The 2006 Texas Independence Tour, Austin to Port Aransas

So YCT (the political group Randy and I were both active in for several years) has an annual retreat in the summer, and in 2006 it was held down on the Texas coast, at Port Aransas. Port A is basically a tourist trap; not as popular with the college crowd as South Padre Island, which makes it much more tolerable, but just to give you an example - the daily population of Port Aransas is about 2000, and on the weekends it jumps as high as 5000. For retreat, we rent out a few condos for two nights sometime in the summer, and round up whoever wants to go (and is willing to drop about $100 for accommodations and a couple of meals). As far as states go, Texas is huge, as you all are probably aware of. It's a fourteen-hour trip from Amarillo to Port Aransas. So we don't get a big turnout to these coastal trips, which happen every couple of years (we also do retreat down somewhere on the Frio or Guadalupe Rivers, and in the Hill Country at Lake LBJ or Lake Buchanan)

In 2006, Randy and I had just started dating, and he was relinquishing his position as YCT state chairman the weekend of the retreat. We decided to make a whole vacation out of it. I met him in Austin on Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning we headed south along the Texas Independence Trail, to see the sights and spend some quality time together. We were dating long-distance and times like this were very important in our courtship.

Day One - Tuesday, July 25, 2006 - Dallas to Austin. I took a train down to Austin, my first train ride ever. The train station is in downtown Dallas, which is about a 25-35 minute drive south from where I live. The trip itself was great; there were relatively few people on the train, and it was quiet. The only snag was the three-hour wait in Fort Worth. The electrical switch just before the Ft. Worth station went down, and it took two hours for it to get fixed. Then we made the stop to pick up people, and then just as we were pulling out of the station, we got held up for an hour by freight traffic. Three hours of seeing I-30 out my window. UGH. So my train got into Austin at 11:30 Tuesday night.



Union Station, in Dallas. The building itself is about 75 years old, I think, which isn't very old, but it's a pretty cool building nonetheless.



The Dallas Morning News building. It's across the street from Union Station; this is a really cool part of Dallas, actually. The Sixth Floor Museum (which was the Dallas School Book Depository), where Kennedy was shot, is about two or three blocks away.



The Hyatt. This was the view from my window on the train, while we were in Dallas. I love this building, and it was just about the last bit of modern architecture I saw for the next six days.

Day Two - Wednesday, July 26 - Austin to Port Lavaca. We left fairly early in the morning, but late enough to avoid the bulk of rush hour traffic. Not that it mattered much; Randy opposes taking major freeways when you can take backroads (if you've got the time, that is). I'm all for it. That's how you get to see the best things, and meet the best people. So we drove down to Gonzales, and there started our Texas Independence tour.



Gonzales is noteworthy because it's where the first battle in the Texas Revolution took place, but it was also home to a great many Confederate soldiers. The first thing I found there was this plaque, donated to the women of the Confederacy. I've seen a lot of monuments and memorials to the Confederacy, but never to Confederate women. The inscription moved me - "Whose hearts bled, whose hands healed, whose pride was crucified, yet who were never conquered by the bitterness of war nor the devastation of Reconstruction."



The actual Confederate monument; behind it is the town's fire station, built in the 1920s, I believe, and still in use.



The Immortal 32 monument. Gonzales was the only town to answer Travis' call for help at the Alamo. Thirty-two Gonzales men marched to San Antonio and met their end there. This monument stands as a memorial to them, and also to the 18 men who died in the Battle of Gonzales a few months prior.



This is Randy reading the historical marker about Andrew Ponton, who was the "Alcalde of Gonzales" in 1835 when the Mexicans came for the cannon the town used for defense. More on that in a bit.



The Gonzales County courthouse. I've mentioned before that Randy's hobby is collecting photographs of the courthouses in Texas. There are 254 counties in the state, and Randy's got pictures of just over 120 courthouses so far. We got a total of ten over the weekend, and could have gotten eleven, but we decided against stopping in Beeville (Bee County) on the way home on Sunday. I got pictures of just a few of the prettier and older courthouses on the trip.



Me in the Gonzales County jail. The whole jail is a museum now. They have never updated it with air conditioning (or, to our knowledge, heating), so it's pretty true to it's original feel. It's a fairly big jail, too, and this portion of it was presumably where solitary prisoners were held, and also those bound for the gallows. The cells are smaller, more closed off. I'm standing at the outside door and behind me are the actual cells. Nearby is an iron plate confirming that these bars were made in Pittsburgh, PA in 1883.



Randy at the gallows in the Gonzales jail. The museum guide told us that this was all a recreation, but that the gallows really were housed in this portion of the jail from about 1915 onwards. Prior to that they had the hangings outside (there are quite a few courthouses in Texas that are built close to huge oak trees, which were specifically used for hanging; I got a picture of one in Goliad County).



The museum in Gonzales. This is the home of the "Come and Take It" cannon, and was built in the 1930s, so it's a bit of a piece of history in and of itself (it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004). There's an amphitheater behind it that is used mainly for sunrise Easter Sunday church services now.



Randy and me with the "Come and Take It" cannon. This cannon was given to the citizens of Gonzales by the Mexican government in the 1820s to defend against Indian attacks. Some years later, there was a lot of unrest and talk of revolution. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a horrible dictator and Texas chafed under his rule. In 1835, revolution began here in Gonzales. The Mexican government demanded the return of the cannon, and Andrew Ponton wrote a letter saying no, they weren't giving it back. The Mexican Army marched towards Gonzales, and the citizens buried the cannon in a peach orchard (there is a mechanic's shop standing in the spot today, and there's a marker showing where the cannon was buried). The Battle of Gonzales took place on October 2, 1835; the Texians (as they were called then) flew a flag the women had made that said "Come and Take It" and had a picture of a cannon on it. The Texians won that battle; the Mexicans didn't get the cannon, and it has been in Gonzales ever since (except for occasional tours around the state).

At this point, we were taken on a driving tour of the town by a man named Leon Netardus. This guy was pretty cool; he's well known to Texas historians because he knows so much about Gonzales, and he's the star of the Gonzales drama about Texas Independence (he plays Empresario Green DeWitt, whose land grant from the Mexican government formed this portion of Texas). Gonzales is an amazing historical gem; there are several historical mansions, most of which were built before 1900 (one or two as early as 1851).

Next stop....Shiner.




The Spoetzl brewery in Shiner, Texas, home of Shiner beers. We stopped to sample some beer (I'm a huge fan of Shiner Bock). Neither of us had ever had the Summer Stock, which is now called Kolsch, so that's what we had. Liked it so much that we bought a twenty-four pack at the town's only grocery store (Shiner is a very small town, about 2070 people). The brewery does offer tours, but only twice a day and we didn't really have time to stop and wait for the next one.



This is the Lavaca County courthouse in Hallettsville. We had lunch at the Novasad BBQ and Meat Market here, which is fairly well-known and has the best beef sausage either of us has ever had.

Then it was on to Goliad, a major place in Texas history.




The Goliad County courthouse. Not a great shot, really, but the courthouse is one of the oldest in Texas, built in 1894.



The hanging tree outside the courthouse in Goliad. There's even a plaque to mark it (I've seen other oak trees this size outside courthouses, but none that were marked). The story has it that this tree was used for both official and unofficial hangings. I want to note here that hanging is still the lawful punishment for horse theft in Texas (not that it's been done in probably a century...).




The plaque outside Mission Nuestra Senora del Espíritu Santo de Zuniga at the Goliad State Park. This mission is a replica of the original; the replica was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and the original was located here in 1749. A lot of the artifacts on-site are originals, dug up during excavations of the site during construction of the current building.




The Virgin Mary, above the front door of the church.




The pulpit inside the church. This church isn't used for mass; it's mostly filled with artifacts from the excavation and tools from the rebuilding. The mission was a major project that gave a lot of jobs to the area during the Great Depression, too, so there are a lot of displays dedicated to that.




Our Lady of Loreto Chapel at Presidio La Bahia. This is just up the road from Goliad State Park and is extremely significant to early Texas history. The current church building has been in use since 1779 and is currently operated by the Catholic Diocese of Victoria, Texas (the place was a fort for the Spanish in the 1700s, the Mexicans in the early 1800s, Texas during the Republic, and I believe it was used by the Confederacy as well). I was extremely interested to see this church; it appeals to the Catholic in me, and the historian.



One of the flags flown at the Presidio. This fort is important because it is where Colonel James Fannin and his men were stationed during the Texas Revolution, before they were slaughtered by General Urrea in 1836. Fannin called the place "Fort Defiance."



This bell hung at this mission 26 years before the American Declaration of Independence was signed (1776) (that church building no longer exists).



The altar inside the Presidio church. Mass is held here on Sundays at 5pm, and one day I'd like to go back for it. I've never taken an actual religious pilgrimage, but this was close. The church is amazing and old-fashioned (you can sort of see the prayer candles up front, which visitors are allowed to light), right down to the confessional in the back and a working belfry.



No word if this an original cannon, but this is the view from one of the cannon towers at the front of the Presidio.




View from one of the gun ports on the back wall of the Presidio. There is a road between the field and the wall, but I tried to make sure it wasn't in the shot. This field separates the Presidio from Fannin's grave.




This was as close as I would get for a picture (we did walk up to the monument to read the names and the dedication, though). This monument marks the place where Col. Fannin and his men were taken to and killed by Urrea. After their defeat in March 1836 (after the fall of the Alamo, which Fannin never reached), the wounded and surviving were taken back to Fort Defiance and held there for a week. On Palm Sunday, they were taken out to this field and murdered. Fannin, since he was the commanding officer, asked that he not be shot in the face, that his effects be returned to his family, and that he be given a Christian burial. He was shot in the face, the soldiers divided up his belongings, and he was left for the buzzards with the others. A few Texians did survive, playing dead or what have you, and escaped to the San Antonio River nearby. A few others, too wounded to try that, were rescued by a woman who came to be known as the Angel of Goliad. There is a monument to her nearby.

I don't think I can convey what this place means to me. It was a very solemn portion of our trip. The field near this monument is a quiet, eerie place, though the battle itself took places several miles from here.



The Fannin Monument at the battlefield, seven miles outside of Goliad. The state park is in terrible condition, but it does have a small display room with a historical timeline and plaque dedicated the man who donated this land to the Historical Commission. The monument is basically a miniature scale version of the San Jacinto monument (that one marks the place where Santa Anna was defeated by General Sam Houston, the battle that ended the Revolution and won Texas her independence from Mexico).



The Texas flag is the only one that flies at the Fannin battleground.


We ended the day in Victoria and then drove down to Port Lavaca to spend the night, and I have some pictures from that, but I'll include them in the next post (which will include Refugio, San Patricio, Corpus Christi/Nueces County/the USS Lexington, and Port Aransas).