Destination: Goliad
Battle Tested
Travel time from:
Austin – 2 hours
Brownsville – 3.5 hours
Dallas – 5.5 hours
Houston – 3 hours
San Antonio – 1.5 hours
Lubbock – 8 hours
El Paso – 10.75 hours
by Elaine Robbins
Travel back in time as you visit Goliad’s Spanish forts, missions and churches.
Heading south on Highway 183 toward Goliad feels like traveling into the pages of a Texas history book. The blackland prairie gives way to mile after mile of coastal plain, and soon the highway signs ring out with the familiar names of battles: Goliad, Coleto Creek, Refugio. “We have more history here than the Alamo,” says Paul Jaure, a ranger at Goliad State Park and Historic Site, “only John Wayne didn’t make a movie about it.”
My companion and I set off on a road trip to explore this sleepy, out-of-the-way place that was once the strategic center of Spanish Texas. We discover that in Goliad, it doesn’t take long for that history to spring to life. We are driving along, lulled by the endless emptiness of ranchland, when an apparition suddenly appears off the highway: the soaring, whitewashed walls of a beautiful Spanish colonial church. We are still rubbing our eyes at the unexpected sight when, less than a mile later, another vision appears on a rise: the blackened stone walls of a Spanish fort silhouetted against the darkening sky.
No billboards, no highway gift shops, no fanfare prepares us for the appearance of the beautifully reconstructed 1749 Mission Espíritu Santo and Presidio La Bahía. Only later are we surprised to learn that together they comprise one of the few remaining Spanish mission/fort complexes in the western hemisphere.
Goliad also happens to be the only place in the United States where you can spend the night in a Spanish fort, which is how we find ourselves inside Presidio La Bahía long after the gates have closed and the last tourists and staff have gone home. Just us.
It is a dark, moonless night as we open the back door of our guest quarters — a warren of lamplit stone-walled rooms — and emerge into the hushed silence of the presidio’s courtyard. A chill moves through my body as we walk around inside the stone-walled perimeter. We climb up into the corner bastions, and I contemplate how the Spanish soldiers must have felt living in this strange, sparsely inhabited land.
As we gaze at the fort’s beautiful stone chapel, I think about James W. Fannin’s men being held within its thick stone walls before 342 of them were executed. Fannin had occupied the fort, renaming it Fort Defiance, but abandoned it after hearing news of Mexican advances. Mexican forces caught up with them near Coleto Creek, and after a fierce fight surrendered the next day on agreement that their lives would be spared. A week later, on March 27, 1836, on orders of Mexican dictator General Santa Anna, they were marched out from the fort in three groups and mowed down — an infamous event that became known as the Goliad Massacre.
Some 5,000 people descend on the presidio each year for a reenactment of the Goliad Massacre, held around the third weekend in March. Visitors who’ve experienced the weekend, particularly the candlelight tour, say that as they file past the wounded Texian soldiers in the chapel hospital and hear their agonized groans, they feel like they’re actually experiencing that time. Although no ghosts spoke to us that night, surely visitors more steeped in Texas military history would feel their spirits here.
The next morning presidio director Newton Warzecha shows us around the fort and chapel and fills in some of the missing pieces.
“The Spanish built the fort to guard the Texas coast. If anyone wanted to take over, the first thing they did was capture the fort,” he explains. “Most of the Spanish soldiers lived outside the fort in houses with their families. That original Goliad community was named La Bahía. In 1829 the name was changed to Goliad, an anagram of Hidalgo, after the man who started the Mexican revolution of 1810.”
He takes us inside the fort’s original stone chapel. “This is one of the oldest Catholic churches in the U.S.,” he tells us. “It’s been in continuous use since the 1700s.”
From the presidio, it’s just a five-minute drive to Goliad’s pretty courthouse square. We have breakfast on the square at the Empresario Restaurant, which serves up country cooking and homebaked pies under a pressed-tin ceiling in a 1903 building. On weekday mornings, Goliad’s politicos meet at the Empresario for a power breakfast, while the town’s power walkers do laps around the square. A few blocks away at Dairy Queen, the old-time ranchers meet for a 7 a.m. coffee klatch and discuss how the town should resist change. They needn’t worry.
“In 1804 the population of La Bahía was 1,600,” said Warzecha. “Today the population of Goliad is 1,900. We’re very particular about who we let live here.”
We poke into the few antiques shops and gift stores housed in the 1800s-era commercial buildings that surround the square. We gaze at the recently restored courthouse, a massive, magnificent brick-and-stone edifice topped with turrets and a clock tower. It’s the kind of building you’d expect to find in a major European capital, not a sleepy town of less than 2,000 souls.
But in Goliad, such beauty often blends with a cruel history. An ancient live oak that spreads its lovely shaded canopy next to the courthouse is named the Hanging Tree. The name recalls a dark chapter in the town’s history when extrajudicial hangings took place during “the Cart Wars” — a period when Anglo settlers tried to take over the successful oxcart transport business of long-established Tejanos.
After wandering around town, we drive to the Barnhart Q5 Ranch and Retreat. The 700-acre family ranch is a Lone Star Land Steward winner, which means they’ve received an award from TPWD for managing their land in a sustainable, wildlife-friendly way. For guests, 18 miles of hike-and-bike trails provide a good way to see that wildlife. We wind past a stock pond, then arrive at the cheery 1877 Greek Revival house where we’ll spend the night. Our vast room has a fireplace, 12-foot-high ceilings and a Jacuzzi tub.
As we relax in the shared living room with tall picture windows, we watch hummingbirds dart at the feeder. From the wide front porch we watch a family of bobwhite parade single file across the yard. A neotropical green jay flits to a birdfeeder, dazzling us with its blue head and parrot-green body. Later, we walk to a pasture behind the house to pet the ranch’s adorable miniature donkeys, who rub their heads against our legs.
That evening we dine on succulent rack of lamb and luscious lemon crème brulee at Terrell Hall, a small restaurant hidden behind the Berclair Mansion off Highway 59. This fine dining spot serves the best food in the Goliad area, but be prepared to bust your budget (and bring your own bottle). That night we sleep soundly, waking once to the sound of coyotes yelping in the night.
The next day we head to Coleto Creek Park and Reservoir, a popular local destination for RV camping, boating and fishing.
“Goliad sits right on a transition zone between both north/south and east/west, between cold and hot and wet and dry,” explains chief ranger Wilfred Korth. “In our park we get palmettos, which need moisture, but at the Barnhart Ranch they have a lot of cactus.” That makes Goliad County a great place for birding. We drive along the long, narrow lake, which sits in the shadow of a power plant. Egrets and a great blue heron fish from the shore.
Back downtown, we walk a couple of blocks from the square and find the trailhead for the Angel of Goliad Trail. This two-mile hike-and-bike path is a great way to see Goliad State Park and Presidio La Bahía — and to walk off the town’s ubiquitous lemon meringue pie. (You can also take the Goliad Paddling Trail, a three-hour trip from an upstream put-in point to Goliad State Park. No boat rentals are available, so bring your own canoe or kayak and make your own shuttle arrangements.) We follow the hiking path as it meanders alongside the slow-moving San Antonio River, bends past someone’s backyard workshop, then cuts a swath through a thornbrush thicket alive with birdsong.
Half an hour later, we reach Goliad State Park. The park offers camping areas along the river and hike-and-bike trails. But the highlight for most visitors is the white church of Mission Espíritu Santo. The church was reconstructed by the Work Projects Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. We walk around the grounds and through the museum.
I am surprised to learn that it was here — not in West Texas or Fort Worth — that Texas cattle ranching was born. The Franciscans and their Indian charges grazed 40,000 head of cattle on their land, which stretched from Goliad 60 miles north. I find my companion gazing into a display case at a beautifully engraved Spanish brass cannon so compact it could be handheld.
“You can imagine Bruce Willis holding it and firing at some English-accented bad guy,” my companion remarks.
In Goliad it’s easy to imagine heroes — and not just the Hollywood kind. “My ancestors came here in 1754,” ranger Jaure tells us, when we stop to chat with him before leaving for home. “My grandfather worked as a laborer to help restore the presidio in the ’60s. Today at age 90, he’s lead cowboy at the nearby O’Connor Ranch, where he still rides at least three hours a day.”
If you ever doubt that this area was once Spanish territory and then part of Mexico, go to Sunday services at the presidio church. As you worship with the descendants of Spanish soldiers, you realize that in Goliad, the past is never far away.
Details
• Goliad State Park (www.tpwd.state.tx.us/goliad, 361-645-3405)
• Presidio La Bahía (www.presidiolabahia.org, 361-645-3752)
• Goliad County Chamber of Commerce (www.goliadcc.org or 361-645-3563). Pick up a self-guided historic tour map at the chamber of commerce on the square.
• Barnhart Q5 Ranch & Retreat (www.barnhartranchretreat.com, 361-375-2824)
• Coleto Creek Park & Reservoir (www.coletocreekpark.com, 361-575-6366)
