Dimmit County
Carrizo Springs, Dimmit County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created February 1, 1858; organized November 2, 1880 Named in honor of Philip Dimmitt, a pioneer trader and captain in the Texas Army who died in 1841. Carrizo Springs, The County Seat (3.7 mi. N Carrizo Springs, US Hwy. 83)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Created by the Texas legislature in 1858 but not formally organized until 1880, Dimmit County honors Philip Dimmitt, a trader and captain in the army of the Republic of Texas who died in 1841. The long gap between creation and organization reflects how sparsely populated this stretch of South Texas remained through the mid-nineteenth century. Carrizo Springs became the county seat.
Why it matters
The county's slow path from statute to settlement traces the gradual American occupation of the South Texas borderlands in the era of the Republic and early statehood.
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Related people
- · Philip Dimmitt
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dimmit County Courthouse
Carrizo Springs, TX
Named for one of the framers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Dimmit County was carved from four counties in 1858 and organized in 1880 with Carrizo Springs as its seat. Its courthouse, commissioned in 1883 and built by J. C. Breeding & Sons on plans likely drawn from architect Alfred Giles, wore an Italianate look until the booming county hired Henry T. Phelps to enlarge and recast it in restrained Classical Revival style in the 1920s. The transformation left a single building embodying two eras of Texas civic architecture.
First Baptist Church
Carrizo Springs, TX
Organized in 1878, this was the first church raised by Texas Baptists west of the Nueces River, a frontier region still thinly settled after the Civil War. Between 1888 and 1891 the congregation built its home by hand on land donated by Levi and Matilda English, burning their own brick and lime and hauling lumber all the way from Cotulla. Among the seven charter members were two former Methodists and a man who had been enslaved, a small window onto the mixed community that built the young town.
Burleson Cemetery
Carrizo Springs, TX
Among the first families to settle what became Dimmit County, the Burlesons arrived near Carrizo Springs between 1865 and 1870. In 1895 tragedy struck fast: three young Burleson men died suddenly, probably of food poisoning, and that July another brother succumbed to heat stroke and was buried alongside them and a Burleson child. Over the decades the graves faded into local mystery until a Texas Department of Transportation investigation in the late twentieth century identified the family resting here.
Espantosa Lake
Carrizo Springs, TX
Long before highways crossed this brushy corner of South Texas, travelers on the old Presidio Road paused at Espantosa Lake, a reliable watering and camping spot on the earliest route linking Texas with the Mexican state of Coahuila. Generations of teamsters, soldiers, and traders knew the lake, and its lonely reputation gathered a thick crust of legend. In 1876 the spot saw real violence when Texas Rangers cornered and killed a band of outlaws here.