24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Lockhart, TX

Lockhart is a city in Central Texas and the county seat of Caldwell County, located about 30 miles south of Austin.

Lockhart is named for Byrd Lockhart, an assistant surveyor to Green DeWitt who received a land grant along Plum Creek in the early 1830s, and the town was originally called Plum Creek.

Lockhart was the site of the Battle of Plum Creek on August 12, 1840, where Texas militia, Rangers, and Tonkawa allies defeated a large Comanche raiding party.

When Caldwell County was organized in 1848, Lockhart was made the county seat, and the town was incorporated in 1852.

The Texas Legislature officially proclaimed Lockhart the Barbecue Capital of Texas in 1999 through House Resolution 1024.

Lockhart's barbecue tradition began in 1875, when Jesse Swearingen opened a meat market that Charles Kreuz bought in 1900 to found Kreuz Market, and it continued with Smitty's Market and Chisholm Trail Bar-B-Que.

Black's Barbecue, founded in Lockhart in 1932, is the oldest barbecue restaurant in Texas still owned and operated by the same family.

The Caldwell County Courthouse, built in 1894 from Muldoon blue sandstone with Pecos red sandstone trim, anchors a downtown historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Lockhart State Park, a 263-acre park just outside town, was built by a Civilian Conservation Corps company in the 1930s and contains the only golf course in the Texas State Parks system, a nine-hole course along Clear Fork Creek.

Lockhart counted 14,379 residents in the 2020 census, and rapid Austin-area growth pushed the Census Bureau's estimate to about 18,159 by 2025.