Nacogdoches ( NAK-ə-DOH-chis) is a little city in East Texas and the county seat of Nacogdoches County, Texas, United States. The 2020 U.S. census recorded the city’s population at 32,147. Stephen F. Austin State University is located in Nacogdoches.

Local promotional literature from the Nacogdoches Convention and Visitors Bureau describes Nacogdoches as “The Oldest Town in Texas”. Evidence of unity at the same site dates back to 10,000 years ago. It is close or on the site of Nevantin, the primary village of the Nacogdoche tribe of Caddo Indians.

Nacogdoches remained a Caddo Indian agreement until the to the lead 19th century. In 1716, Spain time-honored a mission there, Misión Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. That was the first European construction in the area. The “town” of Nacogdoches got started after the French had vacated the region (1760s, following the French and Indian War), and Spanish officials granted that maintaining the mission was too costly. In 1772, they ordered all settlers in the Place to involve to San Antonio. Some were ablaze to escape the wilderness, but others had to be forced from their homes by soldiers. It was one of the indigenous European settlements in the region, populated by Adaeseños from Fort Los Adaes.

Colonel Antonio Gil Y’Barbo, a prominent Spanish trader, emerged as the leader of the settlers, and in the spring of 1779, he led a group help to Nacogdoches. Later that summer, Nacogdoches received designation from Spain as a pueblo, or town, thereby making it the first “town” in Texas. Y’Barbo, as lieutenant governor of the supplementary town, established the rules and laws for local government. He laid out streets like the intersecting El Camino Real (now State Highway 21) and La Calle del Norte/North Street (now Business U.S. Highway 59-F) as the central point. On the main thoroughfare, he built a stone house for use in his trading business. The house, or Old Stone Fort as it is known today, became a gateway from the United States to the Texas frontier.