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Exploring an Austin site that might reveal 1730 Resize text Spanish missions Camino Real expert Steven Gonzales walks the Montopolis bluffs for topographical evidence. Posted: 12:00 a.m. Wednesday, June 24, 2015

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By Michael Barnes - American-Statesman Staff

Steven Gonzales picks up a shard from the clearing.

“This is what you’d expect to find,” he says about the roughly triangular piece of enameled pottery. “Except that this is obviously modern.”

Gonzales, director of the Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail Association, casually surveys a site

on the Montopolis advertisement bluffs that has been In this Section leveled for new Must-see: Abandoned, blind dog construction. He points has his own canine guide over the treetops to the A view of downtown from the Montopolis bluffs. Nearby is a creek and a ford on the Colorado east. River. All three ... Read More Aww! Check out these adorable newborn panda twins “The Spanish usually established their settlements on hills and bluffs on the south and west Austin360Cooks: Bacon Pecan Pralines combine meat and sweet sides of rivers and streams in Texas,” he says about the three missions

established on the Colorado River in 1730. “Because their main concern Food Matters: Book explores depths of infusing was a potential French threat coming from Natchitoches, Louisiana, at water, oil and spirits the eastern end of the Camino Real.” Things to do Tuesday, June 23

The primary view from the bluffs — on this spring day just as centuries 5 cool pieces to perk up your summer wardrobe ago — is to the east and very expansive.

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/lifestyles/exploring -an -austin -site -that -might -reveal -1... 6/ 24/ 2015 Exploring an Austin site that might reveal 1730 Spanish missions | www.mystatesman.com Page 2 of 5

For years, historians Special Father's Day for daughter reunited with dad she thought was assumed that those dead temporary missions rose at Barton Springs, Heartwarming: Homeless man finds purse, returns it to single a place continuously mom with cancer occupied for thousands

of years. In the past, Quiz: How much do you know Gonzales has shared his about Father's Day? reasons for believing otherwise. This time, he More things to do, 6/22/15 wants to demonstrate why on the Montopolis bluffs.

“The waterway also would have acted as a

This map shows where El Camino Real de los natural barrier that Tejas crossed Central Travis County, including would have slowed a fords on the Colorado River just ... Read More French advance, thereby allowing the Spanish the maximum amount of time to prepare,” Gonzales says. “The site is also closer to the Blackland prairie than the purported Barton Springs location, which would have allowed crops to have been grown more easily in the fertile soil of the flatlands than in the shallow, rocky soils of the Balcones Escarpment.”

He begins his informal tour of the Montopois site at a trailhead behind the playground in the eastern sector of Roy Guerrero Park off Grove Boulevard. The broad trail follows a ledge above the river and below the bluffs. It crosses a small stream named Country Club Creek, presumably so dubbed when the Austin Country Club moved nearby, to the current site of Austin Community College Riverside, between 1948 and 1950.

Surely it had another name before that. Could this be his Spanish stream?

Gonzales continues uphill through a wooded area to a concrete pad above MICHAEL BARNES Montopolis Boulevard The only remains of the Grove Trailer Court, once atop the Montopolis bluffs. where a weathered sign for the Grove Trailer Court is all that remains of a residential enclave that older Austinites can recall. He continues onto the protected pedestrian walkway for the Montopolis Bridge, where he points out the third geographic element that would have attracted the Spanish — shallow fords in the Colorado River below. Nearby is one of at least two places in Central Austin where

comprehensive studies have concluded that the Camino Real met the Colorado.

Up on the bluff, Gonzales points out evidence of old and new Montopolis, including newer, mod residences with somewhat unexpected views of downtown. Eventually, he winds down a path to a depression and pond where young workers are bustling around a brownfield that once held an offending garbage dump. After Montopolis was annexed in the 1950s, neighborhood activists demanded the dump’s removal, but the residue remains.

To be clear, Gonzales insists that there is no pressing reason for archaeologists to excavate any spot on the Montopolis bluffs. After all, Brad Jones, archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission, has said This stretch on the Colorado River, seen from the Montopolis Bridge, is near one of two places where that despite hundreds the Spanish crossed ... Read More of digs, nobody has uncovered physical evidence of the short Spanish stay here — the three missions moved to San Antonio in 1731.

Still, Gonzales would like people to keep an eye out. After all, settlement patterns such as the ones he describes are seen at sites such as the San Xavier Mission Complex in Milam County and San Marcos de Neve in Hays County.

“The Spanish would have established their missions and other settlements near El Camino Real so that they would have easy access to the roadway for the goods and services, especially the protection, that it provided,” he says. “Shallow river crossings with solid, limestone bottoms are places that the Camino was ‘funneled’ into, since steep river banks and deep pools in other locations made crossing the river impossible. Therefore, these characteristics, combined with a desire to settle near the road, suggest that the Montopolis Bluffs are a stronger possibility than Barton Springs, since the latter is many miles from the Camino.”

According to a thorough study, “A Texas Legacy: The Old San Antonio Road and the Caminos Reales; A Tricentennial History, 1691-1991,” Spanish routes intersected waterways in Travis MICHAEL BARNES

On a cleared lot near Clovis Street in Montopolis, County at Onion, Camino Real expert Steven Gonzales points in the direction that the Spanish ... Read More Boggy, Slaughter, Williamson, Little Willow, Walnut, Gilleland and Wilbarger creeks. They also crossed the Colorado River to the east of the Montopolis Bridge.

Gonzales’ guesses about the mission site are not entirely speculative. The kind of triangulation he employs has uncovered remains of a mission in Nacogdoches County. A couple of Texas Archaeological Stewards — volunteers who work with the Texas Historical Commission — used Spanish records to locate the original location of Mission Concepción, which is now in San Antonio.

“By systematically visiting sites in Nacogdoches County that matched the description of the landscape of the mission site, they were eventually able, through trial and error, to locate it,” Gonzales says. “Essentially, by reading the Spanish record and noting that the site had been established on a hill next to a waterway to the east of the city of Nacogdoches, and studying modern topographic maps to find locations that matched the Spanish account, they were eventually able to locate the site, which matched all the criteria. They found over 300 nails and other artifacts from the mission.”

More Austin history

For 25 years, Michael Barnes has written about Austin’s culture and history. Among his recent stories have been reports on ancestral Austin families, local desegregation and life on East Avenue. To sample more than 100 of his history stories, go to mystatesman.com/austin-history.

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