Mision de las Cabras ("Mission of the Goats")

Missionaries and Indians raised livestock at this outpost of Mission Espada from 1731 until secularization in 1794. Its fortifications and chapel left only a few foundations by the 1980s. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department bought the property from private owners in 1976 and 1977 for about $86,000 and ran it as Rancho de las Cabras State Historic Site. In 1995 the National Park Service acquired it, and the ranch became part of San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, which as of the 2010s offered guided tours of the site periodically through the year.

What the plaque says

Mision de las Cabras ("Mission of the Goats") A fortified visita of Mission Espada, founded 1731 in San Antonio. Situated near Paso de las Mujeres ("Crossing of the Women"), an important ford on the San Antonio River, known to most parties obliged to travel between Mexico and San Antonio. Meadowland along the river and near the crossing was used to pasture cattle owned by Mission Espada. Indians under Espada's protection were kept here to herd the cattle. For the care of souls of the herdsmen, a chapel was built. The 1895 guide, "San Antonio at a Glance," described the Old Cabras site as a 2-acre, diamond-shaped lot with bastions at each end. After secularization of the missions in 1794, lands here were owned by one of the descendants of Spain's colonists from the Canary Islands, Ignacio Calvillo. In turn, the Cabras site was inherited by Calvillo's flamboyant daughter, Dona Maria Del Carmen (born in 1765). Noted for her independent spirit, she forsook her husband, Gavino Delgado, and personally managed the ranch, her long black hair flying in the wind as she rode a great white horse. She kept down Indian troubles by paying tribute in beef. In her time and for a century afterward Old Mission Cabras remained in use for rites of the church. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 22 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Mission San Juan — 23 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.
• San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 25 mi
  Four working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
• Mission Concepción — 27 mi
  A stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.

More markers nearby

• Wilson County — 2.0 mi
• James Charles Wilson — 2.0 mi
• The Flores de Abrego Family and Floresville — 2.0 mi
• Captain Will Wright — 2.0 mi