Early Native American inhabitants of the area included Tonkawa, Caddo, Lipan Apache, and Comanche.

[3] In 1732, Governor of Spanish Texas, Juan Antonio Bustillo y Ceballos, arrived on the feast day of sixth-century monk St. Sabbas, and named the river Río de San Sabá de las Nueces.

[4] In 1788, José Mares led an expedition from San Antonio to Santa Fe.

The David Matsler family moved from Burnet County to Cherokee Creek.

[3] In 1874, Edmund E. Risen devoted his work to improving local nuts, in particular the pecan.

Mob killings in Texas in the years after the war were often racially motivated crimes committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan against suspected slave rebels and white abolitionists.

[11] Most of the people killed by vigilante mobs in the five years after the war were "suspected slave rebels and white abolitionists".

In 1885, for the state of Texas, "...an estimated 22 mobs lynched 43 people, including 19 blacks and 24 whites, one of whom was female".

[11] "The San Saba County lynchers, the deadliest of the lot, claimed some 25 victims between 1880 and 1896.

[13] West Texas Normal and Business College was organized by Francis Marion Behrns in 1885.

[14][15] The parallel-wire suspension Beveridge Bridge was built across the San Saba River in 1896 by Flinn, Moyer Bridge Co.[16] In 1911, the Lometa-Eden branch of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway was built through San Saba County.

Relocated several miles upstream in 1946, the Boy Scouts continue to use Camp Billy Gibbons to this day.

San Saba County is home to the only suspension bridge open to traffic in the state; the Regency Bridge spanning the Colorado River, located off FM 500 in the northern part of the county, was built in 1939.

Actor Tommy Lee Jones was born in San Saba and owns a ranch outside of town.

Aaron Behrens, front man for Austin-based music group Ghostland Observatory.