San Antonio

San Antonio is one of Florida's more unusual small towns: a Catholic colony founded in 1882 by Judge Edmund F. Dunne, who had been engaged to handle land affairs for a development company and was given control over a large tract for the purpose of establishing a Catholic settlement. Dunne laid out the town around a central park and town square, and the colony drew German Catholic immigrant families to the rolling hilltop country of what was then Hernando County and later became Pasco. The setting — high ground overlooking Lake Jovita — gave the town its enduring hilltop character.

The Benedictine presence shaped the area profoundly. In 1889 Dunne conveyed land to the Order of St. Benedict, and a small party of monks led by Father Charles Mohr arrived to establish a monastery and Catholic school and to found the neighboring town of St. Leo, named for Pope Saint Leo the Great. The same year, Benedictine sisters founded Holy Name Convent and Academy to teach the children of the German immigrant families; the convent later moved to a hill overlooking Lake Jovita. Saint Leo Abbey and what became Saint Leo University grew from these roots, and the religious institutions remain central to the area's identity today.

The modern chapter places this century-old town squarely in Pasco's growth corridor. San Antonio sits just off I-75 and State Road 52, minutes from the interstate, and the explosive Mirada master-plan — built around one of the nation's largest crystal lagoons — falls within the San Antonio ZIP (33576) along with other new-construction communities. The result is a striking contrast: a tiny, intact town square with its park, Catholic church, and post office on one side, and thousands of new homes rising on former ranchland nearby. The annual San Antonio Rattlesnake Festival, which began as a local project in 1967, remains a beloved community tradition.