Medina Lake
A historic 1913 irrigation-district reservoir about 40 minutes from San Antonio, with a genuinely affordable Hill Country market shadowed by the most severe and frequent drought drawdowns of any major Texas lake.
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A catfish caught near Red Cove, a full-pool sunset over the old dam, a Hill Country evening in Lakehills — submit a photo and we'll feature it here.
Submit a Photo →The Lake at a Glance
Medina Lake was formed by damming the Medina River in Bandera and Medina counties, southwest of the Texas Hill Country and about 40 minutes from downtown San Antonio. Construction ran from November 1911 to 1913, with deliberate impoundment beginning May 7, 1913. At completion, Medina Dam was the largest dam in Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States, built with over 1,500 workers and financed by British bondholders. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places today.
Unlike the LCRA-operated Highland Lakes or the USACE-operated reservoirs covered elsewhere on this site, Medina Lake is governed by the Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Counties Water Control and Improvement District No. 1, a local irrigation district whose core legal mission is delivering water to roughly 400 area farmers. Recreation is a secondary consideration administratively, not a co-equal legal mandate the way it is at a multi-purpose federal or LCRA reservoir.
Lakehills, Mico, and Pipe Creek ring the shoreline, giving buyers a genuinely rural, unincorporated Hill Country setting with no municipal property tax on the lake itself.
What Buyers Need to Know First
The single most important fact for buyers: Medina Lake has no legally guaranteed minimum recreational pool level, and it has repeatedly dropped to extreme lows, including roughly 2 percent capacity in May 2025, described by local officials as the lowest level in at least 60 years. Confirm current conditions directly before assuming a listing's photos reflect today's water line.
The second piece is dock and shoreline structures. Unlike LCRA's detailed, publicly published dock-permitting system, BMA has no comparable online permitting portal, meaning buyers must contact the district directly for case-by-case guidance, and a dock built during a full-pool year can end up hundreds of feet from water during a drought.
The third piece is well water. Local groundwater authorities have documented roughly 60 percent of area domestic wells underperforming during the worst drought stretches, a genuine, well-documented risk directly tied to how low the lake itself has fallen.
Everything We Cover on Medina Lake
Independent research across every topic Medina Lake buyers ask about — Bandera and Medina county tax math, the district's irrigation-first governance, dramatic drought history, and which nearby community actually fits you.
This is exactly the stuff a Medina Lake specialist helps you navigate. Want an introduction?
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