Gonzales marks its 179th year during the Come & Take It celebration Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 1-3,2004.

There are events for the entire family all during the weekend, including a biergarten, food booths, arts and crafts, street dances, battle re-enactment, carnival, parade, family games and lots of exhibits.

The town became known as the "Birthplace of Texas Independence" when the first shot in the Texas revolution was fired here on Oct. 2, 1835. The cannon firing was scheduled to be recreated Thursday, Sept. 30, on Texas Heroes Square and again at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 2, during a special Masonic ceremony which will start the 2004 Come & Take It Parade at 10:30.

James Kerr and several hardy pioneers arrived in the Guadalupe River Valley in 1825, establishing a small settlement on the creek that bears Kerr's name. He was surveyor general and right-hand man to Empresario Green DeWitt, who had a contract with Mexico to bring 400 settlers to Texas.

Kerr was entrusted with laying out the four leagues of DeWitt's Colony, the capital of which was named Gonzales in honor of Don Rafael Gonzales, governor of Coahuila and Texas.

With Kerr came Erastus "Deaf" Smith, Gerron Hinds, John Wightman and Francis Berry, who built their cabins about a mile from present-day Gonzales. The settlement was difficult to defend and the Indian raids that followed resulted in the death of one of Kerr's group.

Fearing for their lives, the families pulled back to Old Station, near the mouth of the Lavaca River. When coaxed to return to the area, they settled near where the San Marcos River flowed into the Guadalupe. It was here that a work force led by Byrd Lockhart built a fort for protection against Indian attacks.

Citizens of Gonzales, known as "The Old Eighteen" refused to return their cannon to the Mexican Army, firing a shot on Oct. 2, 1835, after telling them to "Come & Take It." In 1836, "The Immortal Thirty-Two" rode from Gonzales to the Alamo to assist William B. Travis and his men, knowing that there was little chance of survival. After the fall of the Alamo, the few survivors came here, where the "Runaway Scrape" began with the burning of Gonzales by the Texas Army. Citizens of the town grabbed what they could salvage and followed the army east, trudging through the cold, wet weather, the worst the colonists had ever seen.

The entire Come & Take It festival celebrates the actions that led to the Texas Revolution. Events are held on the downtown squares among structures built in the 1800s.