The Best Swimming Holes in Texas

Nothing else in Texas is in this class. More than 15 million gallons flow through San Solomon Springs every day, which is what keeps a pool this size at 72 to 76 degrees in January and in August alike. It covers 1.3 acres and runs up to 25 feet deep, deep enough that the park sells a scuba fee alongside ordinary entry, which no other state park pool in Texas does, and clear enough that divers go down to look at the fish.

The Civilian Conservation Corps built it in the 1930s, and it swims like a spring rather than a municipal pool. Getting there is the price of admission. Toyahvale is in Reeves County, a long way west past Fort Stockton, and the park is not in the town of Balmorhea but up the road from it.

The best swimming hole in Texas that you can reach on a city bus. Barton Springs is three acres fed by underground springs inside Zilker Park, held at 68 to 70 degrees year-round, with depths running from nothing at the shallow end to 18 feet. Austin regulars swim it in February.

It is also a federally protected habitat for the Barton Springs salamander, which exists here and nowhere else, and that status is why the pool is drained and scrubbed every Thursday rather than chlorinated. The water is genuinely cold on first contact. The trick, which every Austin regular knows, is to get in at once rather than wading.

The best privately owned swimming hole in Texas, and the one that photographs best. The Krause family has run this since 1955 and it went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. There are 32 springs on the 115 acre property, draining toward Lake Travis, and they feed two swims: a built pool near the top that sits around 70 degrees, and below it a natural grotto where water falls over a ledge into a pool ringed by cypress and ferns.

Day use is first come, first served with no reservations, which cuts both ways. There is no booking to miss out on, and there is also nothing stopping the gate closing when the lot fills on a hot Saturday. Tent and RV camping run on site, and there is a butterfly garden by the entrance.

The most beloved state park in Texas, and the swim most Texans mean when they talk about going to the river. Garner holds 2.9 miles of the Frio inside 1,774 acres of Hill Country, with bald cypress along the banks and water clear enough to count the rocks. You swim it, float it and paddle it.

The other half of the institution is the dance. Since the 1940s people have been gathering at the park's concession building on summer evenings for a jukebox dance, and the generations keep showing up. As of a July 21, 2026 park advisory, swimming is permitted at your own risk with no lifeguards on duty, and the Blinn River and White Rock Cave trails remain closed.

Read this before you go, because the reservation is for entry and not for a swim. As of this publication Travis County has water access closed at Hamilton Pool because of recent rain and high bacteria, with the earliest possible reopening given as Saturday October 10. That is normal rather than unusual here, and the county says plainly that swimming is not guaranteed with your reservation.

What you are coming for when the water is open is the most dramatic swimming hole in the state, a grotto formed when the dome of an underground river collapsed, with a waterfall dropping into a jade pool below the overhang. The preserve runs to 232 acres and the walk down is a quarter mile of steep, uneven rock steps. Reservations are required every day of the week and you pay twice, once online per vehicle and again in cash at the gate.

The best granite swim in Texas. Devil's Waterhole is a cove at the north end of Inks Lake where Valley Spring Creek comes in through a narrow canyon cut into pink rock, and that rock gives you ledges to get in and out of the water from instead of a muddy bank. When the creek is running you can walk upstream to the waterfalls.

There are no lifeguards here, the water is open lake rather than spring-fed, and it warms up properly in summer, which is either the point or the drawback depending on what you came for. The park warns that day passes and camping sell out every weekend and holiday, and it closes selected trails and the west loop campsites for permitted hunts on set dates in December and January.

The San Marcos River runs at a constant 72 degrees from the springs under Texas State University, which makes this the most swimmable river in the state and the only one on this list that is genuinely as good in December as in July. At Rio Vista Park the city has spread an eight foot fall over three engineered drops about thirty yards apart, and people ride them in tubes, on boards or in nothing but a swimsuit, then walk back up the bank and do it again.

Public swimming is allowed at the city's access points, Rio Vista, City Park, Plaza Park and Veramendi among them, and entry passes are needed at Rio Vista only on summer weekends. The rules are stricter than most Texas rivers and they are enforced: no glass, no Styrofoam, no charcoal or wood grills, and no single-use drink containers at all, which includes plastic water bottles and pop-tab cans.

The best swimming hole in Texas for small children, and the cheapest. The park holds just a one mile stretch of the Blanco River, and the Civilian Conservation Corps dammed it with stone in 1933 and 1934, building the pavilions, picnic tables, benches and bridges in the same eleven month stretch. The dams turn a shallow river into a chain of flat pools you walk into rather than jump into.

TPWD's own guidance is that you can swim anywhere along the river here, and that small children will want the shallow wading pool next to Falls Dam. Entry is $5 for adults and free for anyone 12 and under. Because the park is small it fills quickly, so reserve the day pass rather than turning up.

This one needs stating carefully, because the thing the park is named for is the thing you may not swim in. TPWD does not allow swimming or wading in the Pedernales Falls area at all. The swimming is at a separate designated stretch downstream, and getting to it is a strenuous quarter mile or more of walking including steep rock stairs with no handrail.

Make that walk and you get one of the prettiest reaches of river in the Hill Country, with limestone shelves and deeper pools. The park's standing warning is worth taking literally: the river can rise from a placid stream to a raging torrent in a few minutes, and if the water starts rising or turning muddy you leave the river immediately. Flash flooding here is common, not theoretical.

The best free swim on this list, and the easiest to fit into a day. Blue Hole is a lagoon on the South San Gabriel River half a mile from the Georgetown square, hemmed by limestone bluffs, in a small park with trails, picnic areas and a shallow wading stretch. There are no reservations and no entry fee, and parking at Third and Rock is free too.

Two honest caveats. The city does not monitor water quality or bacteria levels here, so you swim at your own risk in a way you do not at a state park. And depth varies with river flow, which in a drought year means wading rather than swimming. It is still the right answer for an hour between Austin and Waco.