By 1720 this community lay in an area known as the land of the Cayopines, a Coahuiltecan Indian tribe. The site was important to the Spanish missions of San Antonio because their herds were pastured here along the river, and adobe huts were built for the herdsmen. After Apache Indians began raiding the area in 1731, the herdsmen took refuge across the river within the stronger walls of Mission Cabras. The Pena brothers held Rancho San Eldifonzo del Chayopin here from 1756 to 1787, and a nephew applied for title when mission lands were secularized in 1794, but the award went to Simon and Juan Arocha. Their neighbors, descended from Canary Island colonists of 1731, included Jose Maria Flores and Erasmus Seguin. Stephen T. Cook settled here in 1858, opened a store, and became postmaster, and he may have named Lodi for a town in Mississippi, his old home state. Wilson County was organized in an election held on Feb. 13, 1860, and Samuel W. Barker, husband of local aristocrat Josefa Flores, became the new county's first sheriff. Improved roads were built here, and after the Civil War Wilson County voters designated Lodi the county seat on Dec. 8, 1867, an honor it lost to Floresville in 1872, after which the area reverted to ranching.