Benjamin Beason's Crossing of the Colorado River
Columbus, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of the camp, March 19,-26, 1836, of the Texas Army under General Sam Houston, who directed the retreat from Gonzales to the San Jacinto.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For a week in March 1836, this Colorado River crossing was the campsite of the Texas Army under General Sam Houston during the anxious retreat that followed the fall of the Alamo. Houston paused here before continuing the withdrawal from Gonzales that would end in triumph at San Jacinto. The marker fixes one waypoint in that fateful spring march.
Why it matters
The camp is a landmark of the Runaway Scrape, the strategic retreat that preserved Houston's army for the battle that won Texas independence.
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Related people
- · Sam Houston
Related events
- · Texas Revolution
- · Runaway Scrape
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Beason's (Beeson's) Crossing
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Benjamin Beason, one of Stephen F. Austin's original 300 colonists, settled by a busy Colorado River crossing in 1822 and built an inn, gristmill, sawmill, gin, and ferry that grew into a small settlement. In the spring of 1836 the crossing became a pivot of the Texas Revolution: Sam Houston camped his army on the east bank as a Mexican force approached from the west. Houston abruptly withdrew toward the Brazos, and his troops burned the settlement to the ground just before the enemy arrived.
Townsend-Koliba House
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The Rangers of Austin's Colony
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By 1822 Stephen F. Austin had drawn some 150 families to his colony on the Colorado and Brazos rivers, where fear of Indian raids was constant. After the Mexican governor Trespalacios organized local defense, colonists in 1823 raised a small company under Moses Morrison, and Austin pledged ten more men at his own expense to serve as "Rangers." Though the Texas Rangers were not formally organized until 1835, these earliest ranging companies became the model for the force that followed.
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Columbus traces its roots to 1823, when Stephen F. Austin eyed the site — shown on his 1835 map as Montezuma — for his colony's capital. The provisional government created the municipality of Colorado in January 1836 and ordered the town laid out as its seat; that spring the county was born and the town soon incorporated. As a railroad terminal from 1869 to 1873 it thrived as a trading hub, and its marker honors generations of pioneers, defenders of Gonzales, San Jacinto veterans, Confederate officers, and citizens of distinction who called the county home.