Round Mountain is a town in Blanco County, Texas, in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. It sits along U.S. Route 281, about twelve miles north of Johnson City, the county seat, and eleven miles south of Marble Falls, with downtown Austin roughly forty-six miles to the east. The community's history is tied to the early roads of the Hill Country. Round Mountain began as a stage stop on the mail route between Austin and Fredericksburg, serving travelers crossing the region in the nineteenth century. Education became a local priority early on: in 1871 residents obtained a state charter for a school and founded an academy that at one time enrolled about two hundred students, a substantial institution for a small frontier settlement. The town takes its name from a nearby rounded hill, a prominent feature of the local landscape. For more than a century Round Mountain has remained a small, quiet community, with its population in the low hundreds. Unlike the fast-growing cities elsewhere in central Texas, it has held onto the scale and pace of a rural Hill Country village. Today Round Mountain sits within one of the most visited parts of the Hill Country. Its location between Johnson City and Marble Falls places it near the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, the wineries of the region, and the Highland Lakes, while Pedernales Falls State Park lies a short drive away. Residents are served by the Blanco County school districts, and daily services are found in nearby Johnson City and Marble Falls. The surrounding ranches and the rolling, rocky terrain give the area the distinctive look of the Hill Country's northern reaches, and the town's position on U.S. 281 keeps it connected to Austin and San Antonio while its small size defines its quiet, rural character.