Honey Creek State Natural Area

🏆 Official Guide: Honey Creek State Natural Area — 2,809 acres of Hill Country in western Comal County, Texas, about 30 miles north of downtown San Antonio, protecting a 1.5-mile spring-fed creek under bald cypress and Spanish-moss-draped live oaks. The creek itself is seen only on 2.5-hour guided tours (Saturday mornings, plus select Sundays) that start at neighboring Guadalupe River State Park; 3.6 miles of trails are open daily. Entry $2 per adult. Verified with Texas Parks and Wildlife as of August 2026.

Honey Creek runs clear blue-green over limestone in a narrow floodplain shaded by bald cypress and sycamore — trees that only grow where the water never stops. Maidenhair fern and spatterdock line the rock banks, Spanish moss hangs from the live oaks, and above the creek the dry, rocky hills of Ashe juniper are slowly giving way, after prescribed burns, to Indiangrass, little bluestem and switchgrass. This is one of the nesting sites of the endangered golden-cheeked warbler, and the water holds Guadalupe bass (the Texas state fish), Cagle’s map turtle, green kingfishers and the Cascade Caverns salamander. Texas Parks and Wildlife keeps Honey Creek State Natural Area deliberately low-traffic: you walk the creek only with a guide, which is exactly why it still looks like this.

Visitor Information

Trails Open Daily

Outside the guided tours, 3.6 miles of trail are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Box Turtle Trail is ADA-accessible; the Roadrunner Trail runs through the juniper-and-grass uplands where prescribed fire has brought the prairie grasses back. Pets are allowed on these trails (not on the tours). The creek corridor is not on the open trails — that is tour-only.

History

German immigrants, the Doeppenschmidt family, began homesteading here in 1866; Adam Doeppenschmidt consolidated the parcels in 1894 and sold to Otto Weidner and Fred Rust in 1910, and the Weidners ran the ranch until 1971. The Nature Conservancy of Texas bought the core tract in 1981 and transferred it to TPWD in 1985, with the rest coming from a private owner in 1988; Honey Creek opened for limited access in 1985. Two recent additions — 515 acres in June 2023 (with The Nature Conservancy, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation and landowners Ronnie and Terry Urbanczyk) and 29 acres in June 2026 — brought the natural area to its current 2,809 acres. Together with a 621-acre conservation easement from 2022 and Guadalupe River State Park, the protected block now covers around 5,000 acres over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone that supplies drinking water to nearly two million Texans.

Pairing It with Guadalupe River State Park

Honey Creek tours begin at Guadalupe River State Park, which fronts four miles of the Guadalupe River and charges $7 per adult (children 12 and under free). Its gate is open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and the Discovery Center runs Thursday–Friday 10 a.m.–2 p.m. and weekends 10 a.m.–4 p.m. A Saturday plan that works: creek tour at Honey Creek in the morning, then the river for the afternoon.

Frequently Asked Questions

More parks nearby: Guadalupe River State Park shares the boundary and the tour meeting point.

Editorial note: Fees, hours, tour details, acreage and history are from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department pages and the June 22, 2023 TPWD news release, checked August 2026. Tour schedules change seasonally — confirm on the TPWD events page.