Meet The Red State Corridor Behind America’s Top Boomtowns

The two top-ranked boomtowns in the United States lie less than 80 miles apart on the same stretch of Texas interstate, turning a single highway into one of the nation’s most potent engines of population and economic expansion.

New Braunfels ranked second and Georgetown first in a SmartAsset study that examined more than 400 cities with populations of at least 65,000. Both communities sit along Interstate 35, the corridor linking San Antonio to Austin and Dallas that has absorbed a large share of Texas’s inbound migration over the past decade.

The data behind New Braunfels’s ranking stand out even by Sunbelt standards. Housing units rose 40% over five years, the labor force expanded 32%, and real gross domestic product in Comal County, home to most of the city, compounded at an annual rate of 6.8% – a pace higher than almost every other county in the country. Those three metrics – housing supply, workforce size and county-level output – formed the basis of SmartAsset’s composite score.

Census Bureau estimates put the city’s population at 122,492 as of July 1, 2025.

“In recent years, some American cities stand out for attracting people, investment and development at a pace that sets them apart,” the report said. “Boomtown status does not mean growth benefits everyone equally, but it does reflect a city’s expanding economic capacity and the new opportunities that come with it.”

Texas nearly swept the top of the list – Leander ranked fourth and the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Lewisville fifth, giving the state four of the top five. Williamson County, home to Georgetown, posted an even faster compound rate than Comal at 7.7%.

The red state accounted for 18 of the top 75 boomtowns while Florida contributed 19, together representing nearly half the list.