Ask a neighbor in San Antonio what there is to do on a Saturday and the answer usually stops at the town line. Coffee at A Cup of Organic, a lap around Lake Jovita, maybe dinner in Dade City. The list is short because the town is small. As of the 2020 census the population sat at 1,297, and the whole city fits inside a rolling ridge that rises from a low of 110 feet on the western edge of the city to as high as 183 feet on a hill overlooking Lake Jovita on the eastern edge of town. Small footprint, short list.
The list is short for the wrong reason. San Antonio was never designed to entertain itself alone. When Judge Edmund F. Dunne laid out his Catholic colony in 1882, he platted a cluster of connected settlements, not a single town. Treat the colony the way its founder did, and a resident's Saturday opens up considerably.
The colony was never one town
Dunne arrived on the shore of a lake he named for a Christian martyr on her feast day, and he laid out more than San Antonio in the years that followed. He first established the Catholic colony of San Antonio in 1882, and later added the surrounding villages of Saint Joseph, Saint Thomas, Villa Maria, Carmel, and San Felipe. Only the rural community of Saint Joseph survives today. St. Leo showed up a few years later, after the formation of two Benedictine communities in 1889, Holy Name Priory and Saint Leo Abbey, and on June 4th, 1891, St. Leo became a Town, making it the oldest incorporated municipality in Pasco County.
For a resident today, the useful part of that history is the geography. Four of the anchor points of a good weekend sit inside a four-mile ring:
| Anchor | Where it sits | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| San Antonio town square | The original 1882 plat | Coffee, pottery, Pancho's Villa |
| Saint Leo Abbey and the Grotto | South shore of Lake Jovita | Quiet, gardens, gift shop, daily Mass |
| The Abbey Course | Adjacent to Saint Leo University | Public golf, Abbey Tavern for lunch |
| Dade City / SR 52 corridor | Five miles east | BBQ, Pioneer Florida Museum, Kafe Kokopelli |
The town line between San Antonio and St. Leo is a surveyor's convenience. St. Leo's western limit is the eastern limit of San Antonio, and the two little towns enjoy being side by side in the Florida sun. A resident who plans a Saturday around the town limits is planning around a line the founder didn't draw.
Morning: the Abbey side of the hill
The rolling terrain that Dunne picked for the colony is the reason golf works here. The Abbey Course sits on that same ridge, and the Town of St. Leo lists it plainly: The Abbey Course is a traditional Florida golf course with hills and gently sloping terrain. Adjacent from the Abbey course lies Tom's Golf Shop. The course is open to the public, walk-ins welcome, and the pro shop shares a lot with a small tavern most residents underuse. Adjacent to the pro shop is the Abbey Tavern, popular with locals for lunch and dinner.
A morning on the Abbey side of the ridge does not have to involve a tee time. The Grotto at St. Leo is a five-minute drive from the San Antonio square, on the same campus as the Abbey, and its Pilgrim Gift Shop, operated by the St. Leo Abbey, is the largest of its kind in the central Florida area. It's the sort of stop that a resident tends to save for out-of-town family and then never bring them to. Better to know it as your own quiet errand: candles from the shop, a walk through the gardens, a look at the stained glass on the way out.
Lake Jovita is the second half of that same loop. The lake is a public draw for residents of both towns, with leisurely walks around the lake, picnicking, and enjoying the natural surroundings. The lake is also a popular spot for fishing, with abundant bass and catfish. Nothing about that description requires you to leave the four-mile ring.
Lunch: three of the town's oldest addresses
Residents already know Pancho's. What's easy to forget is how long it has been on the same street. The restaurant sits family owned and operated for 19 years. We are conveniently located at 32804 Penn Ave, San Antonio. Nineteen years is a run most Wesley Chapel storefronts can't claim, and Penn Avenue is the same street Dunne platted in the original town square.
For a change of order, drive east on SR 52 and stop at Redneck Station, which sits 100yr Old Florida Cracker house turned into a nice little BBQ joint. Ribs, Pulled Pork, collards, Smoked Mullet. It's all Good! A century-old cracker house serving smoked mullet is the sort of detail that the generic "things to do in Tampa Bay" post never surfaces, because the generic post never leaves I-275.
The third option is the least advertised of the three. Locals have long known that the Jiffy Food Store on 52 makes a real Cuban sandwich. As one longtime reviewer put it, "we stopped into the Jiffy to pick up some Cuban sandwiches. From the outside, the store doesn't look like much." The address does not have a website. The sandwich is still there.
The Rattlesnake Festival is the 3rd longest running festival in the Tampa Bay Area.
That claim, made by the festival's own organizers, is easy to underweight because most residents grew up assuming it was a small thing. It isn't small anymore, and it isn't in San Antonio anymore either.
The 50th festival is not in San Antonio (and hasn't been for a while)
The festival that carries the town's name has moved. After the 2017 festival, it appeared that the annual event would come to an end when the Rotary Club of San Antonio announced it would no longer hold the event. However the non-profit Thomas Promise Foundation from Zephyrhills stepped in to continue the festival. In order to allow the festival to grow, the venue for the annual event was moved to the Pasco County Fairgrounds in Dade City. The name stayed. The zip code did not.
October 2026 is the 50th. The Central Pasco Chamber lists the 50th Annual San Antonio Rattlesnake Festival & Run as a two-day event at the fairgrounds, with the Sunday run on October 18, 2026. The programming reads more like a Pasco county fair than a small-town street festival: live snake and reptile shows and wooden gopher tortoise races, a variety of entertainment and live music, handmade arts and crafts vendors, children's games and crafts, pony rides, farm animals, and an old time pioneer village. There will also be inflatable fun houses, a rock climbing wall, and new this year, mechanical bull rides.
Proceeds still route back to a real Pasco cause. The Thomas Promise Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, raises funds to feed less fortunate children who have breakfast and lunch provided in school, but do not have access to nutritional meals on the weekends. Confirming the need of the students through the schools' administration, the foundation packs bag lunches containing six meals for the weekend each week. Currently the foundation provides about 300,000 meals per year and all proceeds of the Rattlesnake Festival go toward providing meals. A festival that carries San Antonio's name, held in Dade City, funding weekend meals in Pasco schools, is the clearest illustration of the point: the colony works as one thing, not five.
Quieter detours worth the drive
The four-mile ring holds the anchors. A few outer stops earn a Saturday of their own for residents who have already done the Abbey and the lake:
- San Antonio Pottery, tucked at 11903 Curley Street, is one of the more unusual businesses in the city limits, a working studio where the San Antonio Pottery offers a hands-on experience with pottery making. We love the workshops where you can learn to craft your own pottery pieces. The studio is run by a local artist who provides insights into the techniques of pottery making and decoration.
- Pioneer Florida Museum & Village in Dade City, five miles east, is the closest thing east Pasco has to an outdoor history museum.
- Kumquat Growers during winter kumquat season, when the crop that Dade City runs a whole festival for actually shows up in the packing house.
- TreeHoppers Aerial Adventure Park for the residents whose kids have outgrown the pony rides at the Rattlesnake Festival.
- Kafe Kokopelli, in a 1916 red brick building in downtown Dade City, for the Saturday when you want breakfast in a room that isn't a chain.
- On Q Smokehouse Grill inside the town limits of St. Leo, for the residents who want ribs without driving to SR 52.
Skip the interstate. Everything on that list sits inside a fifteen-minute radius of the San Antonio water tower.
The point
The generic version of this post lists ten things and calls it a weekend. The version that fits a resident's actual Saturday starts from a different premise. The founder of this town spent a decade building a network of small settlements around a single lake, and the network is still here. The Abbey, the Grotto, the pottery studio on Curley, the tavern next to the pro shop, the cracker-house BBQ on 52, and the festival that carries the town's name from a fairgrounds five miles east are one thing, not six. Plan the day that way and San Ann stops feeling like a place with nothing to do.
If you'd like to talk about what living inside this specific stretch of east Pasco looks like over a longer horizon, or you're a neighbor who's curious what your home on this ridge might be worth, Carr Signature Premier Group is happy to help. Reach out to request a private consultation and home valuation whenever the timing is right.
