Kerrville, Texas map
30.05° N · 99.14° W · Kerr County seat · elev. ~1,650 ft · Central Time
Kerrville is built on both banks of the Guadalupe River where it comes off the Edwards Plateau, and the river is the reason for everything about the town: the shingle-makers' camp that started it in the 1840s worked the cypress along the water, and the parks, camps and dance halls strung upstream and down still follow the same green line through otherwise dry hills.
Centered on downtown Kerrville and the Guadalupe. I-10 runs along the north side of the city; SH-39 follows the river west through Ingram to Hunt.
Where Kerrville is in Texas
Kerrville sits on I-10 about 65 miles northwest of San Antonio and 24 miles south of Fredericksburg over the divide on SH-16. West of here the interstate climbs onto the open plateau and the next town of any size is Junction, 60 miles on. That makes Kerrville the practical western edge of the San Antonio–Austin sphere: the largest city in the Hill Country proper, with the hospitals, the airport and the county offices that the ranch country west and south of it depends on.
Kerr County covers 1,107 square miles and had 52,598 people in 2020, about half of them in Kerrville. It was created out of Bexar County in 1856 and named for James Kerr, a Republic of Texas congressman, by his friend Joshua Brown, who founded the town. Kimble County is north, Gillespie northeast, Kendall east, Bandera south, Real southwest and Edwards west.
The river through town
The Guadalupe enters Kerr County as two forks that join near Hunt, runs east through Ingram and Kerrville, then leaves for Center Point and Comfort. Inside the city, Louise Hays Park occupies the north bank below the SH-16 bridge, and a paved river trail runs from there downstream. Kerrville–Schreiner Park, on the southeast edge of town, has camping and river frontage; it was a state park until the city took it over. Upstream the SH-39 river road passes the summer camps that have used this stretch of the Guadalupe for a century.
The university, the festival and the VA
Schreiner University stands on the north side of town off SH-27, founded in 1923 with money from Charles Schreiner, the merchant and rancher whose store anchored early Kerrville. The Kerrville Folk Festival runs from late May into June at Quiet Valley Ranch, south of the city on SH-16 — eighteen days of camping and songwriting that has been held annually since 1972. Downtown, the Museum of Western Art sits above the river on a bluff. The Kerrville VA Medical Center, on Memorial Boulevard, is one of the larger veterans' hospitals in the region, and the Kerrville–Kerr County Airport southeast of town has a history of aircraft manufacturing behind it.
Highways
- I-10 – east through Comfort and Boerne to San Antonio; west to Junction, Sonora and the Trans-Pecos.
- SH-16 – north to Fredericksburg; south through Medina to Bandera.
- SH-27 – southeast along the Guadalupe to Center Point and Comfort, the old river road that parallels I-10.
- SH-39 – west up the Guadalupe through Ingram to Hunt and the forks of the river.
- SH-173 – south to Bandera, over the divide between the Guadalupe and Medina drainages.
- Loop 534 – the city loop tying I-10 to the south side and the hospital district.
Districts and communities in the valley
| Place | What's there |
|---|---|
| Downtown / Water Street | Kerr County courthouse, Museum of Western Art, riverfront blocks |
| Louise Hays Park | City park on the north bank of the Guadalupe with the river trail |
| Schreiner University | Campus north of downtown off SH-27 |
| Kerrville–Schreiner Park | Camping and river frontage on the southeast edge of the city |
| Quiet Valley Ranch | Folk festival grounds south of town on SH-16 |
| Ingram | Town of about 1,800 six miles west where SH-27 and SH-39 split |
| Hunt | Settlement at the forks of the Guadalupe, 15 miles west on SH-39 |
| Center Point | Old river community 10 miles southeast on SH-27 |
Distances from Kerrville
| City | Road miles | Route |
|---|---|---|
| Fredericksburg | 24 | SH-16 N |
| Bandera | 26 | SH-173 S |
| Boerne | 34 | I-10 E |
| Junction | 60 | I-10 W |
| San Antonio | 65 | I-10 E |
| New Braunfels | 75 | I-10 E / SH-46 E |
| Austin | 105 | SH-16 N / US-290 E |
Road miles are approximate driving distances on the route named.