Cabeza Creek Crossing on the La Bahia-Bexar Road

The crossing itself is a gravel bar, a ford on the creek about five miles west of Goliad. It lies on Big Oak Ranch, which is private and not open to visitors, so the marker here on the farm road is as close as the public comes. The National Park Service counts the ford as a certified partner site of El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail, which Congress created on October 18, 2004, about 2,580 miles from the Rio Grande to Natchitoches, Louisiana. The trail's visitor center opened at Goliad State Park in 2018.

What the plaque says

Cabeza Creek Crossing on the La Bahia-Bexar Road The Cabeza Creek Crossing (1 mi. NW), a point on the San Antonio River tributary, is located on the La Bahía-Bexar road, a vital Texas transportation route. The crossing is on ranch property which belonged to Rafael Antonio Manchola, an alcalde of Goliad and state deputy of Coahuila y Tejas. The La Bahía-Bexar road, which was a segment of the Camino Real, connected Spanish territories to Mexico City. In 1749, the Presidio La Bahía and the Mission Espíritu Santo relocated nearby from the Guadalupe River area. The residents needed a trade route and made use of the road, charted by Capt. Manuel Ramírez de la Piscina in 1775 and mapped by Gov. Domingo Cabello y Robles in 1780. By mid-1830s, Stephen F. Austin had also mapped the route, as did French-Swiss naturalist Jean Louis Berlandier, who noted an abandoned ranch on the eastern approach to the crossing where Spanish artifacts dating to 1790 were later found. Through the years, the road and crossing were used by travelers, military personnel, and Spanish, Mexican and Anglo traders and ranchers. Later called the Goliad-San Antonio road and the San Antonio road, the route became a vital supply line between gulf ports and Bexar (San Antonio). During the 1840s, German immigrants traveled the road; some would settle in this county in communities such as Weesache, Schroeder and Ander, while others used the crossing and continued northwest. By the late 1800s, the road and crossing fell into disuse as railroads arrived and became a primary form of transportation. Today, the crossing and road are part of a national historic trail and continue to serve as a reminder of Goliad's rich history. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goliad State Park and Historic Site — 6.2 mi
  Mission Espíritu Santo on the San Antonio River, a mission ranch whose herds seeded Texas cattle country, rebuilt from ruin by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
• Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site — 6.4 mi
  A rebuilt stone house beside La Bahía marking where Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, the general of the Battle of Puebla and Cinco de Mayo, was born in 1829.
• Presidio La Bahía — 6.5 mi
  A Spanish fort on its third site since 1749, held in turn by filibusters, insurgents and Fannin's Fort Defiance, rebuilt in stone in the 1960s around a chapel that never fell.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 6.7 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Goliad County — 3.1 mi
• Site of Mission Nuestra Senora del Rosario — 3.1 mi
• Fannin Street United Methodist Church — 5.6 mi
• Founding Site of First Baptist Church of Goliad — 5.8 mi