Arroyo de Juan Lorenzo

The Handbook of Texas says Diego Ortiz Parrilla's company wintered in San Antonio in 1756-57, amid a feud between two priests over the mission. They marched on April 5, 1757, and about 300 people reached the San Saba on April 17 but found no Apaches. After five days of searching the riverbanks, Ortiz Parrilla laid out his presidio on the north side, and the friars built quarters and a temporary church a league and a half downstream. In mid-June some 3,000 Apaches camped nearby on their way north but would not settle, and three missionaries soon withdrew.

What the plaque says

Name used by Spaniards of Presidio de San Saba (in existence from 1757 to 1770) for this stream now called Celery Creek. Stone to build Presidio was quarried from bluffs along the creek, and deep banks let hostile Indians approach undiscovered, to attack the Presidio, half a mile to the southwest. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Presidio de San Saba — 0.2 mi
  The ruins of the largest Spanish presidio in Texas, built in 1757 to guard a mission to the Lipan Apache, where the Comanche and their allies first turned back Spain's frontier.
• Fort McKavett State Historic Site — 20 mi
  The post Sherman called the prettiest in Texas, home to soldiers of all four Buffalo Soldier regiments and then to a town that lived in its buildings until 1973.

More markers nearby

• Mission Santa Cruz de San Saba — 0.4 mi
• Real Presidio de San Saba — 0.4 mi
• Paso de la Santa Cruz — 0.8 mi
• The Ditch — 0.9 mi