Old Stone Fort

Originally “La Casa Piedra,” this historical building is a reconstruction of a famed 18th century structure, used as a multi-purpose building in both the 18th and 19th centuries. With a second floor, the building was twenty feet tall and remained the tallest structure in Nacogdoches for nearly a century.

Over the years, the building has been used as Antonio Gil Ybarbo’s (a Spanish lieutenant governor and commander of the militia in Nacogdoches in the late 18th century) smuggler’s hide-away; a military headquarters for Ramon Musquiz’s operations against the filibusters; a jail for Philip Nolan’s men after he was killed; a barracks for Zebulon Pike’s soldiers on their return from Mexico; and a residence for Antonio Cardero y Bustamante while Colonel Simón de Herrera negotiated the Neutral Ground agreement with General James Wilkinson.

Manuel Maria de Salcedo, governor of Texas in 1810, occupied the house when he visited East Texas. Additionally, the Committees of Safety and Correspondence met there during the Texas Revolution, and the house served as a reception center for many Americans, including David Crockett. The building was turned into a courthouse in 1837, and housed the Republic’s first official court in East Texas with Judge Robert M. Williamson presiding.

In 1901, Charles Perkin bought it, and turned it into a saloon, but it quickly became an “eyesore and source of embarrassment to the town,” and the Perkins brothers dismantled it in 1902 and donated the materials to the Cum Concillo Club. In 1907, the Ladies’ Organization picked up the materials and constructed a building on Nacogdoches public school property, which was later moved to the campus of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College in 1936. SFASTC became Stephen F. Austin State University in 1969.