Historical Marker
The Battle of the Salado
San Antonio, Bexar County · Texas
Erected 1936
The fight began with a dare. Only thirty-eight horses in the Texan camp were fit, so thirty-eight men under John C. Hays rode toward town on the morning of September 18, 1842, as decoys. Hays and Henry E. McCulloch went within half a mile of the Alamo, taunting the Mexican cavalry to come out. Hays hoped for forty or fifty pursuers; instead 400 to 500 riders chased them toward the creek. Woll, already mounted to move on Caldwell, said he "would go in person and drive the Texian wolves from the bushes."
What the plaque says
The Battle of the Salado Decisive in Texas history, was fought here September 18, 1842. Col. Mathew Caldwell and Capt. John C. Hays, commanding a force of Texas volunteers, opposed the Mexican Army under General Adrian Woll that had captured San Antonio, and with the loss of only one man, checked the last Mexican invasion of Texas and thereby prevented the capture of Austin, capital of the Republic of Texas. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Where it stands
29.48816, -98.41793 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- The Alamo — 6.0 miMission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.
- La Villita Historic Arts Village — 6.2 miThe little village across the river from the presidio, where Cos surrendered San Antonio in 1835, rebuilt by Depression-era youth crews as a working crafts village.
- San Antonio River Walk — 6.2 miA Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.
- San Fernando Cathedral — 6.4 miThe Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.