Georgetown’s location on the eastern edge of the Texas Hill Country has had a huge effect on its history, and Georgetown has, since the earliest settlement of the Hill Country, been a step ahead of most Hill Country towns. Yet despite explosive growth throughout Williamson County since the construction of Interstate Highway 35 in the 1960s, downtown Georgetown retains the feel of a town just slightly larger than the most isolated Hill Country county seats.

Williamson County (and in fact, the whole United States) is divided by the Balcones Escarpment, which, in separating the blackland plains from the Texas Hill Country, also separates the American South from the American West. The escarpment is a geologic fault line which rises several hundred feet from the eastern plains in a series of ridges and canyons which mark the beginnings of our Texas Hill Country. Interstate Highway 35 follows the edge of the escarpment, making a convenient eastern boundary for our Hill Country map.

Before Texas joined the United States in 1845, Georgetown was part of a vast, untamed region called Milam County. When Neil McLennan brought his family to the “Gabriel Valley” in late 1835 or early 1836, the nearest neighbor was said to be “75 miles away.” And while a few brave souls settled in what would later become the southeast corner of Williamson County, the pioneer who became most famous was Captain John Webster, who, with thirteen of his men, was massacred by Comanches in 1839.

Around that time, a visitor from Bastrop observed that the (future) Georgetown area was “the finest waterd part of Texas that I have seen.” Indeed, the Tonkawan name for the valley was “Takachue Pouetsu,” or “Land of Good Water.” The visitor’s name was George Washington Glasscock (a flatboating partner with Abraham Lincoln in 1832), and he had been deeded “four leagues” of land on the San Gabriel River. He resolved to re-settle there as soon as it was safe.

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