Two matched hills stand west of the highway here, about 1,760 feet at the summit and several hundred feet above the road, and they have been a landmark for as long as anyone has travelled this line. The community below took their name. Twin Sisters, on the Little Blanco River seven miles south of Blanco, was settled from 1854 and had a post office by 1856, the first inside what is now Blanco County, and by the end of that decade it was the centre of German settlement in the county. By 1890 it had three general stores, a gristmill and a cotton gin. The settlement never grew much past that, but the name stayed on the road signs because the hills are still there to explain it. They stand almost exactly level with one another, which is what makes the pairing read as deliberate from a distance. The pairing is not a coincidence of shape. Both hills are erosional remnants of the same near-horizontal Glen Rose limestone that forms the benches all along this road, left standing where the streams either side cut down past them. Anything capped by the same resistant bed tends to end up at the same height, which is why Hill Country skylines so often show several summits level with one another rather than a range of different peaks. What survives of the settlement now is a scatter of buildings, a cemetery and the hills themselves, which are on private land. The name is worth keeping straight: the Little Twin Sisters Peaks are a separate pair, over in Hays County.
Getting there
29.9805, -98.4467
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
