Pinta Trail in Kendall County

The trail was probably part of the network the Jumanos used in the seventeenth century to trade among New Mexico, Central Texas, La Junta de los Rios and East Texas. After the Spanish founded Bexar in 1718, it became one of their routes north, and Apaches moving south into the Hill Country used it too. It led toward the mission and presidio at San Saba, and the Marques de Rubi took it home from his inspection of 1767. After the Spanish left San Saba, Comanches pushed the Apaches south, and the trail went back to being a native path.

What the plaque says

Pinta Trail in Kendall County The Pinta Trail (Camino Pinta) was a natural pathway through the Hill Country, utilized by Native Americans and later linking to Spanish settlements to the southeast. The path extended about 180 miles northwest from San Antonio to the 1750s Spanish presidio at Menard. In the 1780s, pathfinder José Mares incorporated the link into a shorter route between Santa Fe and San Antonio. Maps, surveys and contemporary accounts include many variations of Pinta, all said to derive from the Spanish word pintar (to paint). Pinto ponies or the Piedra Pinta Mountains on period maps are two possible explanations. In 1839, John (Jack) Coffee Hays surveyed the area where the Pinta Trail crosses the Guadalupe River, designating the route as Paint Road. It became a consistent map feature soon after Texas statehood. In the 1840s, the German Adelsverein utilized the trail for access to its new settlements near the Pedernales River. Naturalists Ferdinand Lindheimer and Ferdinand von Roemer referenced the Pinta Trail in their 1845-47 excursions. Nicolaus Zink settled along the path in 1847, becoming the first pioneer in the future colony of Sisterdale. The trail's use diminished when new routes were established. Landscape artist Hermann Lungkwitz documented the historic road in his painting Old Pinta Crossing on the Guadalupe (1857). The trail went through the center of Kendall County. East of Boerne, it crossed the southern boundary of George Wilkins Kendall's ranch west of Post Oak Creek. The selection of the Pinta Trail as an ancient pathway stood the test of time. By connecting reliable water sources, good terrain and emerging settlements, the trail was an important factor in the development of the Hill Country and Kendall County. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natural Bridge Caverns — 19 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.
• Treue der Union Monument — 20 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 24 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Frontier Times Museum — 26 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• Cascade Cavern — 2.4 mi
• Dr. Ferdinand Ludwig Von Herff — 4.0 mi
• Boerne Chapter No. 200, O.E.S. — 4.6 mi
• Kendall Masonic Lodge No. 897 — 4.6 mi