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Gonzales, the county seat of Gonzales County, is one of the oldest Anglo-American settlements in Texas, founded in 1825 as the capital of Green DeWitt's colony and named for Rafael Gonzales, a provisional governor of Coahuila y Tejas.

For a decade Gonzales was the westernmost Anglo settlement in Texas, sitting at the confluence of the Guadalupe and San Marcos rivers closest to San Antonio de Béxar.

Gonzales fired the first shot of the Texas Revolution: on October 2, 1835, settlers defied Mexican dragoons sent to seize their small cannon, flying a flag that challenged the soldiers to "Come and Take It" — earning Gonzales the nickname "the Lexington of Texas."

The Gonzales cannon story lives on today in the annual Come and Take It festival each October, and the little cannon itself is displayed at the Gonzales Memorial Museum.

Gonzales sent the only reinforcements ever to reach the Alamo: the 32 men of the Gonzales Ranging Company rode in during the siege and all died there on March 6, 1836.

Days after the Alamo fell, Sam Houston ordered Gonzales burned to the ground to deny it to the Mexican army, triggering the civilian flight known as the Runaway Scrape; the town was rebuilt on the same cross-shaped street plan surveyed in 1832.

Gonzales College, which opened in 1851 in the town's first permanent school building, was among the early colleges chartered in Texas, and the Gonzales Inquirer, founded in 1853, is one of the state's oldest newspapers.

Texas Highways notes that Gonzales holds the only state-designated Texas History Museum District in Texas, anchored by its 1936 memorial museum and Pioneer Village.

Gonzales counted 7,165 residents at the 2020 census, with about 2,926 households averaging 2.37 people each.