San Saba County Texas map
31.16° N · 98.82° W · County seat: San Saba · 1,138 sq mi
San Saba calls itself the Pecan Capital of the World, and the claim has a basis: native pecans grow thick in the bottomland where the San Saba River joins the Colorado, and commercial budding and grafting of improved pecan varieties in Texas began on this river in the 1870s.
The town of San Saba sits on the river of the same name where US-190 and SH-16 cross. The Colorado River forms the county's northeastern and eastern boundary.
Where San Saba County is
The county lies on the northern edge of the Edwards Plateau in western Central Texas, at the point where the Hill Country grades into the rolling prairies to the north. Seven counties border it: Mills north, Lampasas east, Burnet southeast, Llano south, Mason southwest, McCulloch west and Brown northwest. Fredericksburg is 61 miles south, Killeen 65 miles east, Georgetown 77 miles southeast and Kerrville 79 miles southwest.
The county was created from the Bexar District in 1856 and takes its name from the San Saba River, which Spanish explorers named for Saint Sabbas, whose feast day fell when they reached it. The river crosses the county from west to east and empties into the Colorado near the eastern line. The 2020 census counted 5,730 residents; the 2024 estimate of 5,508 is lower, and the county has been slowly losing people for decades.
Pecans
Native pecans line the San Saba and Colorado bottoms in dense stands. In the 1870s Edmond E. Risien, an English cabinetmaker who settled at the confluence, began selecting and propagating from an outstanding wild tree he called the Mother Pecan, and his grafting work at the mouth of the San Saba produced named varieties that spread through the Texas industry. Commercial orchards still occupy most of the good river land, and shelling plants and candy makers in town run hard from October through the winter. The county fills its calendar around the harvest, and roadside stands on US-190 sell in-shell pecans through the season.
Away from the bottoms the county is stock country — cattle, sheep, goats and hunting leases on brushy limestone hills. Wheat, oats and hay are grown on the flatter ground toward the north.
The Regency suspension bridge
At the northeastern corner of the county, on the boundary with Mills County, a single-lane suspension bridge crosses the Colorado River at the old settlement of Regency. Built in 1939 after two earlier bridges at the site failed, it is the last suspension bridge in Texas still open to vehicle traffic. The deck is wooden, the towers are steel, and the gravel roads that reach it from FM 500 on the Mills side and from Bend on the San Saba side are slow going. It is sometimes called the Swinging Bridge, and it is the county's most photographed structure.
Bend, in the same corner, is the gateway to Colorado Bend State Park, which occupies the river canyon on the Lampasas–San Saba line and is reached by several miles of unpaved road from the settlement.
Towns and roads
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| San Saba (county seat) | City | 3,111 |
| Richland Springs | Town | 246 |
More than half the county lives in the town of San Saba. Bend, Cherokee, Chappel, Algerita and Harkeyville are unincorporated communities.
- US-190 – the main east–west road, from Lometa and Lampasas in the east through San Saba and on toward Brady in McCulloch County.
- SH-16 – north–south, from Goldthwaite down through San Saba to Cherokee and Llano. It runs with US-190 through the town.
- FM 45 – southeast from San Saba toward Bend and the Colorado River country.
There is no interstate and no scheduled passenger rail; the nearest interstate access is I-10 far to the south or I-35 at Temple, about 90 miles east.