DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just doing my best to do it justice. Now, there's a stretch of road out here — a winding, hundred-mile trail running from San Antonio all the way up to Kerrville — that's got a whole lot of history soaked into its dirt. During the nineteenth century, this wasn't just any back road.
This was a strategic patrol road, regularly traveled by Texas Rangers keeping watch over the surrounding territory against hostile Indian attacks. In those uneasy pioneer days, roads like this one — scouted, patrolled, and held — helped promote early white settlement by strengthening the frontier defense. That was the work, and it was not gentle work.
Now, Bandera — the town you might be passing right through — sat exactly midway on that trail. Right in the middle of things. And ten miles north of town lay Bandera Pass, a narrow gorge that frequently harbored Indian ambushers.
So you can imagine what kind of reputation this stretch of road had. Bandera became a focal point for Ranger activities along the whole route, and for good reason. But here's where the story gets its teeth.
In the spring of 1841, a company of forty Texas Rangers was out on a scouting mission in the Guadalupe Mountains. Their captain was a man the marker calls Capt. Jack Hays — described plainly as an intrepid Indian fighter.
Forty men. One captain. And somewhere ahead of them, Bandera Pass.
They rode into that narrow gorge. Got halfway through. And then — all at once — several hundred Comanche warriors rose out of the brush and from behind the boulders along the walls of the pass.
Hidden. Waiting. And now, not waiting anymore.
What followed was a bloody fight. Much of it hand-to-hand, with Bowie knives, in that tight canyon with no room to maneuver and no room to retreat. Forty Rangers against several hundred.
You do the arithmetic on those odds and your stomach tightens a little. But then the Comanche chief was slain. And after that, the warriors withdrew.
They finally escaped, and the pass fell quiet again. The marker says that was perhaps the best-known battle to occur along the old route. Perhaps.
That word is doing some quiet work. Because in a hundred miles of frontier patrol road, in a century of hard riding, there were surely other moments that tested men just as hard. The Rangers held the trail.
The trail held the frontier. And Bandera Pass — ten miles north, right up the road — still cuts through those hills today, just as narrow and just as still as it was in the spring of 1841.
What the marker says
This winding, 100-mile trail from San Antonio to Kerrville was, during the 19th century, a strategic patrol road traveled by Texas Rangers to protect the surrounding area from hostile Indian attacks. During uneasy pioneer days roads such as this, regularly scouted by Rangers, helped promote early white settlement by strengthening frontier defense. Because Bandera was located midway on the trail and because Bandera Pass, 10 miles north, frequently harbored Indian ambushers, the town became a focal point for Ranger activities along the road. Perhaps the best-known battle to occur on the old route happened in Bandera Pass in the spring of 1841. At that time a company of 40 Texas Rangers, under intrepid Indian fighter Capt. "Jack" Hays, was on a scouting mission in the Guadalupe Mountains. Halfway through the pass, they were suddenly attacked by several hundred wild Comanches who lay hidden in the brush and behind boulders in the narrow gorge. A bloody fight ensued, much of it hand-to-hand combat with Bowie knives; but after their chief was slain, the Indians withdrew and finally escaped. Thus the Rangers and this trail helped remove the Indian menace and open the frontier across Texas. (1968)