DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. You're rolling through Sabine County right now, and the land outside your window has been holding a secret for a long, long time. The marker calls this place El Lobanillo — a historic Spanish rancho, right here in this vicinity, and what a story it carries.
Let's go back. Way back. To 1729, when a man named Gil Ybarbo came into the world.
By the time the wheels of history started turning hard against the settlers of this region, Ybarbo had a pueblo right here at El Lobanillo. And then came 1773. Spain made a decision — evacuate the colonists from Western Louisiana and East Texas.
Pack up, move out, the empire has spoken. But not everyone could go. Ybarbo's own mother was ill.
She and other refugees stayed behind, right here, when everyone else was marched away. Think about that a moment. The empire pulls up stakes, soldiers march off into the distance, and here sits a sick woman and a handful of souls, holding on to this piece of ground.
El Lobanillo didn't let go of its people, and its people didn't let go of it. The rancho kept going. In 1794, the land was granted to a man named Juan Ignacio Pifermo.
And then, sometime in the early 1800s, it passed again — inherited by a man known as John Maximillian, born around 1778, who lived all the way to 1866. The land outlasted empires, evacuations, and the turns of several lifetimes. That's the thing about El Lobanillo.
The marker says it plainly: this is now known as the oldest continuously occupied site in East Texas. Other places got abandoned, burned, forgotten, or swallowed by time. This one just kept going.
Somebody was always here. And in a way, somebody still is.
What the marker says
In this vicinity was historic Spanish rancho called El Lobanillo. Pueblo of Gil Ybarbo (1729-1809), where his ill mother and other refugees remained when Spain evacuated colonists from Western Louisiana and East Texas in 1773. Granted 1794 to Juan Ignacio Pifermo, and inherited in early 1800s by John Maximillian (1778?-1866), this is now known as oldest continuously occupied site in East Texas. (1972)