DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. End of March, 1836. The news coming out of Texas was about as dark as news gets.
The Alamo had fallen. Goliad had fallen. The Texas army — what was left of it — was in full retreat, and a lot of folks figured the whole revolution was folding up like a wet map.
But General Sam Houston had other ideas. He led his retreating forces right here, west of the Brazos, and he made camp. March 31st, 1836.
And what happened at this site over the next two weeks is the kind of thing that makes you want to slow down when you drive past a historical marker. Houston didn't just rest his men. He reorganized them.
Reinforcements came in. Supplies came in. And among those supplies — and this is the part worth savoring — came a pair of cannon known as the Twin Sisters.
Two guns with a name, which tells you something about how Texas felt about them. For two weeks, from March 31st through April 13th, Houston trained his soldiers right here on this ground. Two weeks to turn a retreat into something else entirely.
Then he led them across the Brazos River, in pursuit of the Mexican army. And on April 21st, 1836, those same soldiers — the ones who'd been reorganized and drilled and resupplied right here — engaged and defeated the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto. The final battle of the Texas Revolution.
Two weeks. That's all the time there was between a beaten, retreating army camping on this ground and the end of a war. Sometimes the ground a story turns on doesn't look like much.
But this patch of Austin County knows exactly what it witnessed.
What the marker says
(March 31-April 13, 1836) At the end of March 1836, following the defeat of Texan forces at the Alamo and at Goliad, the retreating Texas army led by Gen. Sam Houston encamped at this site. While in camp here Houston's forces were reorganized and received much needed reinforcements and supplies, including the "Twin Sisters," a pair of cannon. After training his soldiers here for two weeks, Houston led them across the river in pursuit of the Mexican army, which they engaged and defeated on April 21 in the Battle of San Jacinto, the final battle of the Texas Revolution. (1990)