and its tall steamboat-shaped front topped by a flag.

National Museum of the Pacific War

Fredericksburg

A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.

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The stone Schreiner Mansion in downtown Kerrville, with arched galleries and red conical turret roofs, behind parked cars.

Schreiner Mansion

Kerrville

The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.

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Treue der Union Monument

Comfort

An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.

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Towns & Gateways

The weathered wooden store and post office at Luckenbach under the spreading limbs of a large oak.

Luckenbach

Fredericksburg

A store, saloon and dance hall on Grape Creek that a humorist bought in 1971, declared a free state of mind, and turned into a pilgrimage for Texas music.

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Architecture

The white octagonal Vereins Kirche with its small cupola at the end of a brick walk across the Marktplatz in Fredericksburg.

Vereins Kirche and Main Street

Fredericksburg

The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.

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Fredericksburg, Kerrville & the Hill Country rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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