Zodiac, TX
After the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, the Quorum of the Twelve all returned to Nauvoo. When the Church removed to the Rocky Mountains, Lyman Wight went to Texas with about two-hundred followers, and settled a short distance south of the present site of Austin. Seeing Wight was permenently withdrawn from the main body of the Church he was disfellowshipped.
His sect of colonists, settled Zodiac, where Wight established an idiosyncratic form of communitarianism he called the "common stock principle," and became a mecca for Mormon dissenters, Zodiac later flooded which forced them to Hamilton Creek in Burnet County, where they established the Mormon Mill Colony finally settling in 1854 in Mountain Valley, at a site now covered by Medina Lake. Wight died in 1858 preparing to lead his followers back to Missouri. He was buried in the Mormon cemetery at Zodiac.
In 1901 the mill closed down, and one year later the flume and several surrounding buildings burned. Local farmers tore down the remaining mill buildings and used some of the materials for construction of a nearby barn. Finally in 1915 the remaining abandoned residences burned. In 1936 the state erected a historical marker at the mill site. The only traces of Mormon Mill left in the 1980s were a few building foundations and the Mormon cemetery.
