Photo - Interior Details at The re-Created Nuestra Senora del Espiritu Santo De Zuniga Mission, Near The Famous, oft-Captured Presidio La Bahia in Goliad, Texas

Founded in 1722, the mission was twice relocated and eventually thrived as what is often recognized as the first cattle ranch in Texas. The site in Goliad eventually deteriorated into abandoned ruins. In 1931, the city of Goliad and Goliad County transferred the site to the state, which agreed to preserve it as a historical park. During Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, federal public-works projects conducted archeological, historical, and architectural research at the mission site, and its buildings were then restored with local Civilian Conservation Corps labor under the supervision of the National Park Service and the University of Texas. Additional reconstruction occurred in the 1960s, and by 1987 the mission appeared as it did in 1749. | Credit line: The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.|Gift; The Lyda Hill Foundation; 2014; (DLC/PP-2014:054).|Forms part of: Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.