Explore Blanco State Park: History, Nature, and Activities
Published: 1976
Updated: August 30, 2025
Blanco State Park is just off U.S. Highway 281 on the south side of Blanco in Blanco County. The approximately 105-acre park covers about a mile-long strip of land on both sides of the Blanco River. Private landowners deeded the land to the state in 1933. In June 1933 Company 854 of the Civilian Conservation Corps began improvements on the land, as the park was one of the inaugural four parks in the state to have a CCC company. Capt. John L. Hill was commander of the camp, which included 177 CCC workers and a corps of engineers. The men built two seven-foot-high dams of stone from the riverbed, roads, two concrete bridges, and a concession house with eighteen-inch stone walls and pine timbers and shingles. Facilities also included a bathhouse, seven campsites, and a seventy-foot table. The work group included a tree army responsible for pruning trees and shrubs and planting shade and fruit trees. The workmen completed their job in May 1934, and Blanco State Park became one of the earliest parks in the state park system.
Glen Rose limestone in the park gives the terrain a stairstep appearance. The riverbed contains layers of limestone and softer marl formed since prehistoric times, when a shallow sea covered the area that is now the Hill Country; outcroppings of a fossil zone with ancient clams and oysters can be seen. Dinosaur tracks have been preserved in the streambed a mile upriver from the park and three miles downstream from the park, on private property. Local vegetation includes juniper, live oak, mesquite, and grasses that grow from dark calcareous stony clays and clay loams. Some water-tolerant hardwoods and conifers are present along the streambed. Area wildlife includes deer, armadillos, squirrels, and a variety of birds.
In 1982 renovations began in the park with the addition of more facilities and the first solar-heated water system in a Texas state park. The system included 240 gallons of thermal storage for showers and restrooms and resulted in savings in the cost of electricity. The renovated park opened on July 30, 1983. Its facilities included thirty-seven picnic sites, twenty-one campsites, ten trailer hookups, and a trailer dump station. The park received a Texas Historical Marker in 2009.
The park suffered extensive damage from a flood on May 23, 2015, when the river rose thirty feet. Park rangers and volunteers made repairs and cleaned out uprooted trees, silt, trash, and other debris that littered the park, which fully reopened on October 24, 2015. The park includes twenty-nine campsites, seven screened shelters, a park store, pavilion, picnic area, and hiking trails and is used by local citizens and tourists, many from Austin and San Antonio. Fishing (officials stock trout in the winter), swimming, boating, picnicking, and camping are popular park activities.
Bibliography:
Blanco State Park, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/blanco/), accessed August 21, 2025. Cynthia Brandimarte with Angela Reed, Texas State Parks and the CCC: The Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013). Ross A. Maxwell, Geologic and Historic Guide to the Texas State Parks (Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin, 1970). John Moursund, Blanco County History (Burnet, Texas: Nortex, 1979). James Wright Steely, The Civilian Conservation Corps in Texas State Parks (Austin: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 1986). Texas Parks and Wildlife, March 1985.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Laurie E. Jasinski, “Blanco State Park,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/blanco-state-recreation-area.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
TID:
GKB08
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- 1976
- August 30, 2025
