Stay on a dude ranch
Guest ranches around Bandera offer trail rides, cattle work, hayrides, and cowboy cookouts — the full experience, on real working land.
Bandera County
Bandera
The self-proclaimed Cowboy Capital of the World — working dude ranches, saddle-up trail rides, and honky-tonks on Main Street.
The place
Bandera leans all the way into its cowboy identity, and it earns it: this was a staging point on the Great Western Cattle Trail, and the surrounding hills are still full of working and guest ranches. You can ride horses, sleep in a bunkhouse, and two-step the same night.
Main Street is short and friendly — saloons, a county courthouse, Western-wear shops — and the Medina River runs cold and clear just south of town for swimming and paddling.
Don't miss
- Saddle up at a working dude ranch
- Live music at the Eleventh Street Cowboy Bar
- Swim or paddle the Medina River
- Hike Hill Country State Natural Area
Things to do
How to spend your time
Honky-tonks on Main
Bandera’s saloons have live country music most weekends; the open-air Eleventh Street Cowboy Bar is the legendary one.
Hill Country State Natural Area
Forty miles of rugged trail for hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding — one of the few Texas parks that welcomes horses.
Plan it properly
Official sources for Bandera
Hours, fees, and closures change. These are the people who set them.
- Bandera — Cowboy Capital of the World
The county CVB: guest ranches, trail rides, and the rodeo calendar.
- Hill Country State Natural Area (TPWD)
Forty miles of trail open to hikers, bikers, and horses.
Pair it with
Experiences here
Trips through here
Ready-made itineraries
2 days · Weekend Honky-Tonk & Smoke
A long weekend of brisket, two-step, and back-road dance halls — Gruene to Luckenbach with a barbecue stop in between.
- Gruene Hall
- Smoke break, Driftwood
- Luckenbach
- Bandera
3 days · Autumn The Fall Color Run
Bigtooth maples at Lost Maples, cypress on the Frio, and a Cowboy Capital nightcap — the three weeks a year Texas does autumn properly.
- Kerrville
- Lost Maples
- Garner State Park
- Bandera
Nearby
More destinations close by
Gruene & New Braunfels
29.738°N 98.104°WComal County
A 19th-century river town wrapped around the oldest dance hall in Texas, with the Guadalupe and the spring-fed Comal running right past the door.
Lost Maples & the Sabinal Canyon
29.816°N 99.570°WBandera & Real Counties
A relict stand of bigtooth maples in a steep canyon on the Sabinal River — and the best fall color in Texas, for about three weeks a year.
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