The History of San Antonio, Florida
From a frontier judge's desert vow to a thriving Catholic Colony on the western shore of Lake Jovita — the story of Pasco County's “Gem of the Highlands.”
Founded
1882
Founder
Judge Dunne
Incorporated
1891
Population
≈ 1,300
1881–1882
A Vow Made in the Desert
Long before he stood on the rolling sandhills of Florida, Judge Edmund Francis Dunne — Irish American jurist and former Chief Justice of the Arizona Territory — found himself lost in the Sonoran desert. Tradition holds that he prayed to Saint Anthony of Paduafor safe passage; a distant fire guided him back to civilization. In thanksgiving, he vowed to one day found a town in Anthony's name.
That promise found its land in 1881. As legal counsel on Hamilton Disston's landmark $1 million purchase of four million Florida acres, Dunne was paid in real estate — 100,000 choice acres at twenty-five cents an acre — and chose the rolling highlands of what was then southern Hernando County as the site of his colony.
On February 15, 1882— the feast day of Saint Jovita — Dunne and his cousin Captain Hugh Dunne discovered a clear freshwater lake on the colony's western edge. They opened a Latin prayer book, read the day's saint, and christened it Lake Jovita. The town that would rise on its western shore took the name of Anthony of Padua.
Historic Photo
Judge Edmund F. Dunne, founder of San Antonio (c. 1880s)
A center of Catholic civilization in Florida — a place where faith, farm, and family could grow together on the highlands above the lake.
The Catholic Colony
Dunne's plan was unusually deliberate. He reserved a full section for the city — streets laid out in a European-style grid around a public square, lots set aside for a church, monastery, convent, orphanage, and school. Satellite villages radiated outward with names that read like a litany: St. Joseph to the north, San Felipe to the northeast, St. Thomas to the northwest, Villa Maria to the south, and Carmel further south, lined with lime and castor-bean trees.
The First Families
From 40 Settlers to 400 in Four Years
A handful of homesteaders — the Carters, Eilands, Howells, Jacksons, Mobleys, Osborns, Platts, Wells, and Wichers — were already on the land when Dunne arrived. Behind them came the Catholic colonists he had advertised for in the religious press up north: the McCabe, Gailmard, Hand, Carroll, Bischoff, Freese, O'Neal, Weaver, Liles, Quigley, Flannigan, and Corrigan families — most of them Irish-descended, many drawn by Dr. Joseph Corrigan, brother of New York Archbishop Michael Corrigan, who served as colony physician.
By summer of 1882 the colony numbered 40 settlers. By 1884 it had grown to 250; by 1886 it peaked at roughly 400. A second wave — Catholic Germans, led by the Barthle family beginning in 1883 — would soon make the area a center of strawberry farming and replace the English-language colony newspaper with the Florida Staats Zeitung by 1896.
Summer 1882
40
First settlers
By 1884
250
Catholic colonists
Peak 1886
400
Largely German immigrants
Faith on the Highlands
Three Cornerstones of Catholic Florida
St. Anthony Catholic School, established in 1884, is among Pasco County's oldest educational institutions. By 1922 a three-story red-brick schoolhouse served the parish — and it still does, more than a century later.
A Town's Milestones
A Walk Through 140 Years
1881
The Disston deal closes
Feb 15, 1882
Lake Jovita named, colony founded
Nov 27, 1882
Post office opens
1883–1884
Stores, school, and the first church
June 1887
Pasco County is born
Feb 13, 1888
Orange Belt Railway arrives
Aug 7, 1891
Incorporated as a city
1902
Saint Leo elevated to Abbey
1913
The St. Charles Hotel opens
1926–1931
The 'Lake Jovita' interlude
1967
The Rattlesnake Festival
Apr 1, 1972
The last passenger train
1998
Saint Leo Abbey added to National Register
2021
Mirada Lagoon opens — the country's largest
Mar 24, 2023
The new SR-52 opens to traffic
Customs & Color
A German Town in an Irish Colony
The 21st Century
A Town on the Move
For more than a century, San Antonio held quietly to its colony roots — a hilltop crossroads of orange groves, cattle pasture, and century-old institutions. That changed quickly. Two transformations now define the town's modern era: a new highway reshaping how Pasco County connects east-to-west, and the country's largest crystal-clear lagoon anchoring the largest residential community in the city's history.
A 15-acre beach in the highlands
The Mirada Lagoon offers white-sand entry, a swim-up bar, cabanas, paddleboards and kayaks, a floating obstacle course, water slides, and a kids' splash zone — open to residents and day-pass visitors alike. It put San Antonio on the map for a generation that may never have heard of Judge Dunne.
New SR-52
7 mi
Uradco Pl → US 301 (2023)
SR-52 widening
22 mi
Pasco County total
Mirada Lagoon
15 ac
Largest in U.S.
Mirada master plan
2,000 ac
On San Antonio's east side
Why it matters for San Antonio
For most of the 20th century, getting east from San Antonio meant a slow trip down a two-lane SR-52 through downtown — the route that nearly cost the town its name in the 1920s. The new alignment puts US 301, Dade City, and the I-75 corridor minutes away, while the SR-52 widening west toward the Suncoast Parkway connects the town to Tampa Bay without ever leaving a four- or six-lane highway.
That access — combined with Mirada and a wave of new single-family neighborhoods — is fueling the largest population growth the area has seen since the German Catholic immigration wave of the 1880s. The 1.36-square-mile city limits remain modest, but the broader San Antonio postal area is changing fast.
San Antonio Today
A Small Town with Big Roots
Population (2020)
1,297
U.S. Census
Land Area
1.36 sq mi
Compact, walkable
Median Age
41.3
Years
Elevation
183 ft
Among Florida's highest
Geography & Climate
San Antonio sits at 28°20′23″N 82°16′43″W in eastern Pasco County, part of the broader Tampa Bay metropolitan area. The land rolls between 110 and 183 feet in elevation — unusually high for Florida — overlooking Lake Jovitaon the city's eastern edge. The climate is humid subtropical: hot, wet summers and short, mild winters.
The 2020 Census recorded 1,297 residents, with a mix of 76.6% non-Hispanic White, 14.3% Hispanic or Latino, 2.5% Black or African American, and 1.3% Asian. About 21% of residents are under 18 and 18% are 65 or older.
City Government
A Mayor & Four-Person Commission
San Antonio operates under a mayor–commission form of government. The mayor and four city commissioners are elected by residents and meet publicly to set policy, adopt the budget, and manage the city's day-to-day services.
Mayor
John T. Vogel II
Chief Elected Official
Mayor Pro Tem
Caitlin Bolender
City Commissioner
Commissioner
Blaze Drinkwine
Commissioner
Randy Huckabee
Commissioner
Sasha Madden
City Hall sits on Main Street in the heart of the original 1882 town grid. Commission meetings are open to the public.
On the Map
Where San Antonio Sits
San Antonio, Florida — eastern Pasco County, west of Lake Jovita.
Walk the History
Five Places to See It for Yourself
St. Anthony of Padua Church
The 1911 stone church on the original 1883 site — the colony's spiritual anchor.
Saint Leo Abbey
National Register Historic District. The Church of the Holy Cross, dedicated 1948, anchors the campus.
Holy Name Monastery
Home to the Benedictine Sisters of Florida since 1889 and the original Holy Name Academy.
Lake Jovita
The freshwater lake Dunne named on Feb 15, 1882. Ringed by some of Florida's highest terrain.
Historic Downtown
The original European-style grid still survives — including the 1913 St. Charles Inn.
Saint Leo University
Born from the abbey's 1889 academy, now a four-year Catholic university serving thousands.
Mirada Lagoon
The country's largest crystal-clear lagoon — 15 acres of swim, slide, and paddle on the city's east side.