Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg is a town of about eleven thousand people in the Texas Hill Country, founded by German settlers in 1846 and proud of it: the wide Main Street is lined with limestone buildings, the Marktplatz holds a replica Vereins Kirche, locals still call it Fritztown, and Sunday houses, the tiny in-town cottages farm families once kept for weekend trips to church, scatter the side streets. Onto that heritage has been grafted one of Texas's biggest visitor economies, wine, with more than a hundred wineries in the county and tasting rooms all along the highway to Johnson City.

The National Museum of the Pacific War, the only museum in the continental United States dedicated to the Pacific theatre and sited here because Admiral Chester Nimitz was born in Fredericksburg, is a serious half-day visit with a museum campus across several blocks. The Pioneer Museum covers the German settlement story, and Enchanted Rock, a pink granite dome eighteen miles north, is the region's great hike, with summit views over the Hill Country; entry is by reservation in busy seasons. The Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, with the LBJ Ranch and the Texas White House, lies fifteen miles east at Stonewall, and Luckenbach, of country song fame, is a short drive south. Peach season, from about June into August, fills the roadside stands along U.S. 290, and Gillespie County grows more peaches than anywhere else in Texas.

Main Street dining leans German and Hill Country: schnitzel and sausage with local beer, barbecue, bakeries famous for peach season, and a growing set of chef-led restaurants and wine bars; dozens of tasting rooms pour Texas wine along Main Street and Wine Road 290 without needing the car. Evenings run to live music in the biergartens, patio dining and the dance hall at Luckenbach. Weekends are busy and bookable; weekdays keep more of the small-town feel.

Fredericksburg has hundreds of places to stay: B&Bs and guest houses, for which the town is famous, in the historic streets, motels and hotels along Main Street and U.S. 290, Sunday houses converted to cottages, and campgrounds at Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park and beyond. San Antonio's airport is about seventy miles south and Austin's about eighty northeast. There is no transit; within town, Main Street and the museum district walk well, and winery tours and shuttles handle the tasting rooms so nobody has to drive Wine Road 290 themselves.

Spring, with bluebonnets and peach blossom, and autumn, with Oktoberfest, the Food and Wine Fest and harvest, are the prime seasons; summers are hot but busy, with Enchanted Rock swims and river tubing nearby, and the Christmas season brings a German pyramid and market atmosphere to the Marktplatz. Two to three days covers the museum, a wine day and the rock; Fredericksburg is also a classic weekend base for the whole Hill Country.

On the road, Fredericksburg sits on U.S. 290 in the middle of the Hill Country, between Austin to the northeast and the interstate at Junction to the west, with San Antonio an hour and a quarter south on U.S. 87. It is the hub of the Hill Country loop that takes in Enchanted Rock, the LBJ Ranch, Luckenbach and Kerrville, and the natural overnight between Austin or San Antonio and West Texas.