Pinta Trail Crossing of the Guadalupe River
Sisterdale, Kendall County, Texas
Marker Inscription
THE DISTINCTIVE CROSSING OF THE PINTA TRAIL AT THE GUADALUPE RIVER BECAME AN IMPORTANT LANDMARK OF THE HILL COUNTRY FRONTIER. IN OCTOBER 1839, A REPUBLIC OF TEXAS EXPEDITION GATHERED NEAR HERE TO SURVEY THE WESTERN BOUNDARY OF BASTROP COUNTY. BEXAR LAND DISTRICT CHIEF SURVEYOR WILLIAM LINDSEY WAS AMONG A GROUP OF ABOUT 120 SURVEYORS, TEXAS RANGERS, AND VOLUNTEERS LED BY COLONEL HENRY W. KARNES OUT OF SAN ANTONIO AND GALVESTON COUNTY SHERIFF WILLIAM F. WILSON.AFTER STACKING A PILE OF ROCKS EAST OF THE PINTA TRAIL ON THE NORTH BANK OF THE GUADALUPE RIVER TO MARK THEIR STARTING POINT, THE MEN SURVEYED A LINE FIFTY MILES LONG TO THE NORTHEAST THROUGH THE WILDERNESS. THEY REACHED THE COLORADO RIVER ON NOVEMBER 14. JOHN COFFEE (JACK) HAYS, RANGER AND SURVEYOR ON THIS EXPEDITION, RETURNED IN DECEMBER TO SURVEY LAND GRANTS TOTALING 49,676 ACRES, INCLUDING A 1,280-ACRE TRACT FOR SHERIFF WILSON SURROUNDING THE PINTA TRAIL CROSSING. HAYS USED LINDSEY’S ROCK PILE AS A SURVEY POINT, AND “PAINT ROAD” AND “PIENTAS TRAIL” APPEAR ON HIS FIELD NOTES. HAYS ALSO NAMED A NEARBY CREEK IN HONOR OF WILLIAM R. SISTY, WHO WAS KILLED ON THE EXPEDITION AND BECAME THE NAMESAKE OF SISTERDALE.JACK HAYS RETURNED TO THE AREA IN 1844 IN THE BATTLE OF WALKER’S CREEK, AN ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN TEXAS RANGERS AND COMANCHE. GERMAN IMMIGRANTS SETTLING FREDERICKSBURG IN THE 1840s ALSO UTILIZED THE RIVER CROSSING ON THEIR JOURNEY TO THEIR NEW HOME. NICOLAUS ZINK SETTLED ON WILSON’S 1,280-ACRE TRACT IN 1847, MAKING HIM THE FIRST RESIDENT OF SISTERDALE AND ALSO THE PIONEER SETTLER OF LATER-ORGANIZED BLANCO AND KENDALL COUNTIES. THE HISTORIC RIVER CROSSING NEAR HIS HOMESTEAD IS REMEMBERED FOR ITS ROLE IN MANY OF THE REGION’S MOST SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL EVENTS AND DEVELOPMENTS.(2019)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Where the old Pinta Trail forded the Guadalupe River, the Hill Country frontier found one of its key landmarks. In October 1839 a Republic of Texas expedition of surveyors, Texas Rangers, and volunteers gathered near here, stacked a pile of rocks on the north bank to mark their starting point, and ran a fifty-mile survey line northeast through the wilderness. The ranger and surveyor Jack Hays returned to plot land grants around the crossing, a nearby creek took the name of a man killed on the expedition — giving Sisterdale its namesake — and by 1847 German immigrants bound for Fredericksburg were using the same ford, with Nicolaus Zink settling as the area's first resident.
Why it matters
The crossing gathers into one spot the forces that opened the Texas Hill Country — surveying, ranger fighting with the Comanche, land grants, and German immigration — showing how a simple river ford could shape a whole region's history.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Coffee (Jack) Hays
- · William Lindsey
- · Nicolaus Zink
Related events
- · 1839 Republic of Texas survey expedition
- · Battle of Walker's Creek (1844)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Camino Real de San Saba (Camino Viejo) in Kendall County
Boerne, TX
From the 1700s, the Camino Real de San Saba ran northwest from San Antonio through Comanche- and Apache-dominated Hill Country to the Spanish Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas on the San Saba River, a route mapped by Joseph de Urrutia in 1767. Long used by Native peoples and later by Spanish entradas, the "old trail" became a path for German settlers arriving from the 1840s onward, its alignment recorded by surveyors like Jack Hays and John James. It passed just west of Boerne's Main Plaza before threading north through Spanish Pass toward the Guadalupe River.
Pinta Trail in Kendall County
Boerne, TX
The Pinta Trail was a natural Hill Country pathway used first by Native Americans and later by the Spanish, running some 180 miles from San Antonio to the 1750s presidio at Menard. In the 1780s pathfinder José Mares folded it into a shorter Santa Fe–San Antonio route, and in 1839 Jack Hays surveyed its Guadalupe River crossing as the "Paint Road." German Adelsverein colonists used the trail in the 1840s to reach their new Hill Country settlements, and it appears in the era's maps, surveys, and even landscape paintings.
The Pinta Trail
Fredericksburg, TX
Long before wagon wheels cut its ruts, the Pinta Trail began as a path worn by nomadic Plains peoples across the Texas Hill Country, linking San Antonio de Béxar with the San Sabá River country near present Menard. Spanish and Mexican expeditions borrowed its general course, and in 1845 German immigrant surveyors improved part of it into a wagon road. After the 1849 California gold rush, U.S. military companies pressed it into service scouting new routes west, until the railroads of the late 19th and early 20th centuries made the old trace obsolete.
Scenic Loop - Boerne Stage - Toutant-Beauregard Historic Corridor
Helotes, TX
This corridor of the Scenic Loop, Boerne Stage, and Toutant-Beauregard roads carries more than ten thousand years of history: burned-rock middens and stone tools mark Paleo-Indian life here, and Jumano, Coahuiltecan, later Lipan Apache and Comanche peoples held the land into the mid-1800s. Prussian settlers arrived at Leon Springs in 1851 near the Boerne Stage Road, which ran from San Antonio toward California; the Great Western Cattle Trail and, in the 1920s, the transcontinental Old Spanish Trail highway followed the same route. A 46-mile scenic loop laid out in the late 1920s survives in part today through Helotes, Grey Forest, and Leon Springs.