Sutherland Springs

The town stands on land first granted to Manuel Tarín. Sutherland opened a stage stop and post office in his home in 1851; by 1860 wagon traffic on the Goliad Trace and the Chihuahua Road crossed here. Wilson County's first newspaper, the Western Chronicle, began here in 1877. In its heyday the resort was billed as the "Saratoga of the South," with its own weekly, the Health Resort, and a 1910 revival drew as many as 2,500 worshipers. The hotel closed for good in 1923, and the Southern Pacific abandoned the railroad in 1971.

What the plaque says

Sutherland Springs Outstanding early-day Southwest Texas health spa. Had 27 flavors of mineral water, from over 100 hot and cold springs. (Indians used curative waters here before white settlement.) Resort was founded in 1848 by Dr. John Sutherland (1792-1867), who had been at the Alamo when Santa Anna came on Feb. 23, 1836, but was sent out by Travis to summon aid. Sutherland built plantation home on bluff west of the Cibolo, across from wooded valley of springs. Patients boarded in his home, homes of neighbors, or rented cottages at the springs. Most common mineral waters were white sulphur, black sulphur, hume sour. Hot springs were especially popular in treating rheumatic diseases. Sutherland Springs was stagecoach stop on Old San Antonio Road. In 1854 Dr. Sutherland had a British teacher lay off square and town as seen today. In 1860, when Wilson County was created, this was county seat. Reconstruction Judge Wm. Longsworth demanded $250 to keep county seat here, and failing to get it hauled court records to Lodi, later to Floresville. In 1909, "New Sutherland Springs", on lowland acres formerly held by Gideon Lee, had a 52-room hotel, the largest concrete pool in south, church encampments. Floods in 1913 made that resort a ghost town. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 24 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Mission San Juan — 24 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.
• San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 26 mi
  Four working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
• Mission Concepción — 27 mi
  A stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.

More markers nearby

• Sutherland Springs School Site — 0.3 mi
• Pat Higgins Grass Farms — 1.0 mi
• John Reagen Baker — 6.2 mi
• Town Named for Governor F.S. Stockdale — 6.3 mi