Kendall County Texas map
29.94° N · 98.71° W · County seat: Boerne · 663 sq mi
Kendall County is where San Antonio runs out of room and the Hill Country begins. I-10 climbs the Balcones Escarpment out of Bexar County and reaches Boerne in about half an hour, which is why a rural German-settled county of ranches has become one of the fastest-growing places in Central Texas.
Boerne sits in the south of the county on Cibolo Creek beside I-10. Comfort is 17 miles northwest where I-10 meets SH-27; the Guadalupe River crosses the northeast corner.
Where Kendall County is
The county sits on the southern rim of the Edwards Plateau, directly northwest of San Antonio. San Antonio is 38 miles southeast, Kerrville 27 miles west, Fredericksburg 25 miles northwest and New Braunfels 39 miles southeast. Six counties border it: Gillespie north, Blanco northeast, Comal southeast, Bexar south, Bandera southwest and Kerr west.
The legislature carved Kendall County out of Blanco and Kerr counties in 1862 and named it for George Wilkins Kendall, a newspaperman who covered the Mexican–American War as a correspondent and then ran sheep on a ranch in the county. This is the western end of the Texas German belt: Boerne, Comfort and Sisterdale were all settled in the late 1840s and 1850s by German emigrants, some of them political refugees who came out from Bexar looking for high ground and cool water.
Growth is the county's defining fact now. The 2020 census counted 44,279 residents; the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate is 51,828, an increase of better than a sixth in four years, almost all of it along the I-10 and SH-46 corridors within reach of San Antonio jobs.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Boerne (county seat) | City | 17,864 |
| Fair Oaks Ranch (part) | City | 2,158 |
Fair Oaks Ranch straddles the county line and also extends into Bexar and Comal counties; the figure above is the Kendall County share. Comfort, Sisterdale, Waring, Welfare, Bergheim and Kendalia are unincorporated communities.
Roads
- I-10 – the spine of the county, entering from Bexar County at Leon Springs, running northwest past Boerne and Welfare to Comfort, then on toward Kerrville.
- US-87 – runs with I-10 across the county; its business route is Boerne's Main Street and the old Spanish Trail alignment through Comfort.
- SH-46 – the east–west cross route, from Bandera in the west through Boerne to New Braunfels in the east, crossing the Guadalupe River near Spring Branch.
- SH-27 – leaves I-10 at Comfort and follows the Guadalupe valley northwest to Center Point and Kerrville.
- RM 473 – Boerne to Sisterdale and Comfort through the back country north of town.
- FM 1621 and FM 3351 – ranch roads north and east of Boerne toward Kendalia and Bergheim.
Water, caves and parks
Cibolo Creek rises in the hills west of Boerne and runs southeast through the town, where it is dammed to form Boerne City Lake. Below Boerne the creek becomes the Bexar–Comal county line. The Cibolo Center for Conservation keeps a block of creek bottom, marsh and prairie next to Boerne City Park with trails open to the public.
The northeast corner of the county is Guadalupe River State Park, where the river runs over limestone shelves under bald cypress; Honey Creek State Natural Area adjoins it and is open only on guided walks. The park is reached from SH-46 east of Boerne.
The limestone under the county is full of holes. Cave Without a Name, northeast of Boerne, and Cascade Caverns, south of town near I-10, are both commercial show caves with guided tours through decorated rooms; the county sits on the recharge zone that feeds springs and wells across the area.
Comfort and the Treue der Union monument
Comfort was settled in 1854 by German freethinkers and never incorporated, which is part of why its 19th-century limestone commercial buildings survive so intact along High Street. In 1862 a party of Unionist Germans from this country was overtaken by Confederate troops on the Nueces River in Kinney County and killed; the survivors' community raised the Treue der Union monument in Comfort in 1866 over the remains. It is one of the oldest Civil War monuments in Texas and one of very few anywhere in the South raised to the Union side.