Comanche Peak

The Penateka, whom Comanche sources call the Honey Eaters, were the southernmost Comanche band, ranging from the Edwards Plateau to the headwaters of the Central Texas rivers. Relations with Texans collapsed in 1840, when officials tried to arrest a peace delegation in San Antonio and thirty-five Comanches, including twelve chiefs, died in the Council House Fight. After the battle of Plum Creek and a Texan expedition up the Colorado, the Penateka withdrew beyond the Red River. By 1854 about 350 lived on a reservation on the Clear Fork of the Brazos.

What the plaque says

Comanche Peak At Austin's founding in 1839, Native American groups already living here included Apache, Waco (a branch of the Wichita) and Tonkawa. The dominant tribe was called Comanche; they called themselves Numunuu ("the people"). They controlled much of Central Texas since the mid 1700s, and their Comancheria homeland included much of what became Texas and the Southern Plains. Austin's early history is inseparable from the history of the Penateka Comanche, the southernmost band who ranged along the Colorado River watershed from its headwaters through the Hill Country and into Central Texas. Rising more than 500 feet above the historic river level, Comanche Peak was part of an intricate network for transportation, communication and resources. Trails from here connected to other trails and geographical features of importance to the Comanche: fords at Santa Monica Springs and Shoal Creek; the pass at Mount Bonnell, and springs such as Seiders, Barton, Manchaca and Hamilton Pool. Segments of these historic trails at the base of Comanche Peak align with local roads such as Comanche Trail and Old Burnet Road that connected Austin to Burnet's Hamilton Creek, a favored Comanche campsite. Peaks such as Comanche Peak were utilized by the Comanche for navigation, surveillance and signaling. The Comanche continued to travel their extensive trail network regionally and locally as Austin began to grow in population. Just south of the peak, a canyon named Defeat Hollow recalls a circa 1870 skirmish between about a dozen Comanche and Joel Arthur Harris, an early Hudson Bend settler. As the only peak in Travis County named for an American Indian group, Comanche Peak's location helps us better understand the Comanche geography of Travis County and their trail system into Austin along the Colorado River. (2021)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Bonnell — 8.3 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.
• Harry Ransom Center — 11 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
• Barton Springs Pool — 11 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 12 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.

More markers nearby

• Anderson's Mill — 2.1 mi
• Hudson Bend — 3.3 mi
• Jolly Cemetery — 6.0 mi
• Lohmans Crossing — 6.3 mi