The Best Things to Do in Boerne, Texas

This is the better of Boerne's two caves and the one to pick if you only do one. The guided walk covers about a quarter mile of passage across six major rooms and runs close to an hour, on lit walkways rather than scrambles. It is a living cave, which means water is still moving through it and the formations are still building.

The National Park Service designated it a National Natural Landmark in 2009, and it has been open to the public since 1939. The name comes from a naming contest held before it opened, when a boy said the place was too pretty to have a name. The Throne Room at the end is where the tour earns the drive out FM 474.

Boerne was settled by German immigrants in the 1840s and never tore its center down, so the Hill Country Mile is a genuine nineteenth century commercial street rather than a rebuilt one. Limestone storefronts now hold bookshops, galleries, boutiques and a run of restaurants, and Texas Highways counts more than 80 locally owned businesses along the stretch.

Main Plaza anchors the north end with a gazebo, old shade trees and the Cibolo Trail trailhead, which makes it the natural place to park once and work outward on foot. Multi-vendor buildings like the Shoppes at 222 and the Shops at 153 Main pack a dozen small sellers into single restored addresses, so the mile covers more ground than the storefront count suggests.

The Cibolo has been open to the public since Earth Day 1990 and protects about 100 acres right at the edge of town. The trail network splits by habitat rather than by difficulty, so you can walk the Marshland Trail and its boardwalk, the Woodlands Trail above Cibolo Creek, and the creek trail itself in a single easy loop.

The Marshland boardwalk is ADA accessible, which makes this the one genuinely wheelchair friendly nature walk in Boerne. There is no admission charge, and the visitor center hands out trail maps and keeps a small nature bookshop.

Cascade is the older and rougher of the two caves, commercially toured since 1932 and reaching about 132 feet down at the Cathedral Room. The passage runs roughly half a mile through five major rooms, and the walk feels more like a real cave and less like a polished attraction than Cave Without a Name does.

One thing you should know, because most roundups skip it. The waterfall in the Cathedral Room is not the original. The Texas Handbook and the cave's own history both record that the natural falls dried up during the drought of the 1950s, and that the current cascade has been fed artificially since the 1960s. It is still worth seeing. It is just not a natural waterfall, and you should hear that before you buy a ticket rather than after.

This is the Saturday morning thing to do in Boerne, and it is a working market rather than a craft fair. Vendors bring farm eggs, sustainably raised meat, produce, baked goods, preserves, Texas wine and locally roasted coffee, with live music and teaching gardens in the background.

The setting does a lot of the work. Ferdinand Herff, a German immigrant physician, established the farm in 1854, and the 60 acres the Cibolo now preserves are on the National Register. Admission is free and leashed dogs are welcome, which is not true of most of the other stops on this list.

The Cibolo Trail runs about 1.75 miles along Cibolo Creek from Main Plaza to City Park, then continues roughly another 1.4 miles south toward Herff Falls, for a little over three miles of paved path in total. It is flat, shaded in stretches, and it is how locals get between downtown and the nature center on foot.

The Old No. 9 Trail is a separate 1.4 mile paved path following a former rail line through town, named for the line that once ran here. Together they make Boerne one of the few Hill Country towns where you can leave the car parked downtown for an entire day.

Kendall County runs this one and almost nobody outside the county knows it is here, which is the appeal. Three miles of multi-use trail cross 117 acres, and the county puts its river frontage at about 1,700 feet, open for swimming, fishing and paddling.

Three wildlife observation blinds are stocked with identification books and cut with camera ports, so it is a serious bird spot rather than a scenic overlook with a bench. The Kronkosky Interpretive Garden near the entrance plants native and adapted species with labels, which is the fastest way to learn what you are looking at everywhere else in the Hill Country.

Boerne has several breweries within walking distance of one another, and this is the one to start with. The Mazour and Wolosin families own and run it, the beer is brewed on site, and the kitchen works from seasonal produce rather than a freezer, which is unusual for a small town brewpub.

It sits in what used to be the postman's office at the south end of Main, so you can finish a walk down the Hill Country Mile here without moving the car. The Dodging Duck Brewhaus on River Road is the other one worth your time, in a turn of the century house with decks over Cibolo Creek.

The city park at the lake covers the outdoor basics in one place, with a fishing pier, boat dock, picnic areas, a playground, a volleyball court and a nine hole disc golf course. Hill Country Paddle Sports rents kayaks and paddleboards on site and runs classes, reachable at (210) 842-4057.

Non-residents pay per carload, and the rate rises on weekends and holidays, so check the city's current fee schedule before you drive out. Texas fishing regulations apply, license included.

The complex takes in the Kuhlmann-King House, a separate Pioneer Kitchen and the Graham Building, all furnished as immersive displays of early Boerne rather than as cases of labeled objects. Volunteers from the Boerne Area Historical Preservation Society give the tours and tell the stories of the Kuhlmann, King and Graham families who built the town.

It is the last listing here because the schedule is genuinely restrictive. Two Saturdays a month, three hours each, and that is it. When your trip lines up with one of those windows it is the best free hour in Boerne, and when it does not you simply cannot go.