Enchanted Rock

Hays became the prototype of the Texas Ranger officer. With John S. Ford, Ben McCulloch and Samuel H. Walker he set the ranger tradition of mounted men with revolvers, their own styles of dress and little military discipline. From 1840 through 1846, first as captain and then as major, sometimes with Mexican volunteers and allies such as the Lipan chief Flacco, his companies fought at Plum Creek, Cañón de Ugalde, Salado and Walker's Creek, usually outnumbered. In the Mexican War his First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, joined the attack on Monterrey in 1846.

What the plaque says

Enchanted Rock From its summit, in the fall of 1841, Captain John C. Hays, while surrounded by Comanche Indians who cut him off from his ranging company, repulsed the whole band and inflicted upon them such heavy losses that they fled. Marked by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 0.6 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 16 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 16 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.
• Fort Martin Scott — 17 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.

More markers nearby

• Crabapple School — 3.9 mi
• Site of Prairie Mountain School — 5.7 mi
• Nine Miles West is the Enchanted Rock — 7.6 mi
• Old Cherry Spring School (Das Alte Schulhaus) — 9.6 mi