Blanco County Texas map

Blanco County occupies the middle of the Hill Country between Austin and Fredericksburg. Austin is 39 miles east in a straight line, Fredericksburg 28 miles west, San Marcos 38 miles southeast and New Braunfels 42 miles southeast. There is no interstate, no railroad in service and no city over 2,000 people.

Seven counties touch it: Burnet north, Travis northeast, Hays east, Comal southeast, Kendall southwest, Gillespie west and Llano northwest.

The legislature created the county in 1858 out of pieces of Burnet, Comal, Gillespie and Hays, and named it for the river the Spanish had called the Blanco, meaning white, for the pale limestone in its bed. The county seat was originally the town of Blanco; an election in 1890 moved it to Johnson City, and Blanco's 1880s limestone courthouse still stands on its square, restored, with no county government in it.

The three incorporated places hold barely a third of the county between them. Everyone else lives on ranch and farm roads, or in the unincorporated communities of Hye on US-290 west, Cypress Mill and Henly toward the Hays County line, and Twin Sisters on US-281 south. The 2024 census estimate puts the county at about 13,358, so growth is running well ahead of the state's rural average as commuters and second-home buyers spread west from Austin along US-290.

Johnson City is named not for the president but for James Polk Johnson, his father's cousin, who laid out the townsite in the 1870s. Hye, west of it, has a post office that Lyndon Johnson used for a stagey postmaster swearing-in while he was in office.

Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park is split between two counties. The Johnson City unit, at the corner of Lady Bird Lane and G Street, holds the frame house where Johnson lived from the age of five and the Johnson Settlement, the log dwelling and barns of his grandfather's cattle-driving operation. The other unit, the LBJ Ranch and the Texas White House, is 14 miles west on US-290 at Stonewall, across the line in Gillespie County, on the Pedernales.

Johnson used the ranch as a working seat of government throughout his presidency, flying in on a small jet that could use the ranch airstrip, and he is buried in the family cemetery under the oaks by the river. The park service runs the Johnson City unit as a walking site and gives a driving tour of the ranch; both are free.

Pedernales Falls State Park lies nine miles east of Johnson City on FM 2766, on the north bank of the river. The falls are not a single drop but a long staircase of tilted limestone slabs where the Pedernales cuts across the upturned edge of an older rock layer, spreading the water into channels and potholes across several hundred yards.

Swimming is prohibited at the falls themselves and allowed downstream at the wide gravel beach; the reason is flash flooding. The Pedernales drains a large area of thin soil over rock, and a storm upstream in Gillespie County can raise the river here several feet within an hour with no rain falling at the park. The park also has a bird blind, a Hill Country loop of backcountry trails and a stretch of the river's north bank open to wading.