Fannin Battleground State Historic Site

Fannin waited too long. Through mid-March 1836 he held Goliad, which he had renamed Fort Defiance, though the Alamo had fallen and Houston had ordered him back to Victoria; he would not move until he knew what had happened to the companies he had sent to Refugio, and his couriers kept falling into José de Urrea's hands. When the column finally left on the morning of March 19 in a heavy fog, it hauled nine cannons and about a thousand muskets behind hungry oxen, with food and water for only a few meals. A cart broke down at the river and the largest gun went in. A mile past Manahuilla Creek, Fannin stopped to graze the oxen, over the protests of Shackelford, Duval and Westover.

Urrea's cavalry caught them in the open at about 1:30 p.m., in a shallow swale less than a mile from the timber of Perdido Creek and about two miles short of Coleto Creek. The Texans, about 300, formed a hollow square three ranks deep, each man with three or four muskets, and held it until dark; Dr. Joseph Barnard counted seven dead and sixty wounded, Fannin among them. In the night Urrea's reinforcements and artillery came up. On March 20 Fannin accepted terms he did not fully explain to his men.

The 14-acre site has an interpretive exhibit, a pavilion and a stone obelisk at the surrender spot, with a gin press screw first set up here in 1894.