Captain Jack Phillips

Two streams frame Phillips's last ride. Seco Creek rises five miles north of Sentry Mountain in southwestern Bandera County and runs southeast for sixty-six miles to Hondo Creek in Frio County. Alonso De Leon, governor of Coahuila, named it for the Spanish word for dry when his expedition crossed it in 1689. The Sabinal River, which runs through Sabinal Canyon, rises in springs seven miles north of Vanderpool, sinks underground in places and runs sixty miles to the Frio. The Spanish called it Arroyo de la Soledad, the Stream of Solitude.

What the plaque says

Captain Jack Phillips A Bandera County Deputy Sheriff, Capt. Jack Phillips, set out alone on Dec. 29, 1876, on an official visit to Sabinal Canyon. Indians attacked him at Seco Canyon Pass, 22 miles southwest of Bandera. Phillips raced for the nearest settlement. When his horse was shot from under him, he ran for half a mile before being killed. A mail carrier and a couple on their way to the county seat to be married found his body later that day. Ironically, the Indians had been trailed for many miles by Texas Rangers who had turned back in exhaustion just before Phillips was waylaid. (1970, 1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Times Museum — steps away
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Treue der Union Monument — 19 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Schreiner Mansion — 22 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.

More markers nearby

• Old Texas Ranger Trail — steps away
• Mormon Settlers in Bandera County — steps away
• Camp Montel, C.S.A. — steps away
• Great Western Cattle Trail — steps away