San Jacinto County Texas map
30.57° N · 95.16° W · County seat: Coldspring · 628 sq mi · Central Time
San Jacinto County is pinned between a reservoir and a national forest. Lake Livingston floods its entire eastern side, the Sam Houston National Forest covers much of the west, and the Lone Star Hiking Trail runs through the timber between them. Houston is close enough — 58 miles by straight line — that the lake shore has been filling with weekend and retirement housing for decades.
The pin marks Coldspring. The long body of water on the right is Lake Livingston; the county line runs down the middle of it.
The San Jacinto Battleground is not in San Jacinto County. It is at La Porte in Harris County, on the Houston Ship Channel about 60 miles to the south. The county borrowed the battle's name, not its ground.
Where the county is
Trinity County is north, Polk County east across Lake Livingston, Liberty County southeast, Montgomery County southwest and Walker County west. The county is the northeastern corner of the Houston commuter shed: Conroe is 25 miles southwest, The Woodlands 33 miles southwest and Houston 58 miles southwest, all straight-line. Lufkin is 59 miles northeast.
The legislature carved the county out of four others in 1870 — Liberty, Montgomery, Polk and Walker — and named it for the 1836 battle that ended the Texas Revolution. San Jacinto is Spanish for Saint Hyacinth. Coldspring became the seat, and it remains one of the smallest county seats in the eastern half of Texas.
Growth here is real and recent: the 2024 Census estimate is 29,326, up from 27,402 in 2020, driven almost entirely by the southern end of the county along US-59.
Cities
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Shepherd | City | 2,096 |
| Coldspring | City (seat) | 819 |
| Point Blank | City | 645 |
Cleveland, mostly in Liberty County, extends across the line at the county's southern tip. Fewer than one resident in seven of San Jacinto County lives inside an incorporated place.
Roads
- US-59 – clips the southeastern corner through Shepherd on the Houston–Lufkin–Texarkana line. This is the county's only four-lane divided route and the reason Shepherd is its largest town.
- Interstate 69 – under construction along the US-59 corridor; sections are being upgraded to interstate standard rather than built on new location.
- US-190 – crosses the north of the county, using the long causeway over Lake Livingston at Point Blank to reach Onalaska and Livingston.
- SH-150 – the county's east–west local road, running from Coldspring west through the national forest toward New Waverly and I-45.
- SH-156 – runs south from Coldspring through the forest to Cleveland and US-59.
- SH-105 – crosses the far southwest corner between Conroe and Cleveland.
- Loop 424 – the short business loop serving Coldspring off SH-150.
Lake Livingston, the forest and the trail
Lake Livingston is impounded on the Trinity River by Livingston Dam, built by the Trinity River Authority and the City of Houston and closed in 1969. It is among the largest reservoirs in Texas, and the dam itself sits at the southeastern end of the lake close to the Polk County line. San Jacinto County holds the western shore for the lake's whole length — roughly 40 miles of waterfront — and the 59 square miles of water inside the county line is nearly a tenth of its total area. Cape Royale, Waterwood and the subdivisions around Point Blank are the residential result.
The western half of the county lies inside the Sam Houston National Forest, which also covers ground in Walker and Montgomery counties. The Lone Star Hiking Trail runs about 96 miles through the forest, the longest continuously marked footpath in Texas, and its eastern trailheads are in this county near Coldspring and SH-156. Double Lake Recreation Area, a Forest Service site with a swimming lake and campground, is a few miles south of Coldspring.
Between the forest, the lake and the reservoir buffer, a large share of the county's land is either federal or under water, which keeps the tax base narrow and the population thinly spread outside the three towns.