Historical Marker
Spanish and Mexican Land Grants
San Antonio, Bexar County · Texas
Erected 2015
Juan Ignacio Pérez, whose family's grant reached this ground, was a royalist soldier as well as a rancher. When the Casas Revolt collapsed at Béxar in 1811 he sat on Juan Manuel Zambrano's ruling junta, and he fought as a captain of cavalry under Joaquín de Arredondo at the battle of Medina in 1813, then rode with Ignacio Elizondo after the rebels to the Trinity. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he served as interim governor in 1816-17. In 1819 he led some 550 men against James Long's filibusters and pursued them to the Sabine.
What the plaque says
Spanish and Mexican Land Grants The Texas A&M University - San Antonio campus site was built on land that once was conveyed by Spanish and Mexican land grants and traversed by several branches of El Camino Real de Tierra Afuera del Oriente (also known as El Camino Real de Los Tejas National Historic Trail). The first inhabitants of the area were Native Americans, who, at the time of discovery by Spanish explorers, were Coahuiltecans. The earliest grant for this site was made to Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo in 1720, followed by a grant made to Mission San Francisco de La Espada, founded in 1731 following its transfer from East Texas. Eventually, interspersed within these mission lands were many private Spanish and Mexican land grants made to soldiers and citizens of Béxar. Vaqueros drove thousands of cattle from the mission and private ranch herds eastward to Louisiana in support of the American Revolution and Bernardo de Gálvez's battles against the British along the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi river. In 1808, Juan Ignacio Pérez (1761-1830) received a large five-league Spanish land grant on both sides of the Medina River. In 1781, he married Clemencia Hernández and became involved with ranching. He purchased the old comandancia, later known as the Spanish Governor's Palace, from the Menchaca family. Along with his military and political success following the Battle of Medina (1813) on these lands, he was also a leading cattleman of the region. Smaller Mexican grants were eventually made to José de los Ángeles (ángel) Navarro (1784-1836), brother of José Antonio Navarro, Alcalde of San Antonio de Béxar and land commissioner, and José Antonio de la Garza (b.1776), one of the largest landowners in San Antonio. A large portion of campus is situated on the Spanish land grant to Fernando Rodríguez, son-in-law of Juan Ignacio Pérez. (2015)
Where it stands
29.30389, -98.52475 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 4.5 miThe southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
- Mission San Juan — 4.6 miThe mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.
- San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 4.8 miFour working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
- Mission Concepción — 6.4 miA stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.