Gillespie County

Gillespie County is located in west central Texas. Fredericksburg, the county's largest town and county seat, is seventy miles west of Austin and sixty-five miles northwest of San Antonio. The center point of the county is at 30°18' north latitude and 98°55' west longitude, about two miles west of Fredericksburg. Gillespie County comprises 1,061 square miles. Most of the county is on the Edwards Plateau, except for the northeastern corner, which is in the Llano River basin. The primary soils are generally shallow and clayey and not particularly suited to intensive agriculture. The soils in the bottomlands along the Pedernales River and some major creeks are deeper and loamier and better for crops, while the soils in northeastern Gillespie County are generally shallow and loamy. The terrain features plateaus and limestone hills broken by the Pedernales River, with an elevation ranging from 1,100 to 2,250 feet above sea level and averaging 1,747 feet above sea level. The soils on Gillespie County's limestone hills support growths of live oak, shin oak, and other browse plants, as well as grasses and forbs well-suited for grazing. The deeper soils in the valleys and plains produce a true prairie of medium and tall grasses mixed with forbs and woody plants. Some 573,000 acres (85 percent of the agricultural land in the county) is rangeland, which constitutes the county's major renewable resource. The recent trend in Gillespie County has been to convert land previously used for raising crops to improved pasture and hay culture. Cattle and sheep are raised throughout Gillespie County, and Angora goats primarily in the southwest part of the county. Among the numerous wild animals are white-tailed deer, turkeys, quail, doves, foxes, ringtail cats, bobcats, coyotes, ducks, and geese. Many farm and ranch tanks are stocked with channel catfish, black bass, and sunfish. The county's principal water source is the Pedernales River, which flows from west to east across the width of southern Gillespie County. Other major water sources include Threadgill Creek in the northwest, North Grape Creek in the east, and Crabapple Creek in the north central part of the county. Mineral resources include limestone, talc, gypsum, and metallic minerals. Temperatures range from an average high of 95° F in July to an average low of 36° in January; rainfall averages 27.45 inches a year, and the growing season lasts 219 days.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.