El Capote Ranch

Michael Erskine came to the Capote Hills by way of a Comanche raid. Born in present West Virginia in 1794, he farmed in Alabama and Mississippi before moving to Texas in 1839 and settling on Arenosa Creek near present Port Lavaca, where during the Linnville Raid he defended his homestead against a Comanche scouting party. When Guadalupe County was organized he was elected chief justice. His 1854 cattle drive to California, guarded by an escort under James H. Callahan, survives in a detailed diary published in 1979. After failed mining ventures he returned to the ranch in 1859.

What the plaque says

El Capote Ranch The founder of El Capote Ranch was Jose De La Baume (1731-1834), a French army officer who came to North America with the Marquis De Lafayette and fought in the American Revolution. He later joined the Spanish Army and for his services received title in 1806 to 27,000 acres of Texas land - the original El Capote Ranch. De La Baume's grant was reaffirmed after Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821. Virginia-born Michael Erskine (1794-1862) acquired the property in 1840. He raised cattle here and drove his herds to California and New Orleans. Since the San Antonio to Gonzales Road forded the Guadalupe River on El Capote land, many travelers passed this way. The Erskine family hosted several eminent visitors, including William Bollaert (1840), Ferdinand Roemer (1845-1847), and Frederick Law Olmstead (1857). After the Erskine family sold the ranch in the 1870s, part of the land was deeded to Edith Kermit Carow, the second wife of Theodore Roosevelt. During the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt rode an El Capote horse, "Seguin", at the Battle of San Juan Hill (1898). The ranch was acquired in 1897 by Judge Leroy Gilbert Denman (1855-1916), a Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, and is owned by his descendants. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 26 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Gruene Historic District — 27 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.

More markers nearby

• Wilson Potteries — 3.6 mi
• William B. Fleming — 3.7 mi
• Leesville School — 6.6 mi
• Gonzales-San Antonio Road — 8.3 mi