Austin

Austin sits on the Colorado River of Texas (not the larger Colorado of the West) right at the Balcones Escarpment, the fault line where the flat coastal plain to the east rises into the rugged limestone Hill Country to the west. That dramatic seam gives the city its hills, springs, and clear swimming holes. Chosen as capital of the Republic of Texas in 1839 and named for Stephen F. Austin, it became the state capital when Texas joined the Union.

The Colorado River was dammed into a chain of reservoirs, the Highland Lakes, that thread through and above the city. Austin sits at the meeting of distinct Texas landscapes — coastal prairie, Hill Country, and the spring-fed Edwards Plateau — and has exploded into one of the fastest-growing major cities in the country, a technology and university hub anchoring a metro of more than two million.