Smiley has 3 official Texas Historical Commission markers in Gonzales County. The marker list includes records dating to 1980. Common marker themes include churches, cemeteries, and community institutions, railroad, trail, and transportation history, ranching, farming, and frontier settlement. Use this page to preview the markers, then open RoadHistorical on your drive to see nearby stops on the map, listen to narration, and save the places you want to visit.
Attracted by abundant water from a natural lake, settlers began moving to this area in the late 1840s. Ranching provided the earliest commerce. In addition to cattle and sheep, ranchers raised racing horses for sale in…
Methodists in the Smiley area gathered for informal worship services as early as 1879. In 1885 a congregation, originally known as the Bundick Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, was organized with about…
George W. Colley, who established a home, gin, and grist mill on Smiley Lake (1 mile S) in 1879, arranged for the Rev. John Stringer to hold the area's first formal Baptist meeting in 1880. People from throughout the…