Travis County Texas map
30.24° N · 97.69° W · County seat: Austin · 1,025 sq mi · Central Time
Travis County holds the state capital, and the Balcones Escarpment runs straight through the middle of it. West of that line the county is limestone hill country cut by the Colorado River into Lake Travis and Lake Austin; east of it the ground flattens into Blackland Prairie farmland.
Centered a few miles from the Capitol. The reservoir arms to the northwest are Lake Travis and Lake Austin; the flat farmland east of SH-130 is the prairie side of the county.
Where Travis County sits
The county is in southern Central Texas, roughly midway between San Antonio and the Dallas–Fort Worth area on I-35. Williamson County is the northern neighbor and Burnet County the northwestern one. Blanco County lies west, Hays County southwest, Caldwell County south and Bastrop County southeast. Those six are the entire border.
Austin does not stop at the county line. Parts of the city lie in Williamson County to the north and Hays County to the south, and the same is true of Pflugerville, Leander, Cedar Park and Round Rock, which straddle the Williamson line. Round Rock is about 19 miles north of the county's center point and Georgetown about 27; San Marcos is 29 miles southwest.
Travis County was created in 1840 out of Bastrop County and named for William Barret Travis, the commander of the Texan garrison at the Alamo in 1836. Austin had been laid out the year before as the capital of the Republic of Texas, and the county was drawn around it.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population in county |
|---|---|---|
| Austin (part) | City | 900,626 |
| Pflugerville (part) | City | 65,013 |
| Lakeway | City | 19,188 |
| Manor | City | 13,642 |
| Leander (part) | City | 9,155 |
| Bee Cave | City | 9,135 |
| Lago Vista | City | 8,890 |
| Cedar Park (part) | City | 7,506 |
| West Lake Hills | City | 3,437 |
| The Hills | Village | 2,622 |
| Jonestown | City | 2,369 |
| Briarcliff | Village | 2,060 |
| Round Rock (part) | City | 1,917 |
| Elgin (part) | City | 1,549 |
Austin's full 2020 city population was 961,855; the balance lies in Williamson and Hays counties.
Roads
- I-35 – enters from Williamson County at the north, runs through downtown Austin and leaves south into Hays County. The only interstate in the county.
- Loop 1 (MoPac Expressway) – a north–south expressway west of and parallel to I-35, ending in south Austin.
- US-183 – comes in from Cedar Park and Leander in the northwest, crosses Austin and leaves southeast past the airport toward Bastrop County.
- US-290 – west toward Dripping Springs and the Hill Country, east toward Manor, Elgin and eventually Houston.
- SH-71 – west through Bee Cave toward Llano, east as Ben White Boulevard and on to Bastrop.
- SH-130 – the tolled eastern bypass of I-35, running north–south across the prairie side of the county.
- SH-45 – tolled east–west connectors at the north and southwest edges of the county, tying MoPac and US-183 to SH-130.
- SH-95 – a two-lane route touching the far eastern corner near Elgin.
- SH-165 – a short state-maintained road inside the Texas State Cemetery in East Austin.
The Colorado River and the Highland Lakes
The Colorado River crosses the county from west to east, and it is dammed three times on the way. Lake Travis, behind Mansfield Dam, is the large reservoir on the northwestern county line and the flood-control member of the Highland Lakes chain, so its level moves by tens of feet between wet and dry years. Below it Tom Miller Dam holds Lake Austin, a narrow constant-level pool with the Westlake hills on one bank. Below that, Longhorn Dam backs up Lady Bird Lake through the middle of the city. Only about 31 of the county's 1,025 square miles are water, but almost all of it is in those three pools.
The river is also why the two halves of the county look different. West of the Balcones Escarpment the water cuts into limestone, leaving steep canyon walls, cedar and karst springs — the same rock that feeds Barton Springs. East of the fault line the river slows across deep black clay, which is why the eastern county was farmed and the western county was not. Part of the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge, set aside for golden-cheeked warbler nesting habitat, lies in the northwestern corner of the county.