Captain Jack Phillips
Bandera, Bandera County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A Bandera County Deputy Sheriff, Capt. Jack Phillips, set out alone on Dec. 29, 1876, on an official visit to Sabinal Canyon. Indians attacked him at Seco Canyon Pass, 22 miles southwest of Bandera. Phillips raced for the nearest settlement. When his horse was shot from under him, he ran for half a mile before being killed. A mail carrier and a couple on their way to the county seat to be married found his body later that day. Ironically, the Indians had been trailed for many miles by Texas Rangers who had turned back in exhaustion just before Phillips was waylaid. (1970, 1975)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On December 29, 1876, Bandera County Deputy Sheriff Capt. Jack Phillips rode alone toward Sabinal Canyon and was ambushed by Indians at Seco Canyon Pass. After his horse was shot out from under him, he ran half a mile on foot before being killed; a passing couple bound for their own wedding found his body. Tragically, Texas Rangers had trailed the same raiders for miles but turned back exhausted just before the attack.
Why it matters
Phillips's death marks the violent, still-contested frontier of the 1870s Hill Country, where lawmen, settlers, and Native raiders clashed in the last years before the region was fully settled.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Jack Phillips
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Texas Ranger Trail
Bandera, TX
This winding hundred-mile road from San Antonio to Kerrville served through the 19th century as a strategic patrol route for the Texas Rangers guarding the frontier. Bandera sat midway along the trail near Bandera Pass, a notorious ambush spot, making the town a focal point for Ranger activity. The route's most famous clash came in 1841, when Captain 'Jack' Hays and forty Rangers were ambushed by a large Comanche force in the pass and fought a desperate, close-quarters battle.
Bandera Historic Town Center
Bandera, TX
The name Bandera traces to eighteenth-century clashes between the Spanish army and Lipan Apaches at the nearby pass, but the town itself began in the 1840s when Charles de Montel, John James, and John Hunter Herndon surveyed and purchased land along the Medina River. A Mormon colony arrived in 1854, followed by Polish immigrants whose hand-cut limestone buildings still stand, and settlers of many nations soon joined them. In 1856 the Texas Legislature made Bandera the seat of its new county.
Bandera County
Bandera, TX
The Bandera area was a strategic point on the Indian frontier, where Rangers and Comanches clashed in 1843 amid the contested borderlands of the young Republic. Settlement came quickly thereafter: Elder Lyman Wight established a Mormon colony in 1854, Polish immigrants arrived in 1855, and the county was created and organized out of Bexar in 1856. The seat of Bandera had been founded in 1853 by John James, Charles de Montel, and John Herndon.
Bandera Pass
Bandera, TX
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.