The Runaway Scrape & the San Jacinto Campaign

In the spring of 1836, after the fall of the Alamo and the massacre at Goliad, panic swept the Anglo settlements of Texas. As Santa Anna's army pushed east, families abandoned their farms and fled toward the Sabine and the safety of the United States in a chaotic exodus Texans would forever call the Runaway Scrape. Roads turned to mud, children sickened, and the newborn government ran ahead of the army. Sam Houston's small force retreated with the refugees, drilling as it marched, waiting for the moment to turn and fight. This driving trail follows that anxious flight east across the Brazos — from the ashes of San Felipe de Austin, which the settlers burned behind them, to Groce's plantation on the river where Houston paused to train his army, and on through Harrisburg on Buffalo Bayou to the marshy field of San Jacinto near Lynch's Ferry. There, on April 21, 1836, Houston finally attacked, and in a single furious afternoon the war was won. This is the ground of Texas's darkest weeks and its greatest triumph, in the order the story unfolded.