The Best Things to Do in Granbury, Texas

Waco architect W. C. Dodson designed the three story limestone courthouse in the French Second Empire style, and it went up in 1890 and 1891. A 1968 tornado tore into the clock tower, and the grassroots campaign to save that tower is what set off the restoration of the entire square. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 1974.

What surrounds it is the actual attraction. Roughly 40 independent shops and about a dozen restaurants fill 19th century storefronts on all four sides, with no chain frontage breaking the block. USA Today 10Best readers have voted Granbury the Best Historic Small Town in America five times, in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2025 and 2026, which no other town has managed more than once.

Henry Kerr built this stone and pressed tin building in 1886 and ran vaudeville, plays and musical programs on the top floor until 1911, with a saloon, a saddle shop and two groceries below. The roof later collapsed, the building rotted, and the Granbury Opera Association brought it back in 1975. A 3.5 million dollar renovation finished in 2012 turned the inside into a modern theatre without losing the shell. The Texas Historical Commission put a marker on it in 1977.

Granbury Theatre Company runs the building now, with a year round Broadway on the Brazos season of nine productions, each playing three to five weekends. That is the difference between this and most small town theatres. Something is almost always running.

Lake Granbury is a Brazos River Authority reservoir behind De Cordova Bend Dam, 8,310 acres with 103 miles of shoreline, first impounded in September 1969. Most of that shoreline is private, which is what makes City Beach unusual. The city put a sandy swimming area, a splash park, restrooms and picnic pavilions at the edge of downtown and charges nothing for any of it.

Kayak rentals and a concession run in summer. Pavilions are first come, first served, so a holiday weekend means arriving early or standing.

It opened on June 5, 1952 on what was then the edge of town along US 377, with room for about 250 cars, and it has never stopped running. Double features still play Friday and Saturday nights, with the audio broadcast to your radio on 89.1 FM. Jarred and Joanne Hopson, who grew up going to it, bought the theatre in 2024.

Twenty dollars covers the whole car, which makes it the cheapest night out on this list for a family of four and the only one that doubles as a piece of 1950s roadside architecture you can still use.

Built in 1885, this was the only jail in Hood County until 1978, which puts it inside living memory for plenty of people in town. The upstairs is divided into three rooms, the gallows, a single cell that held women and the mentally ill, and the main cell, and the Hood County Historical Society has left them legible rather than dressing them up.

It is the one stop here that gives the square's outlaw reputation something physical to stand on.

The tour walks the buildings of the courthouse square, a good many of which date to the late 1800s, and ties them to the county's John Wilkes Booth and Jesse James legends rather than to jump scares. It runs an hour, works for all ages, and costs 10 dollars for adults and 7 dollars for children 12 and under.

Texas Highways has covered it, which is a reasonable filter for a category that attracts a lot of nonsense. Two operators run ghost tours in Granbury, so make sure you are booking this one.

Capacity is 270, which means there is no bad seat and no distance between the band and the room. The fall 2026 calendar runs tribute acts for Santana, Van Halen, Kansas and ELO alongside working Texas songwriters like Max and Heather Stalling and Terry McBride.

It is listed in some directories as The New Granbury Live, which is the same venue at the same address, not a second room.

A small volunteer museum that collects Granbury and Hood County history through recorded oral histories and biographical sketches of the people who actually lived here. It is a different kind of visit than the jail, quieter and more personal, and it is the place to go if you want to understand the town rather than its legends.

It closes for January and February, though private tours can sometimes be arranged in the off season. Sources disagree on whether the Saturday window ends at 4 or 5, so call if you are arriving late.

A fraction of an acre inside the old Acton Cemetery, holding the grave of Elizabeth Crockett, second wife of the Davy Crockett who died at the Alamo. She came to Texas years later to claim the land granted for his service, and she is buried under a tall monument topped with her likeness, facing west.

The legislature placed the plot in the custody of the State Parks Board in 1949, and operational control moved to the Texas Historical Commission on January 1, 2008. It is a ten minute stop, and it is outside Granbury proper, which we are flagging rather than burying.