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In the Hill Country, the water in new wells stands lower in 8 of 10 counties

This page covers the 10 counties with home wells inside the state's groundwater model of the Hill Country part of the Trinity Aquifer. Their home wells differ widely: the median runs from 240 feet in Gillespie County to 540 feet in Kerr County, across 11,262 wells. Gillespie County has the most wells (1,959). Compared with 2003 to 2007, new wells are at least 10% deeper in 3 of the 10 comparable counties, and the water stands lower in 8 of 10, most of all in Travis County (111 feet lower).

Updated every day from Texas Water Development Board driller reports. Last update: November 11, 2026, using the state file of November 10, 2026.

Download the table (CSV)Sources and how to check it

The figures

Deepest county
Kerr: 540 feet
955 wells
Shallowest county
Gillespie: 240 feet
1,959 wells
Most wells
Gillespie: 1,959
Counties drilling deeper
3 of 10
Counties with the water lower
8 of 10

The 10 counties

Home wells, last 10 years, or since 2001 where few. The 20-year columns compare 2003 to 2007 with 2021 to 2025 where both periods have 30 wells. Tap a heading to sort.

CountyMedian (ft)Middle half (ft)WellsThen → now (ft)ChangeWater level change (ft)
Kerr540380–660955480 → 560+17% (Deeper)+66
Medina535344–820800520 → 530+2% (No clear change)+69
Bandera510450–6401,042480 → 530+10% (Deeper)+40
Hays510410–6801,086522 → 510−2% (No clear change)+47
Bexar500360–694810500 → 5000% (No clear change)+20
Comal484400–6001,255480 → 489+2% (No clear change)+30
Travis445280–628969410 → 450+10% (No clear change)+111
Kendall413280–5701,214390 → 420+8% (No clear change)+18
Blanco410305–5051,172364 → 420+15% (Deeper)+51
Gillespie240178–3671,959224 → 245+10% (No clear change)+18

What this shows and what it doesn't

  • We give each county's own figure and no single number for the region: a regional median would be set by whichever county drills the most.
  • A deeper well can mean a falling water table, a different aquifer, better water quality or simply more reserve.
  • The water level is measured once, when each well is finished, so drought years pull it down. 2022 and 2023 were dry years in much of Texas.

Questions

How deep are water wells in the Texas Hill Country?

This page covers the 10 counties with home wells inside the state's groundwater model of the Hill Country part of the Trinity Aquifer. Their home wells differ widely: the median runs from 240 feet in Gillespie County to 540 feet in Kerr County, across 11,262 wells. Gillespie County has the most wells (1,959). Compared with 2003 to 2007, new wells are at least 10% deeper in 3 of the 10 comparable counties, and the water stands lower in 8 of 10, most of all in Travis County (111 feet lower).

Which county in the Texas Hill Country has the deepest water wells?

Kerr County, with a median of 540 feet and a middle half from 380 to 660 feet (955 wells, in the last 10 years).

Sources you can check

Check it yourself

  1. Download this page's table as a CSV (texas-hill-country-water-well-depth.csv): every figure in the text is in it.
  2. Open any county in the table. Its page lists its figures, and each well on its map opens the official report on the state's site.
  3. For the raw data, download the state file from the TWDB link in the sources and keep the wells whose proposed use is Domestic and whose work is a new well or a replacement.
  4. If a figure does not match, write to us with the county and the number: we correct it in the next update and say so.

How we got it

We count new and replacement domestic (home) wells with a valid depth on their report. Monitoring wells, soil borings, injection, geothermal and oilfield wells are left out. A depth under 10 feet or over 5,000 feet is treated as an entry error.

County figures use the wells finished in the last 10 years when there are at least 30; otherwise all since 2001. The median is the middle well: half are deeper, half shallower. Only counties with 30 wells or more are ranked.

We compare the wells finished in 2003 to 2007 with those finished in 2021 to 2025, in every county with at least 30 wells in each period. The 95% interval for the difference in medians comes from 2,000 bootstrap resamples. A county counts as deeper or shallower only when that interval excludes zero and the change is at least 10%. For the water level we require at least 5 feet and 10%.

The full method · All open data

How to cite this

TerraFunded (2026). "In the Hill Country, the water in new wells stands lower in 8 of 10 counties." Texas Well Atlas. From the Texas Water Development Board, Submitted Driller's Reports database (state file of November 10, 2026). https://terrafunded.com/wells/findings/texas-hill-country-water-well-depth. License CC BY 4.0. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24126380.

Free to use with credit under CC BY 4.0. Journalists: write to us for any county's figures.

More findings

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