John M. Davenport

The Sabinal River, near which Davenport was killed, rises in fissure springs in what is now Lost Maples State Natural Area, north of Vanderpool, and runs sixty miles to its mouth on the Frio, ten miles south of the town of Sabinal. In several places it sinks underground and rises again downstream. Early Spanish maps marked a well-known Indian trail along its course as the Comanche Trail. A John and a James Davenport were among the first settlers who followed William Ware into the Sabinal Canyon in the 1850s.

What the plaque says

John M. Davenport (February 8, 1827 - October 28, 1859) Stock-raiser and captain of a company of volunteer Indian fighters. Killed near here by 30 Comanches. Inquest for him was first in area for Indian victim. Settlers and soldiers from Fort Inge trailed the band 200 miles. After battle, found Davenport's gun on one of the Indians. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Inge Historical Site — 21 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.
• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 21 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 21 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Garner State Park — 26 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.

More markers nearby

• Sabinal — steps away
• Sabinal Methodist Church — 0.5 mi
• First Baptist Church, Sabinal — 0.6 mi
• Site of Camp Sabinal — 1.4 mi