Goliad, Victoria & the Coastal Prairie

This is the coastal prairie between the Guadalupe and the San Antonio rivers, Karankawa country when the Spanish came. In 1749 Spain moved Presidio La Bahia and Mission Espiritu Santo, founded for Karankawa bands in 1722, to the San Antonio River at the site of Goliad. The presidio chapel has stood since then. In March 1836 the Texans who surrendered at Coleto Creek were held in the presidio chapel, and at dawn on Palm Sunday, March 27, 342 of them were shot on Santa Anna's order. The presidio was restored in the 1960s, the mission by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s.

Victoria was founded in 1824 by Martin De Leon as Guadalupe Victoria, a Mexican colony that sent volunteers and arms to the fight against Santa Anna. Germans, Czechs, Italians and Jewish families later joined it. On Matagorda Bay, Indianola rose to be the second port of Texas. German immigrants landed there from 1844 and the Army's camels in 1856 and 1857, until hurricanes in 1875 and 1886 wiped it out.

Inland the roads run through cotton and cattle towns. Cuero shipped turkeys nationwide by 1906. Refugio grew around the Refugio mission, the last in Texas to be secularized. Panna Maria in Karnes County, where Silesian families heard Christmas Mass under a live oak in 1854, claims the oldest permanent Polish settlement in America.

Goliad, Victoria & the Coastal Prairie rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.