Every spot on this list is natural water. Springs, rivers, creeks, and one granite cove on a reservoir. No chlorine and no concrete basins.

This is not a ranking. A 40 foot granite ledge and a shallow sandy river bend are not competing for the same afternoon. Each of these is beautiful in a way the others are not, and the right one depends on whether you are bringing a toddler, a cooler, a dog, or a group of twelve.

Every one of these is fragile, and most are only public because someone chose to protect them. Ranching families, climbers, and small-town volunteers spent decades keeping these places open. Pack out everything you carry in, including what someone else left. Stay on marked trails and out of closed areas. Respect property lines, because in Texas the land next to the water almost always belongs to somebody. Leave no trace, leave no trash, and honor the land.

Two practical notes. Water levels swing hard with rain, and bacteria closures happen at nearly all of these after a storm upstream, so check the morning you leave. And bring cash.

Where: Blue Hole Lane, Wimberley
Drive: about 50 minutes southwest
Hours: park open 8am to sunset. Swim slots run 9am to 1pm and 2pm to 6pm, with the swim area closed to day pass holders from 1pm to 2pm
Cost: $15 adults 13 to 59, $10 youth 4 to 12, $10 seniors 60 and up, $10 military, $6 Wimberley residents, free under 3
Reservations: required for the swim area during swim season

The John R. Dobie family bought this land in 1897 and opened the swimming hole to the public in the 1920s for a small fee. It stayed private for over a century, eventually passing to an Austin partnership that limited access. When development threatened the property in the early 2000s, a community campaign backed by Texas Parks and Wildlife, Hays County, the LCRA, and the Trust for Public Land raised the money for the Village of Wimberley to buy all 126 acres in May 2005.

Cypress Creek runs through a stand of old cypress trees whose branches hold the rope swings the park is known for. The city caps daily swim capacity, which is why the reservation exists. Swim season runs May 1 through Labor Day, then weekends only into late September. Weekend slots in June and July sell out five to seven days ahead, and a full day in the water means booking both blocks.

The reservation covers the swim area only. The other 126 acres, including about 3.5 miles of trail, are free and open year round. Book through wimberleyparksandrec.com, not a resale site.

Where: 424 County Road 404, Spicewood
Drive: about 45 minutes west
Hours: 9am to 8pm daily. Anyone arriving after 8pm is turned away, including guests who left and came back
Cost: $10 to $11 for ages 12 and up, $6 for ages 4 to 11, free under 4. Cash preferred
Reservations: none, first come first served

Elton Krause retired from the Austin American-Statesman and bought this 115 acre property from an aunt in 1955, when it was a hog farm. He tore out the pens and in 1963 started building a 70 by 20 foot pool largely by hand. He made the stone tables and gazebos across the grounds himself, and locals say you can pick out his first table and watch his skill improve from there. The property joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 as an archaeological site. Elton died in 2011 at 88, and his sons Hugh, David, and Terry run it now. The family name rhymes with drowsy, not house.

Thirty two springs feed two swimming areas: the manmade pool up top, supplied at about 70 gallons a minute, and a natural grotto below where a waterfall drops into a deep pool ringed with ferns and cypress. Rope swings hang over the natural pool.

The water holds about 68 degrees year round and keeps flowing through drought, which is the practical reason to know this place. When the Pedernales is low and Hamilton Pool is closed, Krause still has water. There is a capacity limit, and on hot summer weekends the property can stop admitting visitors before noon, so arrive by 10am. No dogs and no glass.

Where: 234 RR 1050, Concan
Drive: about 3 hours southwest
Hours: 8am to 10pm, extended to 11pm in peak season while the dances run
Cost: $8 per adult 13 and up, free for 12 and under
Reservations: day passes open 30 days out, camping opens 5 months out

Local citizens raised the money for this land between 1934 and 1936 and handed it to the state. Civilian Conservation Corps Company 879 built the park from 1935 to 1941, including the Combination Building, a pavilion of local limestone and hewn bald cypress finished in 1937. The dance tradition started with the CCC men themselves, who invited friends over after work to play music on the floor they had just built. The park opened June 1, 1941, named for John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, the Uvalde native who served as FDR's vice president and who reportedly opposed spending federal money on a park in his own county. His wife disagreed with him.

The dance survived. It still runs at that same pavilion nearly every summer night, roughly 8pm to 11pm from Memorial Day weekend through mid-August, free with park entry.

The park covers 1,774 acres with 2.9 miles of Frio frontage, 16 miles of trail, and the climb up Old Baldy. On the water temperature: the Frio is spring fed at its headwaters and runs clear and cool, but it is a river, not a spring pool. USGS readings at the Concan gauge in midsummer have come in near 80 degrees, and the Friends of Garner have reported the same. It is refreshing, not shocking. Garner drew over 455,000 visitors in 2025 and closes to day entry when it fills, sometimes by 10am on a summer weekend, reopening around 6pm.

Where: Blanco River, upstream of Fischer
Drive: about an hour, plus a 14-20 mile round trip walk
Hours: none, no gate and no facilities
Cost: free
Reservations: none

Read this before you plan anything. The Narrows is not a day trip. It is a 14-20 mile round trip walk, roughly seven miles up a mostly dry riverbed and seven back, over loose rock, in full sun, with no shade, no water, no restrooms, no cell service, and no one coming to help you. Private land runs along both banks, and there is no road, no trailhead, and no parking. Texas law protects the right to travel a navigable riverbed, but not the right to cross private property to reach one, and hikers who have tried have been confronted by landowners. The Blanco also floods violently. The Memorial Day flood of 2015 was deadly and tore out century-old cypress along the banks. Never enter this riverbed with rain in the forecast anywhere upstream.

We include it because it is real and part of Hill Country lore, not because it belongs on a Saturday itinerary. If you go, treat it as a full day backcountry hike, stay inside the riverbed, carry far more water than you think you need, tell someone your route, and pack out everything.

The canyon itself is a slot where the Blanco cuts through curving limestone into a chain of pools, some over 20 feet deep, with maidenhair ferns down the walls. Wes Ferguson wrote about it in his 2017 book "The Blanco River," published by Texas A&M University Press. The river runs 87 miles and flows both above and below ground, which is why long stretches of the bed sit dry.

If you want the same river without any of that, Blanco State Park sits on it with $5 day passes and a real swimming stretch.

Where: 1108 Chalk Bluff Rd, Uvalde
Drive: about 3 hours southwest
Hours: day passes valid 10am to 6pm, last entry 4pm. No river access between sunset and sunrise
Cost: $20 per person ages 3 and up, free for 2 and under, $10 per pet. 4% card surcharge, ATM on site
Reservations: none, buy at the gate

The name comes from the white limestone bluffs along this stretch of the Nueces, rising about 300 feet off the bank. Permanent settlers reached the region in the 1850s and Uvalde County was organized in 1856. The county sits where four spring-fed rivers, the Nueces, Leona, Sabinal, and Frio, cut canyons through the same limestone, which is why so much of Texas swimming culture is concentrated in one rural county.

The park runs like a family river camp that never modernized, and that is the appeal. The water is shallow enough to wade for long stretches and deep enough to swim in others. There is no capacity limit and no reason to arrive early.

The $20 pass covers river access, restrooms, showers, a playground, seasonal hay rides, and a petting zoo with longhorns, donkeys, horses, buffalo, mini cows, and goats. Gemstone mining costs extra. Bring your own chairs, shade, and toilet paper. Open seven days a week in summer and spring break, Monday and Friday through Sunday in October, November, March, and April, and closed December 1 through mid-February.

Where: City Park at 170 Charles Austin Dr, Rio Vista Park at 555 Cheatham St
Drive: about 35 minutes south
Hours: riverfront parks open 6am to 11pm
Cost: free at City Park and Stokes Park. Rio Vista charges $5 on summer weekends and holidays for out of area visitors 18 and up
Reservations: none

Around 200 springs feed this river from the Edwards Aquifer at roughly 200 million gallons a day, and archaeologists consider the headwaters one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in North America, with sediment cores showing people here 11,500 years ago. General Edward Burleson dammed the springs in the late 1840s to power a gristmill, forming Spring Lake. A.B. Rogers bought the property in 1926, his son Paul launched the first glass bottom boat in 1946, and by 1951 the site was Aquarena Springs, an amusement park with a submarine theater, an Alpine sky ride, underwater mermaids, and Ralph the Swimming Pig, who took his first swine dive in 1969. Texas State University bought it in 1994 and turned it into a water research center.

That is why you cannot swim at the actual headwaters. Spring Lake is protected habitat for species found nowhere else, and access is by glass bottom boat through the Meadows Center. The boats are the one piece of the old park that survived.

What you want is the stretch just downstream, which holds a steady 72 degrees every day of the year and is the only spot here genuinely swimmable in January. City Park has the open lawn and launches most town floats. Rio Vista Park has three engineered chutes that turn the river into a short set of rapids. Anyone under 18 gets into Rio Vista free regardless of residency. Sewell Park belongs to Texas State and is not a public access point. The city bans styrofoam and disposable containers on the river.

Where: Blue Hole Park, off Rock Street, Georgetown
Drive: about 35 minutes north
Hours: open daily. Confirm current hours with Georgetown Parks and Recreation
Cost: free
Reservations: none

This was a working limestone quarry in the early 1900s. A dam built in the 1930s slowed and deepened the water, and the quarry filled into the lagoon you see today. The dams are historic and cannot be removed, which is why the water sits still rather than flowing through. Georgetown acquired the park in 1977 and has kept it deliberately primitive, and the city has since committed roughly $10 million toward enhancements and flood proofing.

The result is a 3 acre park where the South Fork of the San Gabriel pools against a limestone bluff, with a shallow shelf, a deeper middle, a short waterfall over the low dam, and fishing for bass, catfish, and sunfish below it.

Parking is the constraint. The lot at Third and Rock fills by mid-morning on hot weekends, with overflow street parking near the cemetery entrance. Jumping from the limestone cliffs is prohibited. There are no lifeguards, the city does not test the water, and because this is a dammed pool rather than a flowing spring, it warms up and can get algae in late summer. The limestone is slick in the shallows and sharp on the edges, so wear water shoes.

Where: 23610 Hamilton Pool Road, Dripping Springs
Drive: about 50 minutes west
Hours: 8am to dark
Cost: $10 per vehicle, cash or check only
Reservations: none

The Reimers family, German immigrants, have been on this land since 1893. Milton was a fourth generation cattle, sheep, and goat rancher who opened part of the riverfront as a private park in the 1960s for fishing, camping, and swimming. In the 1980s climbers found the limestone cliffs and worked directly with the family to bolt routes, write guidebooks, and run a waiver system. When development pressure from Dripping Springs closed in, the Reimers chose to sell for preservation rather than subdivision, and the climbing community gathered signatures for a ballot initiative that pushed the purchase through. Travis County closed on 2,427 acres in November 2005, still the largest parkland acquisition in county history.

The park has something almost no other Hill Country swimming hole does, which is sand. Long stretches of sandy bank on the Pedernales, deep enough to swim in spots and shallow enough to wade in others. It sits five minutes from Hamilton Pool and takes walk-ups, which makes it the standard fallback when Hamilton Pool is booked or closed. Because the Pedernales is a river rather than a spring, levels drop in a dry summer, so check conditions before driving out.

The walk from the River Bend lot to the water is about a quarter mile on a steep grade. The road to the shoreline closes to vehicles on all summer weekends and holidays, so you cannot drop people and coolers at the bottom. It reopens seven days a week after swim season. The park also has more than 13 miles of trail, hundreds of sport climbing routes, and an astronomical observatory.

Where: 3630 Park Road 4 West, Burnet
Drive: about 1 hour 15 minutes northwest
Hours: 8am to 10pm for day use
Cost: $7 per adult 13 and up, free for 12 and under. A Texas State Parks Pass is $70 a year and covers everyone in your vehicle
Reservations: strongly recommended, the park closes when it fills

None of this existed before 1938. The Lower Colorado River Authority was created in 1934 to tame the Colorado, and Inks Dam, built from 1936 to 1938 and named for LCRA board member Roy B. Inks, backed up the water that became Inks Lake. CCC Company 854 arrived in 1940 fresh off Longhorn Cavern and began building park roads, stone culverts, a boathouse, and a dock. World War II shut the camp down in 1942 before the work was done. The State Parks Board finished it years later and the park opened in 1950.

This is a reservoir, not a spring, so the water warms in summer like any lake. What it offers instead is reliability. Inks sits between two dams and holds its level within about a foot year round, so it does not drop the way Lake Travis does in a dry summer.

Devil's Waterhole is a cove on the north end where pink granite from the Llano Uplift steps down into deep water, with ledges running up to roughly 40 feet. Most people jump from far lower. The nature trail from the parking area is about two tenths of a mile, so you are not hiking for it. Inks Lake drew over 220,000 visitors in 2025 across 1,201 acres and turns away day visitors at capacity on hot weekends. There is camping, cabins, and kayak and paddleboard rental. Wear shoes, because the granite gets hot enough to burn.

Where: Hamilton Pool Road, Dripping Springs
Drive: about 45 minutes west
Hours: 9am to 5:30pm daily
Cost: $12 per vehicle online, plus cash at the gate: $8 per adult 13 to 61, $3 per senior 62 and up, free for 12 and under
Reservations: required every day of the year

Thousands of years ago the dome of an underground river collapsed here, leaving an open grotto with Hamilton Creek pouring about 50 feet over the rim. People have used the canyon for over 8,000 years, and the Tonkawa and Lipan Apache lived in the area before European settlement. The pool takes its name from Morgan C. Hamilton, who owned the land in the 1860s and whose brother Andrew Jackson Hamilton was governor of Texas.

The Reimers family bought it in the 1880s, the same German ranching family behind Reimers Ranch down the road, and legend has it their eight year old son found the grotto. They opened it to the public. By the 1960s it was overrun, and decades of unrestricted visitation and livestock grazing wrecked the ecosystem. Texas Parks and Wildlife called it the most significant natural area in rural Travis County in 1980, and in 1985 the county bought 232 acres from the Reimers and began an aggressive restoration. The ferns on those cliff faces came back because of that work. It became a nature preserve in 1990.

That history is exactly why access is controlled now, and why this is the least reliable swim on the list. Reservations are required every day, booked only through Travis County Parks. Swimming is never guaranteed. Bacteria levels, recent rain, and an ongoing falling rock hazard can all close the water, only a limited section near the beach is open when swimming is allowed, and the trail beneath the overhang is closed. The county posts status by 8:30am at 512-854-2581.

The payment structure catches people every time. You pay $12 per vehicle online with a card, then per person fees in cash at the booth. No cards at the gate. One reservation covers one vehicle and up to eight people. Fees are non-refundable, but you can reschedule online before midnight the night before.

What is the closest natural swimming hole to Austin?
Blue Hole Park in Georgetown and the San Marcos River are both about 35 minutes from downtown. Both are free, and neither requires a reservation.
Are there free swimming holes near Austin?
Yes. Blue Hole Park in Georgetown is free with no reservation. City Park and Stokes Park in San Marcos are free, though Rio Vista Park charges out of area visitors 18 and up $5 on summer weekends and holidays. The Narrows is free but requires a 14 mile round trip hike.
Which swimming holes near Austin do not require reservations?
Krause Springs, Chalk Bluff, Blue Hole Park Georgetown, Milton Reimers Ranch Park, and the San Marcos River all take walk-ups. Krause Springs and Reimers Ranch can still hit capacity on hot weekends, so go early.
Which swimming holes near Austin require reservations?
Hamilton Pool Preserve requires one every day of the year. Blue Hole Regional Park in Wimberley requires one for the swim area during swim season. Garner State Park releases day passes 30 days ahead and fills fast. Inks Lake does not strictly require one but closes the gate at capacity.
How cold is the water at Hill Country swimming holes?
It depends on whether the spot is spring fed or a river. Krause Springs holds about 68 degrees year round and the San Marcos River holds a steady 72, because both come straight out of the ground. The rivers are different. The Frio at Garner is spring fed at its source but has measured near 80 degrees at the Concan gauge in midsummer, and the Pedernales, the Nueces, and the San Gabriel all warm up in August like any river does.
Which swimming holes near Austin are open year round?
Krause Springs is open daily 9am to 8pm year round. Garner and Inks Lake stay open all year. The San Marcos River is swimmable in winter at a constant 72 degrees. Blue Hole Wimberley closes its swim area after September, and Chalk Bluff closes December 1 through mid-February.
Where can you go cliff jumping near Austin?
Devil's Waterhole at Inks Lake State Park is the main spot, with pink granite ledges running up to roughly 40 feet. Jumping is prohibited at Blue Hole Park in Georgetown. Always check depth before you jump anywhere, since water levels change with rainfall.
Can you bring dogs to swimming holes near Austin?
Chalk Bluff allows pets for $10 each. Krause Springs does not allow dogs at all. Rules vary at the rest, so check the specific park first.
Do you need cash for swimming holes near Austin?
Yes, at several. Hamilton Pool takes no cards at the entrance booth even though the reservation is paid online. Milton Reimers Ranch Park takes cash or check only. Krause Springs prefers cash. Chalk Bluff takes cards with a 4% surcharge and has an ATM.
What is the best swimming hole near Austin for kids?
Chalk Bluff has the most for young kids, with shallow water plus a petting zoo and playground included in the day pass. Blue Hole Georgetown has a shallow shelf and is free. Krause Springs has a manmade spring fed pool separate from the deeper natural grotto.