The Pinta Trail

Above Sisterdale the trail followed West Sister Creek nearly to its headwaters, turned northwest along Jung Creek, crossed a ridge and dropped down to ford South Grape Creek. That hard stretch soon gave way to a gentler road to the east, through Luckenbach. Continuing northwest, the trail crossed the Pedernales at the first inverted horseshoe bend east of Baron's Creek, north of present US 290, where Boundary Commissioner John Russell Bartlett visited the Mormon colony of Zodiac in 1853, shortly before a flood devastated it. It seems first to have passed east of Fredericksburg.

What the plaque says

The Pinta Trail Origin of the Pinta Trail is attributed to nomadic Plains Indian tribes. Early Spanish and Mexican expeditions followed the general route of the trail, which extended from San Antonio de Bexar to the San saba River near present Menard. A survey by German immigrants in 1845 provided a wagon road over part of the trail, and, after the discovery of gold in California in 1849, the trail was utilized by U.S. Military companies seeking to open new routes to the western states. Use of the trail declined with the advent of railroads in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Martin Scott — 2.6 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.
• Luckenbach — 4.5 mi
  A store, saloon and dance hall on Grape Creek that a humorist bought in 1971, declared a free state of mind, and turned into a pilgrimage for Texas music.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 4.7 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 5.1 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.

More markers nearby

• The Easter Fires — 1.5 mi
• Site of Fort Martin Scott — 2.7 mi
• African American Community in Gillespie County — 4.2 mi
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church — 4.3 mi