Smithville
Smithville, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1691 missionaries on the expedition of Don Domingo Teran de Los Rios sighted a lagoon which the Indians called Nenocadda. The lagoon, known today as Shipp's Lake, is on the southern edge of present Smithville. Frederick W. Grasmeyer operated a ferry here on the Colorado River in 1836. Steamboats plied the river from 1845 to about 1865. The village of "Old Smithville" was laid out on 640 acres of land granted to Thomas J. Gazley and Lewis Lomas. The town was located along the Colorado River in the northeast section of present Smithville. There were mercantile stores, dry good shops, and a Masonic lodge. In 1876 the first post office was established with John Pride Jones as postmaster. The Taylor, Bastrop & Houston Railroad, later a part of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas system, arrived in 1887, and the town relocated along the tracks. The legend is that a coin was tossed to decide if the name would be changed to Burlesonville for Murray Burleson, who gave land for the railroad depot. The coin toss resulted in "Smithville" being retained as the name, apparently in honor of pioneer settler William Smith. The town was incorporated in 1895 and T. C. Collins served as the first mayor. (1979) Incise in base: Marker Sponsor: Smithville Chamber of Commerce 1977-78
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Smithville area was noted as early as 1691, when a Spanish expedition sighted an Indian-named lagoon still known today as Shipp's Lake. A ferry crossed the Colorado here in 1836 and steamboats plied the river until the 1860s, but the town's fate was sealed by the railroad: when the Taylor, Bastrop & Houston line arrived in 1887, "Old Smithville" picked up and moved to the tracks. Legend says a coin toss kept the name Smithville over "Burlesonville" before the town incorporated in 1895.
Why it matters
Smithville's shift from riverboat landing to trackside town captures how the railroad rewrote the map of nineteenth-century Texas, moving whole communities to the rails.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Frederick W. Grasmeyer
- · William Smith
Related events
- · Arrival of the Taylor, Bastrop & Houston Railroad
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Muldoon Community
Muldoon, TX
First settled in the 1830s on land from an 1831 Spanish grant through Stephen F. Austin, the Muldoon community took its name from Father Miguel Muldoon, an Irish-born, Spanish-educated priest who ministered to Austin's colonists and received leagues of land in return. The town boomed after the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad arrived in 1887, gaining stores, churches, a hotel, a cotton gin, and its distinctive 1890 precinct courthouse. Muldoon blue sandstone from the local quarry went into courthouses, churches, and even Galveston's coastal jetties before the community faded with the railroad's decline.
In This Grave Rest James Goucher and Five Members of His Family
Serbin, TX
This grave holds James Goucher and five of his family, killed in a raid by Indians on November 26, 1836, in the dangerous first year of the Republic of Texas. A true pioneer, Goucher had cut the first road from San Felipe to the settlements on the Colorado River—a route known for years afterward as 'Goucher's Trace.' The State of Texas set this monument in 1936, the state's centennial.
King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road
Lincoln, TX
This marker commemorates the King's Highway, or Camino Real, the Spanish colonial road system that once linked the missions and settlements of Texas and stretched toward Mexico and Louisiana. Placed in 1918 by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Texas, it was part of an early-20th-century effort to trace and memorialize the historic route. The road carried soldiers, missionaries, traders, and settlers for well over a century.
New Red Rock Cemetery
Red Rock, TX
Settlers reached the Red Rock area by the 1850s, and by the mid-1870s the community supported a post office and the Red Rock Male and Female Academy. When the MK&T Railroad laid track about a mile east in 1890, residents picked up their homes and businesses and moved to the rails—and in 1913 established this cemetery on land given by L. A. and Adrienne Turner. Families have donated ground repeatedly since, and the cemetery association still tends it today.