Silver Mine Pass

John C. Duval saw a Spanish silver shaft on the east side of Sugarloaf Mountain, five miles south of present Utopia, in 1836. Bowie's own silver hunting looked farther north. He was taken with tales of the lost Los Almagres Mine, said to lie near the ruined San Saba mission, and on November 2, 1831, he left San Antonio with his brother Rezin and nine others. The Handbook of Texas places their fight six miles from San Saba, where they held an oak grove against a large war party for thirteen hours.

What the plaque says

Silver Mine Pass Named for silver mine opened near pass by Spaniards in 1700s or earlier. Ore was inferior, and mine was abandoned; but 14 shafts (some interconnecting) remain. Near the mine are remnants of a fortification made by 30 men under the leadership of James Bowie, later (1836) a hero of the siege to the Alamo. In 1831, while at work at this mine, Bowie's men repulsed a Comanche attack in a fierce, all-day battle. Hero of the fight was Bowie's slave, "Black Jim Bowie," who risked his life by leaving the fortification to bring water to the besieged. 1968

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Garner State Park — 6.9 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.
• Real County Historical Museum — 16 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 20 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 20 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.

More markers nearby

• C.S.A. Saltpetre Mine — steps away
• Civilian Conservation Corps at Garner State Park — 5.9 mi
• Dry Frio Canyon — 7.6 mi
• Lombardy Irrigation Ditch — 9.3 mi