Site of Zodiac

After the Mormons left, Zodiac went on under other people. English, German and Danish families moved onto the land, and the 1850 census had counted 161 residents at the Mormon settlement. Before and during the Civil War the site held the only cotton plantation in Gillespie County that used enslaved labor, and descendants of the enslaved people still owned land in the area as late as 1947. The community was later renamed Rocky Hill, after a school built in 1885. The Mormons kept a one-acre cemetery here, where Lyman Wight was later buried.

What the plaque says

Site of Zodiac 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

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Martin Scott — 2.4 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 4.3 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 4.7 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• Luckenbach — 5.0 mi
  A store, saloon and dance hall on Grape Creek that a humorist bought in 1971, declared a free state of mind, and turned into a pilgrimage for Texas music.

More markers nearby

• The Pinta Trail — 0.7 mi
• The Easter Fires — 1.5 mi
• Site of Fort Martin Scott — 2.5 mi
• African American Community in Gillespie County — 3.9 mi