In April 1757 Spain set the presidio of San Luis de las Amarillas on the north bank of the San Saba, a mile from present Menard, to protect a mission for the Lipan Apache about four miles away. With its added recruits it was the largest presidio in Texas. The Lipan were at war with the Comanche and their allies to the north, and early in 1758 northern raiders began running off the presidio's horses.
On March 16, 1758, a force the Handbook of Texas puts at 2,000 Comanche and allied warriors, riding Spanish horses and carrying French guns, attacked the mission. Two priests and six others were killed and the mission burned; the crowded presidio was left alone. When Col. Diego Ortiz Parrilla marched north to punish the attackers in 1759, he was defeated at the fortified Taovaya village on the Red River. The Handbook calls San Saba the first place the Spanish in Texas found the Plains peoples a fighting force superior to their own.
Felipe de Rabago y Teran rebuilt the presidio in stone around 1761, a square with four corner bastions and a moat, and called it the Real Presidio de San Saba. In June 1768, worn down by raids, hunger and disease, he marched the garrison and their families south to the mission on the Nueces without orders. In 1936 the Texas Centennial rebuilt the northwest corner. Today the ruins and that reconstruction stand on almost 18 acres along the river, with the native landscape restored, picnic tables, and interpreters on hand to answer questions.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour