Site of Zodiac
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A Mormon settlement. Established in 1847 by 150 Mormons under the leadership of Lyman Wight (1796-1858). Abandoned in 1851 after floods destroyed their mill. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1847, about 150 Mormons led by Lyman Wight founded the settlement of Zodiac near Fredericksburg, building a community and a mill along the river. Wight had led his followers to Texas as one branch of the fractured Latter-day Saint movement after the death of Joseph Smith. When floods destroyed their mill, the settlers abandoned Zodiac in 1851, leaving only a memory on the land.
Why it matters
Zodiac marks the little-known reach of the Mormon migration into Texas and the fragility of frontier communities dependent on a single mill.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Lyman Wight
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Pinta Trail
Fredericksburg, TX
Long before wagon wheels cut its ruts, the Pinta Trail began as a path worn by nomadic Plains peoples across the Texas Hill Country, linking San Antonio de Béxar with the San Sabá River country near present Menard. Spanish and Mexican expeditions borrowed its general course, and in 1845 German immigrant surveyors improved part of it into a wagon road. After the 1849 California gold rush, U.S. military companies pressed it into service scouting new routes west, until the railroads of the late 19th and early 20th centuries made the old trace obsolete.
Site of Fort Martin Scott
Fredericksburg, TX
The U.S. Army established Fort Martin Scott in December 1848 to shield travelers and settlers on the Texas frontier from Indian attack, naming it for Major Martin Scott, killed the year before at the Battle of Molino del Rey in the Mexican-American War. Its garrison saw many skirmishes before the post was occupied only intermittently after 1852. Confederate forces held the site during the Civil War, and it was permanently abandoned in 1866.
Rausch Ranch Home
Fredericksburg, TX
German immigrant Nicolaus Gerhard bought this land in 1856 and lived with his son Michael in a log cabin until local German stonemasons built this sturdy house from field rock in 1866. Michael sold the place in 1904 to another skilled stonemason, Robert Rausch, whose family kept it as headquarters for their ranch until 1976. The house's hand-cut stone walls reflect the building traditions the Hill Country's German settlers carried from the old country. Restored in the twentieth century, it endures as a monument to frontier craftsmanship.
Ressmann-Boos House
Fredericksburg, TX
This Fredericksburg home is a small chronicle of frontier building written in its own walls. The oldest section, from about 1845, is fachwerk — the timber-and-infill method German immigrants carried to the Texas Hill Country — while later additions in log and clapboard frame show how families adapted with what they had. The Ressmanns bought it in 1866 and the Boos family held it into the 1970s, more than a century in the hands of two settler households.