Zebulon Pike Campsite

Spanish troops took Pike into custody in February 1807 after he reached a tributary of the Rio Grande. He was taken to Santa Fe and then Chihuahua, where Gen. Antonio Salcedo questioned him, and was allowed to go home under military guard, crossing Texas on the Old San Antonio Road to Natchitoches. His notes and papers were taken from him and stayed in Mexican archives until Herbert Eugene Bolton found them and published them in the American Historical Review in 1908. Pike's own account of the expedition came out in 1810.

What the plaque says

Zebulon Pike Campsite In 1807, under commission from Gen. James Wilkinson, Governor of the Louisiana Territory, Lt. Zebulon Pike led an expedition to explore the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers and to report on Spanish settlements in the New Mexico area. Heading south from present Colorado, where the party saw the mountain later named Pike's Peak for the expedition's leader, they were arrested by Spanish authorities. Under escort back to the United States, the party camped near this site on June 23, 1807. The Pike expedition furnished an important account of Spanish Texas and New Mexico. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 0.2 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 27 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• Neches Indian Village — 0.4 mi
• Mission Santissimo Nombre de Maria — 1.9 mi
• Site of Lacy's Fort — 4.2 mi
• Site of the Delaware Indian Village — 4.4 mi