Goliad

Goliad, the county seat of Goliad County, originated as one of the oldest Spanish colonial municipalities in the state. The town is on the Southern Pacific Railroad, the San Antonio River, U.S. highways 59 and 183, and State Highway 239. It was established in October 1749, when colonizer José de Escandón recommended moving Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission and its royal protector, Nuestra Señora de Loreto de La Bahía del Espíritu Santo Presidio (Presidio La Bahía), from the Guadalupe River to a site named Santa Dorotea, on the San Antonio River. A new presidio, La Bahía, was built on a hill near the river, where sand, limestone, and timber were abundant. Around the presidio walls grew the settlement of La Bahía, and on the opposite bank stood Mission Espíritu Santo.

The fort supplied Spanish men-at-arms to the army of Bernardo de Gálvez in the American colonists' war against the British between 1779 and 1782, garrisoned Spanish troops throughout the 1810–21 Mexican war of independence, and after 1812 saw four separate attempts to establish Texas independence. In the longest siege in American military history, the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition captured La Bahía and held it for the first "Republic of Texas" from November 1812 until February 1813. In June 1817 Henry Perry and forty companions tried to capture the presidio but were repulsed. James Long, who surprised the occupying garrison in 1821 and met with little resistance, was unseated by deception after three days when 700 Spanish Royalist troops arrived from San Antonio.