Site of Old Town: Lodi
Floresville, Wilson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Community in an area known by 1720 as land of the Cayopines, a Coahuiltecan Indian tribe. The site was important to Spanish missions of San Antonio, since here along the river their herds were pastured. For the herdsmen, adobe huts were built. After the Apache Indians began to raid the area in 1731, the herdsmen took refuge across the river within the stronger walls of the Mission Cabras. The Pena brothers had Rancho San Eldifonzo Del Chayopin here from 1756 to 1787, and a nephew applied for title when mission lands were secularized in 1794. However, award was made to Simon and Juan Arocha. Their neighbors (descended from Canary Island colonists of 1731) included Jose Maria Flores and Erasmus Seguin. Stephen T. Cook settled here in 1858, putting in a store and securing office of postmaster. He may have named Lodi for a town in Mississippi, his old home state. Wilson County was organized in an election held Feb. 13, 1860. Samuel W. Barker (husband of local aristocrat Josefa Flores) became the first sheriff of the new county. Improved roads were built here. After the Civil War, Wilson County voters on Dec. 8, 1867, designated Lodi county seat--an honor lost to Floresville in 1872. Area then reverted to ranching. (1971)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
By 1720 this land along the river was known as the country of the Cayopines, a Coahuiltecan people, and it became vital to the San Antonio missions, whose herds grazed here tended by herdsmen in adobe huts. Apache raids after 1731 drove those herdsmen to shelter at Mission Cabras, and the ground passed through Spanish ranchos and Canary Islander families before Anglo settler Stephen T. Cook opened a store in 1858 and named the place Lodi. Chosen county seat in 1867, Lodi lost that honor to Floresville in 1872 and reverted to ranching.
Why it matters
Lodi's layered past — Coahuiltecan land, Spanish mission ranch, Canary Islander settlement, and Anglo county seat — compresses two centuries of Texas's colonial and frontier history into a single site.
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Related people
- · Stephen T. Cook
- · Jose Maria Flores
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mision de las Cabras ("Mission of the Goats")
Floresville, TX
A fortified outpost of San Antonio's Mission Espada, the Mission of the Goats guarded ranchlands along the San Antonio River near a well-known river crossing. Founded in the 1730s era of Spanish missions, it sheltered Indian herdsmen who tended mission cattle, and a chapel was built for their spiritual care. After the missions were secularized in 1794, the land passed to Canary Islander descendants, including the spirited Dona Maria Del Carmen Calvillo, who managed the ranch herself and kept the peace by paying tribute in beef.
Flores Rancho
Floresville, TX
This land began as ranch country for Mission Espada and Rancho de las Cabras, granted by the Spanish crown and once known as Chayopines for the Native people who lived there. By 1756 Juan José Flores kept an adobe house at a river crossing where travelers camped overnight, and that hacienda — encased within a brick house built around it in 1844 — is thought to be the oldest home in Wilson County. Nearby lie the stone foundations of an early-1800s chapel and its campo santo, and the rancho passed through three generations of the Flores family.
Sutherland Springs
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Founded in 1848 by Dr. John Sutherland — the Alamo courier whom William B. Travis sent out for reinforcements in 1836 — Sutherland Springs became one of southwest Texas's premier health resorts, drawing visitors to more than 100 hot and cold mineral springs long used for their curative waters. A stagecoach stop on the Old San Antonio Road, it served as the first seat of Wilson County in 1860 before politics moved the county seat away. A later resort boom at "New Sutherland Springs" collapsed after devastating floods in 1913 left it a ghost town.
Thomas Ransdell Brite
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