Medina is a small unincorporated community in central Bandera County, Texas, set in the Medina River valley of the Hill Country at the junction of State Highway 16 and Farm Road 337, about 12 miles northwest of Bandera. It is part of the San Antonio metropolitan area despite its distinctly rural character, and it sits within easy reach of both Kerrville and San Antonio. The community takes its name from the Medina River, which the Spanish explorer Alonso de León named in the late seventeenth century and which still runs through the surrounding valley. Medina's fame rests on apples. The Hill Country climate and the river valley proved well suited to orchards, and in 1989 the Texas Department of Agriculture declared Medina the "Apple Capital of Texas." Apple orchards remain the community's signature, drawing visitors and defining the landscape around the town's modest core. That agricultural identity sits alongside the area's older ranching and farming roots, which date to the mid-1800s settlement of the valley. The community's population is small — in the hundreds at its core — and it is served by the Medina Independent School District, a single-campus system of roughly 250 students serving pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, with a small portion of the district extending into neighboring Kerr County. State Highway 16 provides the main route through town, running north toward Kerrville and south toward Bandera and San Antonio. Medina suits people seeking a quiet, orchard-country Hill Country lifestyle — river access, acreage, and a single-community school district — within commuting distance of Kerrville and San Antonio and just a short drive from Bandera, the self-styled "Cowboy Capital of the World."