About this tour
On March 9, 1731, fifty-six exhausted colonists — recruited from the Canary Islands and sent by order of the Spanish king — stepped off a year-long voyage and laid out a plaza that became the first chartered civil government in Texas. This short walk covers the plaza they founded: the cathedral raised beside it, the courthouse that succeeded generations of earlier government buildings, a marker cataloguing the nine different governments that have claimed this ground since 1718, and the spot where Moses Austin secured Spain's permission for the first Anglo-American colony in Texas. It's a compact, five-stop loop around the literal starting point of chartered Texas.