Bosque River Crossing of the 1841 Texan Santa Fe Expedition

Here the Santa Fe expedition was still a Central Texas march. The Handbook of Texas says it left Kenney's Fort on Brushy Creek, twenty miles north of Austin, on June 19, 1841, and crossed the Brazos below Bee Mountain on July 8, two days after the Bosque. Trouble with the route began later: the column followed the Wichita River in early August, took it for the Red, and lost its Mexican guide on August 17. The Llano Estacado, the surrender and the march to Mexico City all lay ahead of the men who struggled down these banks.

What the plaque says

Bosque River Crossing of the 1841 Texan Santa Fe Expedition Sent by Republic of Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar to establish trade and expand Texas' legal boundaries, the members of the 1841 Texan Santa Fe Expedition met with a number of hardships endeavoring to carry out their mission. On July 6, 1841, the expedition crossed the Bosque River near this site with great difficulty due to the steep river banks. Finally reaching New Mexico in September after enduring Indian attacks and a lack of food and supplies, the travelers were captured by Mexican troops and marched to prison in Mexico City. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 7.7 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 11 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 11 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 12 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.

More markers nearby

• China Spring Tabernacle — 3.1 mi
• China Spring Cemetery — 3.1 mi
• Speegleville Baptist Church — 4.3 mi
• Bosqueville Cemetery — 6.4 mi