Define Texas Hill Country

[TexasHorseLady]

I'm sorry, but your Texas Travel Guide must have been written by someone is "not from here".

Blackland prairie doesn't count as Texas Hill Country. Our place, just a couple miles east of IH35, is half Austin Chalk (up the hill to the west) and half Houston Black (down the hill to the east).

Round Rock might qualify. Taylor and Hutto are still Central Texas, but not Hill Country.

[texastea]

I've heard that the first "official" hill of the Hill Country is Pleasant Hill. Its that small rise around Parmer and Crystal Falls East in Leander. Drive west on Crystal Falls to the golf course and you'll see real Hill Country views.

[love roses]

I'm still gonna beg to differ just a tad because even by the posted map the Southern edge of Hutto/RR is within the shaded area. Although, I do agree that the soil and topography aren't really the same, and going by either map it's on the Easternmost edge. According to the TTG, Jarrell is on one of the boundaries of Hill Country and then oddly, Prairies and Lakes. Actually, so is my area. Yep, It's definitely still Central Texas.

Hill Country makes me think of Horses, Dude Ranches, Pioneers....

[love roses]

I even googled Texas Hill Country Towns and many Eastern Williamson towns came up. I don't know what the criteria was, but they were there. A couple of sites listed Taylor and one site listed Coupland, Florence, Friendship, Georgetown, Granger, Jarrell, New Corn Hill, Noack, Round Rock, Sandoval, Schwertner, Structure, Theon, Thrall, Walburg, Waterloo and Weir.

[HappyTexan]

Cities/Areas

The above lists cities/towns in the Texas Hill Country..only one close to I-35 I see in that list is Georgetown. This list of towns goes more along my thinking of what the Hill Country means.

I guess it's subjective as it's not like a county with county lines defining it.

[love roses]

That list just shows towns very close to the west of Austin. The Hill country comprises way more territory than that. Most of the maps show it reaching nearly to the Big Bend area to the West.

[chickenfry]

i always thought that the balcones escarpment was the eastern boundry of the hill country. it runs thru san marcos, new braunfels, barton creek area of austin, georgetown and on to salado

[love roses]

I think it's like HappyTexan says, it's subjective maybe. I could probably look at 5-10 different maps and they might all say something different. The map I'm using as reference out of the TTG puts Salado in the Prairies and Lakes region. For Eastern boundaries, according to this, it has Georgetown and Taylor. Then it goes down to Austin, San Marcos, New Braunfels, around to Hondo, Devine, Uvalde, and Brackettville to the South/SW, then up to Ozona, Iraan, and Big Lake. The Northern points as Eldorado, Menard, Braady, San Saba, Lampasas. There are surely more towns than that eeking right up to the edge parts of this map but I think it's only listing towns of larger populations. I think the map THL posted is pretty representative of it though. I think it shows a little further South than the one I'm looking at.

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by chickenfry

i always thought that the balcones escarpment was the eastern boundry of the hill country. it runs thru san marcos, new braunfels, barton creek area of austin, georgetown and on to salado

That was my impression, as well. As I said, we're just a couple miles east of IH35, and we're Austin Chalk on the west and Houston Black on the east side of the place.

[Alatex]

I always thought that the balcones escarpment was the eastern boundry of the hill country.

I visited Wonder World in San Marcos, and share your opinion.