Scenic Loop: Fair Oaks Ranch to Helotes Creek

In the late 1920s, San Antonio drivers with new automobiles and a Sunday to spare could follow a 46-mile Scenic Loop out past Helotes into the Hill Country — a road laid over Paleo-Indian campsites, a Prussian settlement, a stagecoach route, and a 19th-century cattle trail. About 13 miles of that original loop still survive. This drive follows the corridor past a paving tycoon's grand rustic ranch and a Scottish surgeon's 1859 homestead to the resort development the road was built to reach — the one that eventually grew into its own small town.