Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre Expedition

The expedition set out on April 5, 1709, from San Juan Bautista, the mission and presidio near present Guerrero, Coahuila, that became the gateway to Spanish Texas. A war council in Mexico City had urged contacts with Texas nations to keep them from French goods, and the friars hoped to renew their missions. Espinosa kept the diary and Olivares served as chaplain. The party admired the land and water at the future site of San Antonio. It learned that the old Tejas leader Bernardino remained unfriendly, and its report probably delayed new missions in East Texas.

What the plaque says

Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre Expedition Approximate Site Reached by the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre Expedition. A good will trip made in 1709, when Spain was uneasy about her 190-year-old claim to Texas. (She had closed east Texas missions, then had learned of a French trading visit to Texas, 1707.) Capt. Pedro de Aguirre and 14 soldiers escorted from a mission on the Rio Grande, Father Isidro De Espinosa and Father Antonio de San Beneventura Olivares. The Tejas were not in this vicinity as expected. Capt. Aguirre had no order to cross the Colorado River. So the padres sent the east Texas Indians an invitation to visit them on the Rio Grande, and turned back here. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Barton Springs Pool — 2.3 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.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 2.8 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Texas State Cemetery — 3.0 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• Texas State Capitol — 3.1 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Doyle Farm — 0.9 mi
• Texas Dental Association — 1.2 mi
• Texas School for the Deaf — 1.6 mi
• Broken Spoke — 1.7 mi