On This Site Stood the Only Home Owned in Texas by Stephen F. Austin

Austin's house is long gone, but the ground around it became public land in 1940, when the San Felipe de Austin Corporation and the San Felipe Park Association gave it to the state. Nothing of the original settlement survives; a town well, an early general store and the Austin statue mark it. On January 1, 2008, the historic site passed from Texas Parks and Wildlife to the Texas Historical Commission, and the 473-acre state park kept the rest: wooded Brazos bottom with deer, foxes and armadillos, six miles of hiking and biking trails, campsites and group lodging.

What the plaque says

On This Site Stood the Only Home Owned in Texas by Stephen F. Austin On this site stood the only home owned in Texas by Stephen F. Austin. It was burned, March 29, 1836, when San Felipe was set afire by Texans to prevent its falling into the hands of the advancing Mexican army under General Santa Anna.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 0.9 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 15 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Stafford Opera House — 27 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.

More markers nearby

• Near This Site Stood a Town Hall — 0.8 mi
• J. J. Josey General Store — 0.8 mi
• Stephen F. Austin — 0.8 mi
• Early Roads to San Felipe — 0.8 mi