Junction: Where the Llano Rivers Meet

The name says exactly what it is. Junction sits at the confluence of the North and South Llano rivers in the Hill Country, and that meeting of waters is what determined everything about its location. The town was founded in the spring of eighteen seventy-six, right after Kimble County organized, and originally called Denman after its surveyor.

It became Junction City in eighteen seventy-seven and simply Junction by eighteen ninety-four. Winning the county seat over a rival settlement called Kimbleville helped. Kimbleville kept flooding out, which tends to settle arguments.

By eighteen seventy-nine Junction had a drugstore, a livery stable, a sawmill, and general stores, and its first newspaper, the West Texan, followed in eighteen eighty-two. Today it remains the county seat and the kind of Hill Country crossroads where pecan trees hang over the river and time moves at a slightly different pace than out on the interstate.