DUANE
Duane's take
The marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Thirteen miles southeast of Inez, out where the South Texas brush starts keepin' its own counsel, sits a patch of ground that has seen more history than most places three times its size. This is the site of Fort St.
Louis — and if you want to talk about a place that got handed from one civilization to another like a deed nobody could hold onto, well, friend, you've come to the right spot. It starts in 1685, when a Frenchman by the name of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, made the first attempt at a French settlement in Texas right here. La Salle.
Now there's a name that carries weight. He planted his flag, built his fort, and tried to make something stick on this coastal Texas soil. The first French settlement in the whole of Texas — that is no small ambition.
But the land had other ideas. The Karankawa Indians devastated the place. And then, in 1689, members of the Alonso De León Expedition came through and burned what was left.
So by the time the Spanish laid eyes on Fort St. Louis, it wasn't much more than ash and memory. And here is where the story turns, because the Spanish looked at those remains and saw not an ending — but a foundation.
On the ruins of La Salle's fort, they constructed the Presidio de Nuestra Señora de la Bahía del Espíritu Santo. That was the work of the Marquis of Aguayo and Father Fray Agustín Patrón, O.F.M., in 1722. They raised it up as protection for the mission of Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga — a mission devoted to the civilizing and Christianizing of the Indian tribes of the vicinity.
But even that wasn't the end of the movin' and the changin'. In 1726, the mission picked up and moved to Mission Valley on the Guadalupe River, near what is now Victoria. And then, still not done, it moved again — finally settling at Santa Dorotea in Goliad, near the San Antonio River, in 1749.
So what started as a Frenchman's dream in 1685 became a Spanish fort, became a mission, and then walked itself across the Texas landscape for the better part of sixty years. The site southeast of Inez just watched it all go — holding the memory of everything that was built on it, burned on it, and eventually left it behind.
What the marker says
Thirteen miles southeast of Inez is located the site of Fort St. Louis. First French settlement in Texas attempted by Rene Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle in 1685. Devastated by the Karankawa Indians, burned by members of the Alonso De Leon Expedition in 1689. On its remains the Spaniards constructed Presidio de Nuestra Senora de la Bahia del Espirtu Santo, Marquis of Aguayo and Father Fray Agustin Patron, O.F. M. In 1722 as a protection for the mission of Nuestra Senora del Espiritu Santo de Zuniga for the civilizing and christianizing of the Indian tribes of the vicintiy moved to Mission Valley on the Guadalupe River near the present Victoria in 1726; moved finally to Santa Dorotea in Goliad near the San Antonio River in 1749.