DIMMIT COUNTY, IN SOUTHERN TEXAS, is bordered by Zavala, La Salle, Webb, and Maverick counties.

Carrizo Springs, the county’s largest town and the county seat, is located in the northwestern part of the county at the intersection of U.S. Highways 83 and 277.

Dimmit County was named for Philip Dimmitt, one of the framers of the Goliad Declaration of Independence; his name was misspelled when the county was formed.

Indian artifacts dating from the Paleo-Indian period (9200 to 6000 B.C.) demonstrate that man has lived in the area of Dimmit County for about 11,000 years. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Coahuiltecan Indians native to Dimmit County were squeezed out by other Indian who were migrating into the area and by the Spanish, who were moving up from the south. Many of the Coahuiltecans were taken to San Juan Bautista in Coahuila. Apaches and Comanches moved in to take their place.

After the Mexican War of Independence the Mexican government used land grants to encourage its citizens to settle in Texas. Perhaps as many as seven grants were made between 1832 and 1834 that included territory now in Dimmit County. None of the recipients seems to have made use of the land, however. By 1836, when Texas became independent from Mexico, the area remained populated almost solely by Indians.

Between the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War (1836-46), most of Dimmit County lay in the disputed area between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River. Since neither the Republic of Texas nor the Mexican government could establish control over this strip of contested land, known at the time as Wild Horse Desert or El Desierto Muerto (Dead Desert), it became a haven for desperate characters.

This remained true for years after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo definitively assigned the Nueces Strip to Texas. In 1858, Dimmit County was officially formed from parts of Bexar, Webb, Maverick, and Uvalde Counties.

Dangers posed by outlaws and unfriendly Indians, however, deterred settlement in the county until after the Civil War. Dimmit County as it was found by early settlers was much different than it is today. Grasslands punctuated by clumps of mesquite, oak, and ash trees supported an abundance of wildlife, including buffalo, deer, turkeys, wild horses, panthers, and javelinas. Springs, bubbling up from a vast reservoir of underground water, fed into running streams that harbored giant catfish, crawfish, and mussels. As one visitor described it, the place in the mid-nineteenth century was “a poor man’s heaven.” Before it was settled, the area became known to a number of men who went there on Indian patrols, to hunt mustangs, or to seek good places to feed and water their cattle.

According to local tradition, the first attempt to establish a settlement in the area occurred just before the Civil War, when a black man from Nacogdoches named John Townsend led a group of families to a site on Pendencia Creek. Harassed by Indians, this group soon moved on to Eagle Pass. A band of settlers from Milwaukee also attempted a settlement on San Lorenzo Creek near the Webb County line. The first permanent settlement in Dimmit County, Carrizo Springs, was founded in 1865 by a group of 15 families from Atascosa County. These early settlers were led by Levi English, a cattleman and frontiersman who, like some of the other settlers, was already familiar with the area from earlier visits. The first years of settlement were difficult.

Most of the early residents of the county lived in primitive jacals or dugouts, and hostile Indians and outlaws often disturbed the peace. Indian attacks posed the greatest threat to isolated ranchers. But, hounded by patrols of Texas Rangers and local volunteers and with their numbers decimated by disease, the Indians were forced to leave Dimmit County by 1877. Thanks in part to the sometimes extralegal efforts of John King Fisher, county marshall cum outlaw, banditry in Dimmit County was greatly reduced by the 1880s and the area became more domesticated.

The county was formally organized in 1880 with Carrizo Springs as county seat. That same year, Levi English donated land for a county courthouse, schools, and churches in the town. The Carrizo Springs Javelin, the county’s only newspaper, was established in 1884. By 1885 the county seat was described as a “flourishing town” with two churches, a grocery, a livery stable, and a harness and boot shop.

Unlike most frontier towns, Carrizo Springs had no saloon. County residents voted to outlaw the sale of alcohol in the early 1880s; and Marshall Fisher, himself a teetotaller, vigorously enforced this law.

The information above is excerpted from the Handbook of Texas, an encyclopedia published by the Texas State Historical Association. The Handbook can be accessed online at www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online. Copies of the two-volume set ay be obtained by contacting the history organization at 512-232-1513.