The Presidio Nuestra Senora del Pilar de los Adais

A 1731 muster recorded each soldier's casta, the colonial ethnic category, and showed a mixed garrison; thirty-one of the hundred soldiers at the 1721 founding were married. Pedro de Rivera found the frontier peaceful in 1727 and recommended cutting the garrison from one hundred to sixty. After the 1773 abandonment, the Adaeseños founded Bucareli on the Trinity River in 1774; Comanche attacks and epidemics ended it, and in 1779 they moved to the former mission site at Nacogdoches.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  The Spanish presidio that was the capital of Texas from 1729 to 1770, some 15 miles from French Natchitoches, now an archaeological site where Native pottery is the most abundant find.
• Fort Jesup State Historic Site — 9.2 mi
  The 1822 army post Zachary Taylor built to hold the Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Spanish Texas, with the one surviving kitchen, a reconstructed officers' quarters and a museum open Friday to Sunday.
• Natchitoches Historic District — 12 mi
  The riverfront blocks of the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, founded in 1714 at a Natchitoches village, with a brick-paved Front Street, Cane River frontage and the largest bousillage construction in the South.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 12 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.

More markers nearby

• Los Adaes — 0.5 mi
• Church of St. Anne (Mother Church of Caddo Adai Indians) — 5.4 mi
• Saint Tekakwitha Plaque and Statue — 5.4 mi
• Francois Rouquier Homesite — 11 mi