San Felipe de Austin: Cradle of Anglo Texas

San Felipe de Austin was the capital of Anglo Texas before there was a Texas. Stephen F. Austin founded it in 1823 on a bluff above the Brazos River as the seat of his colony, and within a decade it had grown into the second-largest town in the province after San Antonio — a place of stores and taverns, a printing press, and the conventions where colonists began pressing for their rights. It was here that the provisional government met at the outset of the revolution, and here that the town was deliberately burned in 1836 to keep it from Santa Anna's advancing army during the Runaway Scrape. The town never fully recovered, and today its story is told mostly through markers and a state historic site. This driving tour visits the markers that survive across the townsite and the surrounding ground, tracing the empresario, his town, and the revolution born here. Drive carefully and pull over safely at each stop.