Mision de las Cabras ("Mission of the Goats")
Floresville, Wilson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A fortified visita of Mission Espada, founded 1731 in San Antonio. Situated near Paso de las Mujeres ("Crossing of the Women"), an important ford on the San Antonio River, known to most parties obliged to travel between Mexico and San Antonio. Meadowland along the river and near the crossing was used to pasture cattle owned by Mission Espada. Indians under Espada's protection were kept here to herd the cattle. For the care of souls of the herdsmen, a chapel was built. The 1895 guide, "San Antonio at a Glance," described the Old Cabras site as a 2-acre, diamond-shaped lot with bastions at each end. After secularization of the missions in 1794, lands here were owned by one of the descendants of Spain's colonists from the Canary Islands, Ignacio Calvillo. In turn, the Cabras site was inherited by Calvillo's flamboyant daughter, Dona Maria Del Carmen (born in 1765). Noted for her independent spirit, she forsook her husband, Gavino Delgado, and personally managed the ranch, her long black hair flying in the wind as she rode a great white horse. She kept down Indian troubles by paying tribute in beef. In her time and for a century afterward Old Mission Cabras remained in use for rites of the church. (1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A fortified outpost of San Antonio's Mission Espada, the Mission of the Goats guarded ranchlands along the San Antonio River near a well-known river crossing. Founded in the 1730s era of Spanish missions, it sheltered Indian herdsmen who tended mission cattle, and a chapel was built for their spiritual care. After the missions were secularized in 1794, the land passed to Canary Islander descendants, including the spirited Dona Maria Del Carmen Calvillo, who managed the ranch herself and kept the peace by paying tribute in beef.
Why it matters
Sites like Las Cabras reveal the ranching backbone of Spanish colonial Texas and the remarkable women who ran its frontier estates.
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Related people
- · Dona Maria Del Carmen Calvillo
- · Ignacio Calvillo
Related events
- · Secularization of the Texas missions (1794)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Old Town: Lodi
Floresville, TX
By 1720 this land along the river was known as the country of the Cayopines, a Coahuiltecan people, and it became vital to the San Antonio missions, whose herds grazed here tended by herdsmen in adobe huts. Apache raids after 1731 drove those herdsmen to shelter at Mission Cabras, and the ground passed through Spanish ranchos and Canary Islander families before Anglo settler Stephen T. Cook opened a store in 1858 and named the place Lodi. Chosen county seat in 1867, Lodi lost that honor to Floresville in 1872 and reverted to ranching.
Flores Rancho
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This land began as ranch country for Mission Espada and Rancho de las Cabras, granted by the Spanish crown and once known as Chayopines for the Native people who lived there. By 1756 Juan José Flores kept an adobe house at a river crossing where travelers camped overnight, and that hacienda — encased within a brick house built around it in 1844 — is thought to be the oldest home in Wilson County. Nearby lie the stone foundations of an early-1800s chapel and its campo santo, and the rancho passed through three generations of the Flores family.
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