Bandera Pass
Bandera, Bandera County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The prominent feature known as Bandera Pass is a notable landmark in the topography and history of the region. The pass is a narrow natural cut through a chain of hills which run roughly east and west and divide the Guadalupe and Medina River Valleys. Archeological evidence indicates that the site is along an ancient path dating back thousands of years. The word “bandera” means “flag” in Spanish, and early accounts recall a 1730s battle between Spanish soldiers and Apache and the memory of a bandera which became the namesake of the pass, nearby creek and eventually the county and its seat of government. Early 1800s maps indicate “Puerta de la Bandera” at this site, also marking the terminus of a Comanche trail to East Texas. An Apache village north of the pass at Verde Creek is also included on early maps, and the pass was well-traveled by Comanche, Spaniards and many others. Swiss botanist Jean Louis Berlandier, on an 1828 expedition from Mexico, recorded that at the pass “here a Comanche warrior was buried, and since the natives often pass this way, every tribe that passes close enough to see the grave of one of their ancestors makes the customary offerings.” By the 1840s, the pass was the scene of frequent patrols and occasional clashes between Texas Rangers and Indian Tribes. The U.S. Army surveyed the pass and surrounding trails to map routes west to El Paso and on to California. Camp Verde and Camp Ives were established nearby in the 1850s, and after the Civil War the pass was used for cattle drives headed up the Western Trail. The path through the pass, well-worn on foot, on horseback, and by wagons and automobiles, became a state highway in the 1940s. The pass remains an important transportation corridor and a link to centuries of history and layer upon layer of cultural imprints.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For thousands of years this narrow gap in the hills between the Guadalupe and Medina valleys funneled travelers through the Texas Hill Country. Comanche and Apache trails converged here, a Swiss botanist recorded native burial customs at the pass in 1828, and by the 1840s it saw patrols and clashes between Texas Rangers and Native peoples. Later it carried U.S. Army surveyors mapping routes to California, then cattle drives up the Western Trail, and finally a state highway.
Why it matters
Bandera Pass is a rare place where the layered story of American movement — Indigenous, Spanish, frontier, and modern — is written into a single stretch of ground.
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Related people
- · Jean Louis Berlandier
Related events
- · 1730s Spanish-Apache battle at Bandera Pass
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Spanish Trail
Kerrville, TX
The Old Spanish Trail threaded through the Hill Country from San Antonio past Bandera Pass, Camp Verde, and Kerrville, a route used for centuries by Comanches and Lipan Apaches. In 1732 Spanish forces under Juan Antonio Bustillo y Cebalos fought the Apaches at Bandera Pass, and over following decades soldiers, missionaries, and adventurers followed the trail toward the San Sabá country and its rumored silver. By the 1850s Camp Verde and Camp Ives anchored military patrols along the same ancient path.
Camino Real de San Saba (Camino Viejo) in Kendall County
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From the 1700s, the Camino Real de San Saba ran northwest from San Antonio through Comanche- and Apache-dominated Hill Country to the Spanish Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas on the San Saba River, a route mapped by Joseph de Urrutia in 1767. Long used by Native peoples and later by Spanish entradas, the "old trail" became a path for German settlers arriving from the 1840s onward, its alignment recorded by surveyors like Jack Hays and John James. It passed just west of Boerne's Main Plaza before threading north through Spanish Pass toward the Guadalupe River.
Pinta Trail Crossing of the Guadalupe River
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Where the old Pinta Trail forded the Guadalupe River, the Hill Country frontier found one of its key landmarks. In October 1839 a Republic of Texas expedition of surveyors, Texas Rangers, and volunteers gathered near here, stacked a pile of rocks on the north bank to mark their starting point, and ran a fifty-mile survey line northeast through the wilderness. The ranger and surveyor Jack Hays returned to plot land grants around the crossing, a nearby creek took the name of a man killed on the expedition — giving Sisterdale its namesake — and by 1847 German immigrants bound for Fredericksburg were using the same ford, with Nicolaus Zink settling as the area's first resident.
Pinta Trail in Kendall County
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