Hamilton Pool Preserve — blue hole
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Hamilton Pool Preserve

  • 2 min read
  • 30.342° N 98.127° W

Interesting facts

  • Traces of human culture found around the canyon date back more than 8,000 years, drawn by its water, shelter and rich plant life.
  • The pool's waterfall is Hamilton Creek, which plunges into the head of a steep box canyon about three-quarters of a mile above its meeting with the Pedernales River.
  • The waterfall has never been known to dry up completely, and even in drought the water level of the pool stays remarkably steady.
  • The eastern red bay growing in the canyon is the westernmost known colony of this eastern species, alongside rare canyon mock-orange.
  • Walking from the dry juniper-and-oak uplands down to the pool means descending about 80 feet into a cool, fern-lined canyon.
  • The preserve is one piece of the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve, more than 31,000 acres of endangered-species habitat shared by public agencies and conservation groups.
  • Andrew Jackson Hamilton, brother of the landowner whose family name the pool carries, was the tenth governor of Texas.
  • Besides The Tree of Life, the pool appears in the 1990 film The Hot Spot.
  • Despite the Texas heat, the pool's water can drop below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 °C) in winter and spring.

Why it is worth it

A jade-green pool lies beneath a half-collapsed limestone dome, and from the lip of the overhang a waterfall about 50 feet (15 m) high drops straight into it. Hamilton Pool, in the Texas Hill Country west of Austin, formed thousands of years ago when erosion brought down the roof of a grotto carved by an underground river, leaving a natural bowl walled by cliffs and half-roofed by a great arching ledge.

Stalactites hang from the underside of that ledge, and its damp walls are covered in moss and maidenhair fern, with cliff swallows nesting high above the water. Big slabs of fallen limestone rest at the pool's edge. Bald cypresses line the little creek that drains the pool, and the chatterbox orchid and eastern red bay grow in the preserve. On the drier uplands, woods of Ashe juniper provide habitat for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler, one reason the site is part of the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve.

The Tonkawa and Lipan Apache lived in this country before the 19th century. In the 1860s the land belonged to Morgan C. Hamilton, whose brother Andrew Jackson Hamilton, governor of Texas in 1865-66, evidently visited the grotto; the pool carries their family name. In the 1880s a German immigrant family, the Reimers, bought the property for sheep and cattle, and local tradition holds that their eight-year-old son was the one who stumbled upon the collapsed grotto. The Reimers opened it to the public, and from the 1960s it became a favourite summer swimming spot for Austin. Decades of grazing and crowds took their toll, and in 1980 Texas Parks and Wildlife singled it out as the most significant natural area in rural Travis County. In 1985 the county bought 232 acres (94 ha) from the Reimers family and set out to restore the land, with prescribed burns, prairie restoration and species surveys; the habitat has been recovering since. The grotto has served as a film location, notably for the 2011 film The Tree of Life.

Getting there

The preserve lies about 23 miles (37 km) west of Austin, off Texas State Highway 71; the nearest town is Bee Cave. The nearest larger city by straight-line distance is Cedar Park, about 35 km away. The nearest airport is Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS), about 48 km away in a straight line.

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From the encyclopaedia

Hamilton Pool Preserve is a recreational destination located in the Texas Hill Country west of Austin. Reservations are required to visit, and it is open for hiking and sight-seeing. Hamilton Pool is a natural pool that was created when the dome of an underground river collapsed due to massive erosion thousands of years ago. The pool is located about 23 miles (37 km) west of Austin, Texas off Highway 71. Since the 1960s, Hamilton Pool has been a popular summer swimming spot for Austin visitors and residents. Hamilton Pool Preserve consists of 232 acres (0.94 km2) of protected natural habitat featuring a jade green pool into which a 50-foot (15 m) waterfall flows with water temperatures reaching 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

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