Self Sacrifice of Padre Fray Juan de Padilla - 1544

Padilla's road to the plains ran through earlier ventures. His signature appears on a letter from New Spain dated October 19, 1529, and he was chosen for a Pacific voyage Hernando Cortés organized from Tehuantepec, which never sailed because the ships were unseaworthy. On the Coronado expedition in 1540 he went with Pedro de Tovar to the Hopi villages and with Hernando de Alvarado's advance guard to Pecos, Taos and the buffalo plains, and he is said to have held a thanksgiving service in Palo Duro Canyon. Survivors who reached Pánuco carried home the account of his death.

What the plaque says

Self Sacrifice of Padre Fray Juan De Padilla - 1544 Built to the glorious and perpetual memory of Father Fray Juan De Padilla, O.F.M. Franciscan Missionary, first martyr for Christianity in the United States and in Texas; Accompanied the Coronado Expedition to Palo Duro Canyon. Went with Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his chosen party in search of La Gran Quivira; Returned soon and began his zealous labors for the civilizing and Christianizing of the Wichita and other Indian nations in the region of the Texas Panhandle; His martyrdom occurred in 1544; Erected jointly by the State of Texas and the Texas Knights of Columbus in 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 1.2 mi
  Thirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 3.7 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
• Cadillac Ranch — 7.9 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 16 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• St. Mary's Academy — steps away
• American Legion Hanson Post No. 54 — 0.4 mi
• Polk Street Schools — 0.5 mi
• Site of Significant Archaeological Find, American Mammoths — 0.6 mi