CADIZ, TEXAS. Cadiz is on Farm Road 799 near La Para Creek twelve miles west of Beeville in western Bee County. In the early 1870s the community was known as Lapara (perhaps from la parral, Spanish for "thicket" or "tangle of vines"). By the late 1870s R. C. Eeds had opened a store, and Amos Barker was minister of the Lapara Baptist Church. Area children attended school at the Turner and McCollom homes. When a post office was established in 1892, the name of the community was changed to Cadiz. In 1914 the population was reported at fifty, but by the early 1930s it had decreased to twenty-five. In the late 1930s the community had two churches, a store, a gin, a three-teacher school, and a service station. The post office was discontinued in 1942, and mail for the community was routed through Beeville. The population of Cadiz was reported at fifteen from the late 1950s through 2000. Community life centered on the Cadiz Baptist Church.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grace Bauer, Bee County Centennial, 1858-1958 (Bee County Centennial, 1958). Camp Ezell, Historical Story of Bee County, Texas (Beeville: Beeville Publishing, 1973).

Rebecca Leigh Kendall