Comanche Village Massacre

John Henry Moore, who led the 1840 expedition, was one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, the Handbook of Texas says. Born in Tennessee in 1800, he settled on the upper Colorado River in 1821, and in 1828 he built Moore's Fort, a twin blockhouse, at the future La Grange. He commanded the Texans at the battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835, and is said to have designed the 'Come and Take It' banner. The Handbook places his October 1840 fight with the Comanches between the Concho and Colorado rivers. He died on December 2, 1880.

What the plaque says

In this vicinity on a bank of the Colorado October 21, 1840; A Comanche Indian village was completely destroyed and much stolen property recovered including 500 horses; 128 Indians were killed; 34 were captured; The expedition commanded by Colonel John Henry Moore; Consisted of 90 citizen volunteers; Mostly residents of Fayette County; Seventeen friendly Lipan Indians under Chiefs Castro and Flacu served as guides; No Texans were killed and but two wounded. (1936)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heart of West Texas Museum — 0.8 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 6.6 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.
• Scurry County Museum — 20 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• National WASP WWII Museum — 23 mi
  Hangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.

More markers nearby

• R.C. (Dick) Ware — 0.6 mi
• Buffalo Trails — 0.8 mi
• Texas & Pacific Railway — 1.0 mi
• Mitchell County — 1.0 mi