About 70 years ago, Beulah Wilson and her husband, Jonah, set out to find a new place to call home outside San Antonio. They searched for seven years, looking for a safe area with good schools and friendly neighbors, before they found the perfect community: Sutherland Springs.

When they arrived, the area’s most promising days in south-central Texas had come and gone. The Great Depression had ended the wintertime flow of wealthy northern tourists who came to bathe in the sulfur springs on the Cibolo Creek. A 52-room luxury hotel had been deserted.

But Ms. Wilson saw something special in Sutherland Springs.

“Everybody knew everybody,” Ms. Wilson, 88, said on Sunday evening. “You didn’t keep your doors locked or your cars locked, unless you lived on the main street. We had no crime here.”

But everything in Sutherland Springs changed around 11:20 a.m. on Sunday, when a 26-year-old man wearing all black and a ballistic vest opened fire with a military-style rifle at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. The gunman, identified by law enforcement officials as Devin Patrick Kelley, killed 26 people and injured about 20 more.