San Antonio-California Trail

The 1848 survey the plaque credits to Hays nearly ended in disaster. Backed by San Antonio citizens, Col. John C. Hays left on August 27 with Indian guides to find a road to El Paso, and thirty-five Texas Rangers under Capt. Samuel Highsmith joined him. The guide lost his way, the party nearly starved, and it came out not at El Paso but at Presidio del Norte, returning after 107 days. Hays still reported a practical road to Presidio. In 1849 he went west as Indian agent for the Gila River country, and later helped found Oakland.

What the plaque says

San Antonio-California Trail (Three miles south) One of Texas' first cross-country wagon trails. The San Antonio-El Paso section of this route was surveyed in 1848 by a party under the intrepid Indian fighter Jack Hays. Used first by emigrants and gold-seekers, it became part of the San Antonio-San Diego mail line (1857), one of America's pioneer mail services. Passengers on the line paid $200 (one-way) to share a swaying Concord coach with 600 pounds of mail and braved bandits, dust, floods, and Indians to spend 27 days traveling 1,500 miles. Service ended in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hotel El Capitan — 3.9 mi
  Henry Trost's Spanish Revival hotel of 1930 in Van Horn, named for the cliff at the end of the Guadalupe Mountains, restored and back in business as an inn.

More markers nearby

• Culberson County — steps away
• County Named for Texas Confederate Colonel David B. Culberson — 4.0 mi
• Eagle Springs Stage Stand — 12 mi
• Van Horn Wells — 12 mi