Site of the First Town of San Marcos

The villa's end came in the summer of 1812. On July 27 a combined party of Comanche and Tawakoni warriors drove off some 205 horses, and the small garrison could neither stop nor pursue them. Fearing a wider war, Gov. Manuel Maria de Salcedo recalled the soldiers to defend San Antonio, and the settlers left, most apparently returning to Mexico. A massive fort ordered for the area was abandoned while being built. In 1995 an archeological team under Nancy Kenmotsu located the remains of the villa and found that most residents had lived outside its plaza.

What the plaque says

Site of the First Town of San Marcos Known officially as Villa de San Marcos de Neve. Established in 1807 by Mexican settlers. The population on January 6, 1808 was 81. A flood in 1808 and subsequent Indian raids led to its abandonment in 1812.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 3.2 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 14 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Gruene Historic District — 15 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 17 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.

More markers nearby

• Don Felipe Roque de la Portilla — steps away
• McGehee Crossing — 1.1 mi
• La Sociedad Mutualista Cuauhtémoc — 2.7 mi
• William W. Moon — 3.1 mi