Near Route of Alonso de Leon Expeditions

Alonso de Leon the younger was a salt man and frontiersman before he was an explorer. Born at Cadereyta in 1639 or 1640, he was sent to Spain at ten to prepare for a naval career, but was back in Nuevo Leon by 1660. In 1682 he won a fifteen-year concession to work the salt deposits along the Rio San Juan. That record made him the viceroy's choice to hunt for La Salle's French, and the 1686 march to this coast was the first of four. He became governor of Coahuila in 1687 and died there in March 1691.

What the plaque says

Near Route of Alonso de Leon Expeditions Spain's desire to colonize this area of the New World in the late 17th Century was spurred by the fear that French adventurer Rene La Salle, who had landed on the Texas coast in 1684, was claiming vast areas for its bitter rival, France. In 1685 Spain's Mexican Viceroy directed Alonso de Leon to lead expeditions against French encroachment and protect Spain's claim by initiating the colonization of Texas. De Leon's first expedition in 1686 followed the Rio San Juan to the mouth of the Rio Grande. In 1687 his second expedition crossed the Rio Grande near present-day Roma, made its way to the river's mouth, and proceeded up the coast to near Los Olmos Creek and Baffin Bay. On his third expedition in 1688 de Leon captured Frenchman Jean Henri near present-day Brackettville. Convinced that the French had settled in Texas, de Leon led a military expedition in 1689 that crossed the Guadalupe River near present-day Victoria before discovering and destroying what remained of La Salle's Fort St. Louis settlement in the Matagorda Bay area. De Leon led an expedition into Southeast Texas in 1690 that established the area's first Spanish mission, San Francisco de los Tejas, and eventually led to Spain's great enterprise of colonizing Texas. (1968, 1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 19 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.
• Stillman House Museum — 21 mi
  The 1850 Greek Revival house of Charles Stillman, who laid out Brownsville in 1848 beside the army's Fort Brown, and for a century the home of the Treviño family.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 22 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• Museum of South Texas History — 29 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.

More markers nearby

• The Spot Where "American Blood was Shed on American Soil" — steps away
• Rancho de Santa Maria — 3.3 mi
• Battle of La Bolsa — 5.4 mi
• El Horcon Tract and Rio Rico — 6.8 mi