Post San Marcos

Hugh McLeod laid out the fort, and his life makes the post look small. A West Point graduate who resigned his commission to join the Texans, he became adjutant general of the Republic's army in 1837, fought Cherokees in 1839 and was one of two negotiators with the Comanches before the Council House Fight in 1840. In 1841 he commanded the military side of the Santa Fe Expedition, was captured and held at Perote prison. He died of pneumonia in Virginia in January 1862 as colonel of the First Texas Infantry and lies in the State Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Post San Marcos The Republic of texas Congress in Dec. 1838 called for military roads and forts from Red River to the Nueces. A road from Austin, joining El Camino Real near St. Mark's Springs, was designed for rapid communication between San Antonio and the Capital. Post San Marcos was to be constructed at the springs to safeguard travel. Adj. Gen. Hugh McLeod (1814-62) laid out the fort, to be garrisoned by a company of 56 men. Capt. Joseph Wiehl's Co. H, 1st Inf. Regt., in Oct. 1840 completed the road and the fort. In 1841 the Republic of Texas army disbanded for lack of funding, and the post was closed. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — steps away
  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.
• Gruene Historic District — 15 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.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 16 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 18 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.

More markers nearby

• San Marcos Springs — steps away
• San Marcos Mill Tract — 0.3 mi
• Site of San Marcos National Fish Hatchery — 0.5 mi
• The Old Lime Kiln — 0.5 mi