Old Texas Ranger Trail
Bandera, Bandera County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This winding, 100-mile trail from San Antonio to Kerrville was, during the 19th century, a strategic patrol road traveled by Texas Rangers to protect the surrounding area from hostile Indian attacks. During uneasy pioneer days roads such as this, regularly scouted by Rangers, helped promote early white settlement by strengthening frontier defense. Because Bandera was located midway on the trail and because Bandera Pass, 10 miles north, frequently harbored Indian ambushers, the town became a focal point for Ranger activities along the road. Perhaps the best-known battle to occur on the old route happened in Bandera Pass in the spring of 1841. At that time a company of 40 Texas Rangers, under intrepid Indian fighter Capt. "Jack" Hays, was on a scouting mission in the Guadalupe Mountains. Halfway through the pass, they were suddenly attacked by several hundred wild Comanches who lay hidden in the brush and behind boulders in the narrow gorge. A bloody fight ensued, much of it hand-to-hand combat with Bowie knives; but after their chief was slain, the Indians withdrew and finally escaped. Thus the Rangers and this trail helped remove the Indian menace and open the frontier across Texas. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This winding hundred-mile road from San Antonio to Kerrville served through the 19th century as a strategic patrol route for the Texas Rangers guarding the frontier. Bandera sat midway along the trail near Bandera Pass, a notorious ambush spot, making the town a focal point for Ranger activity. The route's most famous clash came in 1841, when Captain 'Jack' Hays and forty Rangers were ambushed by a large Comanche force in the pass and fought a desperate, close-quarters battle.
Why it matters
The trail illustrates how frontier defense and violent conflict with Native peoples paved the way for Anglo settlement across the Texas Hill Country.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Coffee 'Jack' Hays
Related events
- · Battle of Bandera Pass
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Captain Jack Phillips
Bandera, TX
On December 29, 1876, Bandera County Deputy Sheriff Capt. Jack Phillips rode alone toward Sabinal Canyon and was ambushed by Indians at Seco Canyon Pass. After his horse was shot out from under him, he ran half a mile on foot before being killed; a passing couple bound for their own wedding found his body. Tragically, Texas Rangers had trailed the same raiders for miles but turned back exhausted just before the attack.
Bandera Historic Town Center
Bandera, TX
The name Bandera traces to eighteenth-century clashes between the Spanish army and Lipan Apaches at the nearby pass, but the town itself began in the 1840s when Charles de Montel, John James, and John Hunter Herndon surveyed and purchased land along the Medina River. A Mormon colony arrived in 1854, followed by Polish immigrants whose hand-cut limestone buildings still stand, and settlers of many nations soon joined them. In 1856 the Texas Legislature made Bandera the seat of its new county.
Bandera County
Bandera, TX
The Bandera area was a strategic point on the Indian frontier, where Rangers and Comanches clashed in 1843 amid the contested borderlands of the young Republic. Settlement came quickly thereafter: Elder Lyman Wight established a Mormon colony in 1854, Polish immigrants arrived in 1855, and the county was created and organized out of Bexar in 1856. The seat of Bandera had been founded in 1853 by John James, Charles de Montel, and John Herndon.
Bandera Pass
Bandera, TX
For thousands of years this narrow gap in the hills between the Guadalupe and Medina valleys funneled travelers through the Texas Hill Country. Comanche and Apache trails converged here, a Swiss botanist recorded native burial customs at the pass in 1828, and by the 1840s it saw patrols and clashes between Texas Rangers and Native peoples. Later it carried U.S. Army surveyors mapping routes to California, then cattle drives up the Western Trail, and finally a state highway.