page_title: Nacogdoches, Texas
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Nacogdoches, Texas / History / Early years
caption_attribution_description: English: Replica of the Old Stone Fort, Nacogdoches, Texas, USA built for the 1936 Texas Centennial. The building was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1962.
context_page_description: Nacogdoches is a small city in East Texas and the county seat of Nacogdoches County, Texas, United States. The 2010 U.S. Census recorded the city's population to be 32,996. Nacogdoches is a sister city of the smaller and similarly-named Natchitoches, Louisiana, the third-largest city in the Southern Ark-La-Tex.
  Nacogdoches is the home of Stephen F. Austin State University and Texas' largest azalea garden.
context_section_description: Local promotional literature from the Nacogdoches Convention and Visitors Bureau describes Nacogdoches as "the oldest town in Texas". Evidence of settlement at the same site dates back to 10,000 years ago. It is near or on the site of Nevantin, the primary village of the Nacogdoche tribe of Caddo Indians.
  Nacogdoches remained a Caddo Indian settlement until the early 19th century. In 1716, Spain established a mission there, Misión Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. That was the first European construction in the area. The "town" of Nacogdoches got started after the French had vacated the region (1760s, following the French and Indian War), and Spanish officials decided that maintaining the mission was too costly. In 1772, they ordered all settlers in the area to move to San Antonio. Some were eager to escape the wilderness, but others had to be forced from their homes by soldiers.  It was one of the original European settlements in the region, populated by Adaeseños from Fort Los Adaes.
  Colonel Antonio Gil Y'Barbo, a prominent Spanish trader, emerged as the leader of the settlers, and in the spring of 1779, he led a group back to Nacogdoches. Later that summer, Nacogdoches received designation from Spain as a pueblo, or town, thereby making it the first "town" in Texas. Y'Barbo, as lieutenant governor of the new town, established the rules and laws for local government. He laid out streets with the intersecting El Camino Real (now State Highway 21) and  La Calle del Norte/North Street (now Business U.S. Highway 59-F) as the central point. On the main thoroughfare, he built a stone house for use in his trading business. The house, or Old Stone Fort as it is known today, became a gateway from the United States to the Texas frontier.
caption: Old Stone Fort Museum in Nacogdoches, on the SFASU campus
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