Mission Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe

The Mayeyes who asked for this mission were a Tonkawa people, probably the Meghey of the La Salle expedition's records. They lived inland north or northeast of Matagorda Bay and along the Brazos east of present Temple, and about 1748 they entered San Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas on the San Gabriel. When those missions failed, some entered Valero at San Antonio, where they were recorded into the 1760s. In the 1770s a group moved to the coast and joined the Cocos, a Karankawa people, and the Mayeyes were probably absorbed by Karankawan and Tonkawan groups.

What the plaque says

Mission Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Established by Franciscan missionaries in 1757 for the purpose of civilizing and Christianizing the Tonkawas, Mayeyes, and their associates. Formerly at Mission San Francisco Xavier on the San Gabriel River. Abandoned in 1758.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 2.4 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 — 3.6 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.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 11 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 18 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.

More markers nearby

• Site of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Mission - Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission — 1.3 mi
• New Braunfels Gemischter Chor Harmonie — 1.4 mi
• New Braunfels — 1.4 mi
• Landa Park — 1.4 mi