Goliad Road

San Antonio, TX

Fertile and well-watered, the Salado Valley was a favored dwelling place of South Texas Indian peoples long before Spanish explorers named Salado Creek in 1709 and Canary Island colonists made it a town boundary of San Antonio in 1731. It witnessed Santa Anna's march in 1836 and, in 1842, both the victorious "second battle of the Salado" and the tragic Dawson Massacre. Crossed by the great roads to Goliad, Gonzales, and Nacogdoches, the valley later became home to Fort Sam Houston in 1876 and Brooks Field in 1917.

San Antonio, TX

In late October 1835, as the Texas Revolution ignited, Stephen F. Austin camped here while gathering volunteers for the campaign against the Mexican garrison at San Antonio. Soon after Austin left to serve as commissioner to the United States, Texan forces under Ben Milam and Frank W. Johnson stormed the town, capturing it on December 10, 1835. This ground marks a pivotal staging point in the fight that would lead toward Texas independence.

San Antonio, TX

Edward Miles arrived in Texas in 1829, when the region was still a far northern frontier of Mexico, and threw in with the Anglo colonists who would soon fight for independence. He was present at Anahuac and at San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 battle that won the Republic of Texas, then went on to serve in the frontier Indian conflicts, the Mexican-American War, and the Civil War. A Natchez-born settler who became prominent in civic life, his long career spans nearly every armed struggle that shaped nineteenth-century Texas.

San Antonio, TX

Born in New Hampshire in 1811, Charles Frederick King came to Texas and served in the Texas Army in 1836, the year of the revolution that won independence from Mexico. He later served two terms as mayor of San Antonio, in 1847–1849 and again in 1852–1853, guiding the frontier town through its early years as part of the new state of Texas. He died in San Antonio in 1869.