Nine Miles West is the Enchanted Rock

Jack Hays was twenty-four at the time of the fight. Born in Wilson County, Tennessee, in 1817, he surveyed land in Mississippi, studied at Davidson Academy and reached Texas in 1836 in time to help bury the dead of Goliad. He rangered under Deaf Smith, then worked as a deputy surveyor in the Bexar District, guarding survey parties as he learned Indian ways of war. He stood five feet nine, fair and mild-mannered, unlike later images of rangers. After the Mexican War he went to California, served as sheriff of San Francisco County and helped found Oakland.

What the plaque says

Nine Miles West is the Enchanted Rock From its summit, in the fall of 1841, Captain John C. Hays, while surrounded by Comanche Indians who cut him off from his ranging company, repulsed the whole band and inflicted upon them such heavy losses that they fled. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 7.5 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 14 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 21 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 21 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.

More markers nearby

• Oxford Cemetery — 4.2 mi
• Enchanted Rock — 7.6 mi
• Six Mile School — 9.5 mi
• Six Mile Cemetery — 9.7 mi