The Casas Reales

Zebulon Pike's stop here was the middle of a long detention. After naming the peak that bears his name, he went south toward the Rio Grande and in February 1807 was taken into custody by Spanish troops, questioned at Santa Fe and Chihuahua, and sent home under guard across Texas by the Old San Antonio Road to Natchitoches. His captors treated him well but took his notes and papers. They lay in the Mexican archives until Herbert Eugene Bolton found them and published them in 1908; Mexico later returned them.

What the plaque says

The Casas Reales On site chosen July 2, 1731, for "government houses" by people of San Fernando de Bexar, including newly-arrived settlers from the Canary Islands. Structure, erected 1742, had to be rebuilt in 1779 by Don Jose Antonio Curbelo, alcalde of the Villa San Fernando de Bexar. A jail was erected to the south in 1783. From commanding position of Casas Reales on Main Plaza were read official proclamations, to the roll of drums. A noted visitor in 1807 was Lt. Zebulon M. Pike, freed after arrest on upper Rio Grande while exploring Louisiana Purchase for the United States. Briefly in 1813 over the Cases Reales flew the green flag of the rebel Republican Army of the North, formed to free Mexico from Spain's rule. Aided by the Baron de Bastrop, Moses Austin in December 1820 initiated the Anglo-American colonization of Texas by filing his petition and plans with the governor and cabildo (council) in Casas Reales. Santa Anna arrived here February 23, 1836, to press the siege of the Alamo. The bloody "Council House Fight" between Texian leaders and Comanche chiefs occurred here on March 19, 1840. The building served as municipal headquarters under Spanish, Mexican, Republic of Texas, and American regimes, but were vacated in 1850 by the city. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Fernando Cathedral — steps away
  The 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.
• Spanish Governor's Palace — steps away
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.3 mi
  A 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.

More markers nearby

• Vicinity of the Storming of Bexar — steps away
• San Antonio Mutual Aid Association — steps away
• The Canary Islanders — steps away
• Commerce Street Bridge — steps away