Rancho de Pataguilla

Pataguilla was also called Rancho de los Chayopines, after the people who herded for Mission San Juan Capistrano. Chayopine and other Coahuiltecan-speaking vaqueros and shepherds kept its flocks, yet by 1777 Fray Juan Agustín Morfí found three people living at the rancho and only three Indians at its laguna. In 1782 Juan and Simón Arocha petitioned for eight leagues, tallying 116 branded head and claiming 500. After the mission was secularized in 1794, heirs divided the grant into eight tracts, and later deeds still named the shallow lake.

What the plaque says

Rancho de Pataguilla In 1731, the Spanish government relocated Mission San José de Los Nazonis, founded in east Texas, to a new site on the east bank of the San Antonio River. They renamed the mission San Juan Capistrano. There, Franciscan missionaries from the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro instructed Native Americans in Christianity and European methods of farming and ranching. Later, San Juan Capistrano was transferred to the administration of the College of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Zacatécas. The Spanish government allocated large quantities of land to each mission for farm and ranch land to supply the missions with the food, meat, horses and other needed products to those living in the mission. Around 1740, the Spanish government granted Mission San Juan Capistrano 15 leagues, or around 66,420 acres of land as a ranch, which they named Rancho de Pataguilla. The land sprawled across present-day Bexar, Wilson and Karnes Counties. Moderate improvements, such as corrals, and jacales are noted in traveler's diaries. The corrals are thought to have been at Laguna de Pataguilla in Lodi, near present-day Floresville. The La Bahía Road, re-named the Goliad Road in 1829, ran through the land of Rancho de Pataguilla. The ranch reported thousands of sheep and cattle during the mid-1700s. Vaqueros of Spanish and Native American descent cared for livestock, driving herds to the mission regularly. In 1757, a land dispute arose between Andrés Hernández and Luís Menchaca. As a result, Rancho de Pataguilla's southern border was fixed at Pajarito Creek. The rancho's cattle were subject to numerous branding requirements and consolidation in the late 1700s. After the mission was secularized in 1794, the rancho land was subdivided and developed. (2023)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 21 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Longhorn Museum — 21 mi
  Atascosa County in one roadside museum: longhorn-and-mustang ranching, a moved railroad depot and caboose, a horse-drawn hearse and the town that calls itself the birthplace of the cowboy.
• Panna Maria — 21 mi
  The Silesian village on a plateau above the San Antonio River that claims the oldest permanent Polish settlement in America, with a church of 1878 and a ceiling found again in 2000.
• Mission San Juan — 22 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.

More markers nearby

• Near Site of Lodi Ferry — steps away
• Site of Old Town: Lodi — 0.7 mi
• Cemetery of Canary Islanders — 1.1 mi
• Captain Will Wright — 1.1 mi