El Capote Ranch

🏛️The era

Few patches of Texas ground have passed through as many hands and flags as El Capote. When Jose De La Baume received his grant in 1806, Texas was a thinly settled frontier province of New Spain. After Mexico won independence in 1821, the new nation confirmed his title, and by 1840 Texas was an independent republic.

The ranch sat on the Guadalupe River near present-day Seguin, along the road that linked San Antonio with Gonzales. In an age of horseback and wagon travel, river crossings were natural stopping places, and a ranch at a ford became a crossroads for travelers, traders, and curious visitors.

In the decades that followed, Texas cattle became famous. Ranchers drove herds great distances to reach markets, and the cattle business shaped the economy and the image of the state. By the 1890s, the frontier era was passing, but Texas horses and Texas men would still play a part in the nation's affairs, including the war with Spain in 1898.

👥People & events

The ranch's founder had an extraordinary life. Jose De La Baume was a French army officer who came to North America with the Marquis de Lafayette and fought in the American Revolution. He later served in the Spanish army, and in 1806 he was rewarded with 27,000 acres of Texas land. By the dates on the marker, he lived to the remarkable age of about 103.

In 1840, Virginia-born Michael Erskine took over the property. He raised cattle and drove herds as far as California and New Orleans, long and hard journeys in that era. Because the San Antonio to Gonzales road crossed the Guadalupe on his land, the Erskines welcomed a string of notable guests: the English traveler William Bollaert, the German scientist Ferdinand Roemer, and the landscape designer and writer Frederick Law Olmsted, whose account of his journey through Texas remains a well-known window on the state in the 1850s.

After the Erskines sold in the 1870s, part of the land was deeded to Edith Kermit Carow, the second wife of Theodore Roosevelt. According to the marker, Roosevelt rode an El Capote horse named Seguin at the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898. Roosevelt took more than one horse to Cuba, and accounts of the campaign have been told in several versions over the years, but this ranch's place in the story is a cherished part of its history.

In 1897, Judge Leroy Gilbert Denman, a Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, acquired the ranch. His descendants still own it, carrying the story of this land into its third century.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

El Capote connects Texas to the founding of the United States in an unexpected way. A veteran of the American Revolution, who came to fight alongside Lafayette, ended up as the founder of a Texas ranch under the Spanish crown. His life is a reminder of how international the revolution was, and how far its veterans scattered afterward.

The ranch's later history touches other national threads. The long cattle drives helped build the ranching economy and the legend of the American West. Visitors like Olmsted wrote about Texas for readers back East, shaping how the rest of the country imagined this frontier.

And the Roosevelt connection ties the ranch to the moment the United States stepped onto the world stage. The Rough Riders famously organized in San Antonio before sailing for Cuba, and the Spanish-American War made Roosevelt a national hero on his road to the White House. That a Texas ranch on the Guadalupe could be part of that story shows how local places carry national history.

🧭If you visit

The country around Seguin is rolling and green, cut by the Guadalupe River with its tall trees and limestone banks. As you take in the landscape, picture the old road from San Antonio to Gonzales and the travelers who stopped here to water their horses and swap stories.

El Capote is a family-owned ranch, so enjoy the marker and the scenery from public areas and respect private property. The setting itself is the reward: open land that has been worked as a ranch since the days of Spanish Texas.

This stop fits nicely into a drive through the Guadalupe valley, between San Antonio and the historic towns to the east. It is a great place to share a big story with young travelers: a Revolutionary War soldier, cattle drives to faraway markets, and a future president charging into history, all tied to one stretch of Texas land.