Historic Granbury Square

Granbury grew up around a courthouse. Hood County was carved out in 1866, and the new county seat platted its blocks around a central square — the way Texas counties did it in the nineteenth century, with the seat of government planted square in the middle and the merchants ringed around it. What makes Granbury's square unusual is that it survived. The limestone storefronts, the opera house, the old jail, the bank, and the towering Second Empire courthouse all still stand, restored rather than razed. In 1974 that completeness earned the square a distinction no other Texas town held: it became the first courthouse square in the state listed on the National Register of Historic Places, called 'one of the most complete nineteenth-century courthouse squares in Texas.' This walking loop circles that square — start at the clock tower, work your way around the limestone blocks, and read the town's story off its own walls.