Campsite Marking Start of San Jacinto Campaign

Houston came here to organize an army, but its first regiment already had a colonel. Edward Burleson, born in North Carolina in 1798, had led Missouri and Tennessee militia before reaching Texas in 1830. At Gonzales in October 1835 he was elected lieutenant colonel in Austin's army, and by December he commanded the volunteers at the capture of Bexar. After that army disbanded he raised a company and rode back to Gonzales in February 1836. By March 10, a day before Houston arrived, he had been elected colonel of the First Regiment.

What the plaque says

Campsite Marking Start of San Jacinto Campaign On March 11, 1836, Sam Houston, leader of Texas Revolutionary Forces, arrived here to organize the second volunteer army. On March 13, he heard of the massacre of Alamo defenders and that the Mexican army was advancing toward Gonzales. He ordered the town burned so that the enemy might find no food or shelter upon their arrival. He then marched east, establishing his next camp at "Sam Houston Oak" (10 miles east). After several weeks of maneuvering his forces into an advantageous position, he led them to victory at San Jacinto on April 21. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gonzales Memorial Museum — 0.8 mi
  A 1937 Centennial museum for the Immortal Thirty-two who died at the Alamo, holding the small iron cannon Gonzales calls its Come and Take It gun and the Handbook calls a second one.
• Palmetto State Park — 10 mi
  Dwarf palmettos, bogs and a spring-fed oxbow on the San Marcos River, with CCC stonework from the 1930s, a swamp an hour from Austin and San Antonio.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 18 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• St. Mary's Church of the Assumption (Praha) — 26 mi
  The mother parish of the Czech settlements around Flatonia, a stone-fronted church of 1895 whose ceiling Gottfried Flury turned into a turquoise garden, with an August 15 feast since 1855.

More markers nearby

• 1834 Homesite of Capt. and Mrs. Almaron Dickinson — steps away
• Indian Fort, Site of — steps away
• Gonzales Cannon Burial Site — steps away
• Plaza — 0.2 mi