Natural Bridge Caverns

Selma, TX

William Davenport, Virginia-born and Kentucky-raised, settled south of Cibolo Creek in 1851, and when his first wife died the next year he buried her near their home, founding this community graveyard. A rancher, militia captain, and Mason, he helped establish Selma's first school in 1859 and a combined schoolhouse-church-Masonic hall in 1872; his second wife's father was a War of 1812 veteran also buried here, and burials continued until 1934.

New Braunfels, TX

Spanish Franciscans founded this short-lived mission in 1757 to draw the Tonkawa, Mayeye, and allied peoples into Catholic mission life, relocating it from the failed San Xavier missions on the San Gabriel River. The effort collapsed almost immediately, and the mission was abandoned in 1758. Its brief existence reflects the strained final decades of Spain's mission system in central Texas.

New Braunfels, TX

Established in 1756 on the Guadalupe River near present New Braunfels, this short-lived Spanish mission was the last chapter of the troubled Mission San Francisco Xavier, which had been battered by attacks, disease, and a friar's murder at its earlier site. Moved here to gather its scattered Mayeye Indian converts — who had refused to enter the Alamo mission in San Antonio — it sheltered only a handful of Spanish families and a few dozen Indians. Escalating Comanche raids forced the church to withdraw its staff in 1758.

San Antonio, TX

In 1871, nine-year-old Jeff Davis Smith and his eleven-year-old brother Clint were seized by Lipan and Comanche raiders while herding sheep near their Kendall County home—a fate that befell many settler children on the Texas frontier. By tradition Jeff was bought by the Apache leader Geronimo and made to live among the tribe until Mexican bandits captured him around 1878 to claim a $1,000 reward for his return. He later married and settled in San Antonio, living until 1940.