San Luis de Las Amarillas Presidio once stood on the world stage as Spain’s most remote outpost against French expansion into Middle America. The piles of rock and partially rebuilt walls of the fort that mark the site one mile west of Menard don’t give a hint of the importance of this lonely border station nearly 250 years ago.
As a person drives the modern highway northwest from Mason, it is not hard to imagine the difficulty of making the six-day journey from San Antonio to what was the frontier of Spanish Texas in the 1700s. A jungle of mesquite trees, prickly pear cactuses, and junipers line the highways leading to the San Saba River.
Once in the river valley, the landscape turns into irrigated fields that resemble large lawns. Pecan orchards line the river like sentries in neat rows. The Spanish missionaries recognized the potential productivity of the fertile land long before permanent settlers began moving into the area.
Spain had established several missions and presidios north of San Antonio in an attempt to protect Texas from foreign encroachment, look for mineral wealth, and convert the natives to Christianity. None of the settlements were particularly successful.
In 1757, a group of missionaries and soldiers moved from San Xavier Mission near present-day San Marcos to the San Saba River. The Lipan Apaches had promised to settle at the new mission closer to their hunting grounds. Their real goal was to put the Spanish between them and the Comanches.
From the start, the missionaries had a bitter relationship with the garrison that was supposed to protect them. Hoping to avoid the mistreatment of the Indians by the soldiers, the priests built the Santa Cruz de San Saba mission four miles downstream from the fort. They failed to realize that it made them more vulnerable to attack.
Despite constant promises, few Apaches came to the mission. Plans for a second mission were never realized. The friars did build a stockade, living quarters, and a small church next to the irrigation canal they dug from the river to their fields.
Life in the fort was no easier. Supplies were always scarce and American Indians stole any livestock left outside the log walls. The garrison was supposed to have 100 men but rarely reached full strength.
On March 16, 1758, when 2,000 Comanches and their allies surrounded the mission and presidio, only 30 soldiers and 300 civilians found refuge behind the stockade. Downriver, the assailants came looking for their Apache enemies. By nightfall the mission was in flames, and two priests and six others were dead. In a daring late-night escape, 27 managed to return to the presidio.
The soldiers narrowly avoided an attack the next day by firing a cannon at the surrounding army. It was the Spaniards first confrontation with the Comanches riding Spanish horses and using French guns. It was a war for control of the buffalo hunting grounds that would continue for another hundred years.
Over the next 12 years, the fort was maintained as a deterrent to Indian raiding parties and thus protected San Antonio in a meager way. The timber fortifications were replaced by stone walls, and the fort served as a way station for Spanish expeditions looking for a route to New Mexico.
The legend of a silver mine in the area has never been substantiated, even though treasure seekers like James Bowie scratched their names in the stone of the old fort’s gate. When Anglo settlers began moving into the river valley they used the stones from the walls to build homes and fences. In 1936, the state of Texas partially rebuilt the walls.
The main gate, a round bastion, and the outline of the walls are all that remains of the fort that was once the largest outpost of Spanish military strength north of the Rio Grande. The ruins are a mile west of Menard off of U.S. 190 next to the city’s nine-hole golf course. The county takes minimal care of the site. Nothing is visible of the mission except the faint outline of the irrigation ditch designated by a historical marker on RR 2092 about three miles east of town.
762nd in a series. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of Day Trips 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
This article appears in January 20 • 2006.
