Velasco

The fight ended on paper three days after it began. On June 29, 1832, William H. Wharton and William J. Russell signed the surrender for the Texans, Juan Moret and José Rincón for the Mexican side, and Ugartechea and John Austin gave final approval. The garrison left with the honors of war aboard a vessel the colonists furnished. Counts differ widely. The Handbook of Texas puts the Texans at 100 to 150 and the Mexican force at 91 to 200, with a conservative toll of seven Texans and five Mexicans killed and many more wounded.

What the plaque says

Velasco Here was fought a battle-- the first collision in arms between Texas colonists and the Mexican military-- a conflict preliminary to the Texas War for Independence. On June 26, 1832, when Texans under John Austin and Henry Smith came down river with cannon for use against Mexican forces at Anahuac, they ran against the resistance of Lt. Col. Domingo de Ugartechea. As commander of Mexican forces at Velasco, Ugartechea refused passage through the mouth of the Brazos River to the vessel bearing the cannon to Anahuac. Some 112 Texans attacked the port at midnight, and after 9 hours under the fire of Texas rifles and cannon, the Mexican garrison was forced to surrender. The Battle of Velasco, brought on by a customs quarrel at Anahuac, was unknowingly fought after the dispute at Anahuac had been peaceably settled. After the victory at San Jacinto 4 years later, President David G. Burnet moved the capital of the Republic of Texas temporarily to Velasco. Here the Treaty of Velasco, ending hostilities between Texas and Mexico, was signed on May 14, 1836. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 7.5 mi
  Coastal prairie, salt marsh and bays between Freeport and Christmas Bay, where an auto tour along Big Slough passes wintering geese, ducks and wading birds in the tens of thousands.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Galveston Island State Park — 26 mi
  A cattle ranch willed to the state that now runs the full width of Galveston Island, from two miles of Gulf beach across dunes and prairie to the marshes of West Galveston Bay.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 26 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.

More markers nearby

• Old Velasco, C. S. A. — steps away
• Sinking Site of the Blockade Runner "Acadia" — steps away
• Gulf Intracoastal Waterway — steps away
• The Lively — 1.0 mi