Early Explorers in Llano County
Llano, Llano County, Texas
Marker Inscription
By commission of the Governor of Spanish Texas, Bernardo de Miranda in 1756 examined Cerro del Almagre, a red ochre hill supposedly rich in silver. His party of 23 from San Antonio struck Honey Creek near here, then went to the junction of the Llano and Colorado rivers. Three pounds of ore from Cerro del Almagre assayed only ten ounces of silver to 100 pounds of ore. Plans for further explorations were therefore abandoned as such low yield; coupled with transport problems and Indian threats, made mining seem unattractive.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1756, under commission from the governor of Spanish Texas, Bernardo de Miranda led a party of 23 from San Antonio to examine Cerro del Almagre, a red-ochre hill rumored to be rich in silver. Reaching Honey Creek and the junction of the Llano and Colorado rivers, Miranda gathered ore that assayed at only ten ounces of silver per hundred pounds. That meager yield, combined with transport difficulties and the threat of Native raids, led Spain to abandon plans for further mining.
Why it matters
Miranda's expedition marks Spain's early, ultimately fruitless reach into the Texas Hill Country in search of mineral wealth — a reminder of how imperial dreams shaped, and often bypassed, the frontier.
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Related people
- · Bernardo de Miranda
Related events
- · Miranda expedition to Cerro del Almagre, 1756
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Llano City Cemetery
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Founded in 1856 as the seat of new Llano County, the town soon needed a burial ground, and by 1862 it held its first graves — a one-year-old child and a seventeen-year-old girl whose stones still stand. Trustees formalized the cemetery in the 1880s before deeding it to the city in 1907. Among those resting here is Frank Teich, the stonecutter remembered as the father of Texas's granite industry.
Smart-McCormick Home
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Bryce M. Smart built this home in 1855, when central Texas was still raw frontier and the great cattle drives were beginning to shape the land. A man of many trades, Smart ran a grist mill, a tannery, and a freight line, and family lore holds that his children rescued newborn calves abandoned along the nearby Chisholm Trail. Five generations later, McCormick descendants still keep the house.
Packsaddle Mountain
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On August 4, 1873, atop Packsaddle Mountain a few miles east of here, Captain J. R. Moss led a small party of settlers — among them his kinsmen and neighbors — against a band of Native fighters said to outnumber them three to one. The settlers prevailed in what the marker records as the last Indian battle in this region. The fight closed a long era of frontier conflict in the Texas Hill Country.
Antlers Hotel
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Where the Llano and Colorado rivers meet, the Austin and Northwestern Railroad built a bridge and depot in 1892 and, soon after, the Antlers Hotel — a two-story wooden resort that opened in 1901 to greet railroad passengers stepping off the train. Guests strolled to a cottonwood park with a pavilion, fished the adjoining lake, and took in river views from the porches. As automobiles eclipsed rail travel the hotel quieted, passing through several owners before being refurbished and reopened in 1996.