Bandera County is situated on the Edwards Plateau in the very heart of Texas. As of the 2010 census, the most recent calculation, the population held at 20,485. The county was formed in 1856 from both Bexar and Uvalde counties. Both the county itself and its seat are named for Bandera Pass, a term taken from the original Spanish word for flag.
The county seat, the city of Bandera itself, was founded by Roman Catholic immigrants from Poland. At the center of town stands the St. Stanislaus Catholic Church,built by the immigrants, and standing as one of the oldest of its kind in the entire state.
One of the more unique facts about this prime piece of land is that the county is officially recognized as the “Cowboy Capital of the World” by the Texas Legislature. The legislature marked off Bandera County from parts of Bexar county in 1856, formally and officially organizing it as a body of US land. By 1982, 82% of the land in the county was comprised of farms and ranches.
Travel throughout the county occurs via a handful of state highways and several ranch and farm to market roads, including State Highways 16, 46, and 173, Park Road 37, Farm to Market Roads 1283 and 3240, and Ranch to Market Roads 187, 337, 1077, and 2828. It’s a broad selection that allows for high mobility to the various ranch and farmlands comprising much of the landscape.