DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Old Smiley Lake and its townsite, out in Gonzales County. Now, most towns get built around a courthouse, or a crossroads, or somebody's stubborn refusal to move any further down the trail. But Smiley Lake?
It started with water. Simple as that. Back in the late 1840s, settlers caught wind of a natural lake out here — abundant water in Texas brush country — and they came.
You don't need a brass band when you've got a dependable lake. The earliest commerce was ranching, and these weren't small-timers. Cattle, sheep, and something a little more spirited — racing horses, raised right here and sold down into the southern states.
And those cattlemen, they'd bring their herds to the lake area and hold them there, patient as you please, until the animals were ready to move north. Twenty miles north, to be precise, up to Belmont, where a branch of the Chisholm cattle trail was waiting. Then, in 1879, a man named George W.
Colley arrived — and the marker calls him the founder of the Smiley Lake community. He didn't just settle. He built.
Right near his home he put up a steam-powered cotton gin and a sawmill. Steam-powered. Out here.
That tells you something about the man's ambitions. He was joined later by Major W. M.
Phillips, who opened a mercantile establishment in 1883. And now you've got the bones of a real place taking shape. The settlement took the name Smiley Lake, named for an early pioneer by the name of Jim Smiley.
It sat right on the Cuero-Rancho trade route, the road running between San Antonio and the Gulf port of Indianola. That kind of location meant traffic, and traffic meant business. And business came.
A saddle factory. A blacksmith shop. A wire fence plant — now there's a frontier enterprise for you.
A newspaper. General stores. A drugstore.
A school. A Baptist church. An I.O.O.F.
Lodge. And in 1884, a post office. When a place gets a post office, it's telling the world: we're here, we intend to stay, and we'd like our mail, thank you.
But here's the thing about railroads. They don't negotiate, and they don't detour for sentiment. In 1906, the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad completed its lines nearby — just not quite here.
And so the town of Smiley did what a practical Texas town had to do. It moved. One mile north, to the present location, following the rails like everybody else was doing.
The lake is still there. The original townsite is still out here somewhere beneath the brush and the years. And the marker stands to remind you that before there was a railroad stop, there was a natural lake, a man named George Colley with a head of steam, and an early pioneer named Jim Smiley who left his name on the whole enterprise — even after it moved.
What the marker says
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 the southern states. Cattlemen brought their herds to the lake area until they were ready for transfer to Belmont (20 miles north), where a branch of the Chisholm cattle trail was located. George W. Colley, considered to be the founder of Smiley Lake community, moved here in 1879. Near his home he built a steam-powered cotton gin and sawmill. He was joined later by Major W. M. Phillips who opened a mercantile establishment here in 1883. The settlement of Smiley Lake, named for early pioneer Jim Smiley, was located on the Cuero-Rancho trade route between San Antonio and the Gulf port of Indianola. The village once had a saddle factory, blacksmith shop, wire fence plant, newspaper, general stores, drugstore, school, baptist church, an I. O. O. F. Lodge and a post office established in 1884. When the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad completed lines nearby in 1906, the town of Smiley was moved to the present location (one mile north).