Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in San Antonio, FL

San Antonio was settled on February 15, 1882 as the center of a Roman Catholic colony founded by Judge Edmund F. Dunne, a former chief justice of the Arizona Territory who took 100,000 acres as his commission in the Disston Land Purchase.

Dunne named the town San Antonio de Padua after Saint Anthony of Padua, and named the crystal-clear lake beside it Lake Jovita, because he discovered it on the feast day of Saint Jovita.

In its early years, Dunne permitted only practicing Roman Catholics to settle in the colony, and German immigrants came to make up about half the city's population by the mid-1880s.

San Antonio was officially incorporated as a town on August 7, 1891, when only 36 people voted in the incorporation election.

In 1926 the city officially renamed itself the City of Lake Jovita to cash in on the Florida land boom, then changed its name back to San Antonio in 1931.

San Antonio - nicknamed 'San Ann' by locals - carries the motto 'Gem of the Highlands' for its rolling hills, which rise to about 183 feet overlooking Lake Jovita, unusually high ground for Florida.

Saint Anthony Catholic School, established in 1884, is the oldest school of any kind in Pasco County - it actually predates Pasco County itself, which was not created until 1887.

In 1889 the Benedictine monks established the monastery of St. Leo on Dunne's former homestead next door, the origin of today's Saint Leo University in the neighboring town of St. Leo.

San Antonio had a population of just 1,297 at the 2020 census, living in 518 households, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

San Antonio's 2000 census count was so disputed by city officials - who pointed to 336 residential water customers who never got census forms - that the controversy made the front page of The New York Times.