Site of the Mission San Lorenzo de La Santa Cruz

The mission came from Lipan Apache wishes as much as Spanish plans. Lipan chiefs persuaded Felipe de Rabago y Teran, commander at San Saba, to found a settlement on the upper Nueces despite the viceroy's instructions, and the mission opened on January 23, 1762, with two friars and twenty soldiers. About 400 Lipans came within a week, but the priests soon saw that they wanted a refuge from their enemies, not conversion. Comanches and their allies attacked in October 1766 and again a month later, and in 1767 the Marques de Rubi recommended abandoning it.

What the plaque says

Site of the Mission San Lorenzo de La Santa Cruz Founded by Franciscan missionaries among the Lipan Apache Indians in 1762. Abandoned in 1769.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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.
• Garner State Park — 17 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.
• Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area — 26 mi
  A 140-foot shaft into a cavern outside Rocksprings, seen only on guided tours from a platform at the rim as some three million bats spiral out on summer evenings.
• Kickapoo Cavern State Park — 27 mi
  A lightly developed former ranch on the Kinney-Edwards line with twenty caves, a Saturday tour into a 1,400-foot cavern and a summer bat flight from Stuart Bat Cave.

More markers nearby

• Site of Camp Wood — steps away
• Private Frank Marshall, C.S.A. — steps away
• Charles A. Lindbergh in Texas — 0.4 mi
• Dixie Settlement — 3.5 mi