Where Travis Sat in a Brick Kiln RoadyGoat

Before William Barret Travis drew his famous line at the Alamo, he was a young lawyer locked up right here at Anahuac, and the trouble he caused helped light the fuse of the Texas Revolution. By 1832, settlers were furious with Col. Juan Davis Bradburn, the Mexican commander of Fort Anahuac, over heavy-handed rule and disputes that included escaped slaves Bradburn had taken in. Hired to recover them, Travis pushed too hard, and Bradburn jailed him and a colleague. Because the post had no secure jail, the prisoners were held in one of the fort's empty brick kilns. Word spread, and roughly two hundred armed colonists from the Brazos gathered nearby, capturing Bradburn's cavalry to trade for the prisoners. Fighting broke out on June 9 and 12, 1832. Bradburn eventually released Travis, then fled the post in fear for his life, hiding in creek bottoms until he reached New Orleans. The episode, remembered as the Anahuac Disturbances, was one of the first armed clashes between Anglo Texans and Mexican troops. (Source: Handbook of Texas, Anahuac Disturbances.)

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The Alligator Capital Throws a Party Every September RoadyGoat

Anahuac doesn't just live with alligators, it brags about them. In 1989 the Texas Legislature officially named the town the Alligator Capital of Texas, a fitting title for a place where the surrounding marshes hold so many gators that locals like to say the reptiles outnumber the people. That same year the community launched Gatorfest, now held each fall at Fort Anahuac Park on the Trinity River. The festival's centerpiece is the Great Texas Alligator Roundup, a hunting contest where licensed harvesters bring their biggest catches to be weighed and measured for cash prizes. The numbers get genuinely huge: at the 2023 festival the winning gator stretched nearly thirteen feet and weighed about 620 pounds, and the Texas state record, a 14-foot, 3-inch animal pulled from Choke Canyon Reservoir in 2013, isn't far beyond what shows up here. Powered by hundreds of volunteers, Gatorfest pulls tens of thousands of visitors and serious money into a town of fewer than two thousand people, all built around an animal most places would rather avoid. (Source: Texas Gatorfest; Texas State Historical Association.)

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The Marsh Decides Whether a Gator Is Male or Female RoadyGoat

The alligators that made Anahuac famous carry a biological secret that has fascinated scientists for decades: their sex isn't set by chromosomes, it's set by the weather. In American alligators, an egg's temperature during a sensitive window roughly twenty to thirty-five days after laying decides whether the hatchling becomes male or female, a process called temperature-dependent sex determination. The pattern is counterintuitive. Eggs incubated around 33 degrees Celsius hatch mostly males, while cooler eggs near 30 degrees hatch mostly females. That's why nest location matters so much in the marshes around town: females build mounded nests of rotting vegetation, and a hot, dry nest on an elevated levee can hatch nearly all males, while a cool, wet marsh nest can hatch nearly all females. Once the egg is incubated, the sex is locked in for life. Researchers studying these reptiles have even traced the effect down to a temperature-sensitive protein in the embryo. In the wetlands surrounding Anahuac, a few degrees of mud temperature quietly shapes the next generation of gators. (Source: Ferguson and Joanen, Journal of Zoology; Scientific Reports.)

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Travis, William Barret

1832

(August 9, 1809 - March 6, 1836) Co-commander with James Bowie, siege of the Alamo. Born in South Carolina; moved with family in 1818 to Alabama, where at 19 he was admitted to the bar; came to Texas 1831. In anahuac he joined william H. Jack and others resisting tyranny of customs collector Juan Davis Bradburn and was jailed 50 days in the fort (1832). In 1835 he led in capture and disarming of Mexican garrison reoccupying Fort Anahuac. As lieutenant of volunteers sent to key city San Antonio in war against Mexican Dictator Santa Anna, he drew men and food into the Alamo on Feb. 23, 1836, and defied with a cannon shot Santa Anna's call to surrender. On Feb. 24, civilian leader James Bowie fell ill, leaving 26-year-old Travis in charge. At Travis' call for aid, 32 men from Gonzales joined the Alamo forces, but Fannin's 500 failed to march in time from Goliad. With doom upon him, Travis drew line on floor to separate men wishing to leave from those staying; only one left. the 182 remaining-- including hero Davy Crockett-- made Santa Anna's army of 2,500 pay dearly for triumph on March 6, 1836. Travis' last message, telling of his resolution to achieve victory or death in face of the foe's overwhelming numbers, has been called one of the world's noblest documents. Incise on base: Erected by Chambers County Historical Survey Committee Guy C. Jackson III, Chairman

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Garrett, Patrick Floyd Jarvis

1877

Pat Garrett, lawman, was born on June 5, 1850, in Chambers County, Alabama, the son of John Lumpkin and Elizabeth Ann (Jarvis) Garrett. In 1853 the family moved to Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, where Garrett received an elementary education. In 1869 he left home for the buffalo range in Texas. He and a friend, Skelton Glenn, hunted buffalo from Fort Griffin to Lubbock; the partnership dissolved in 1877, when Comanches destroyed their camp. Garrett then drifted west to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. In 1877 he married Juanita Gutiérrez, who died a few months later. He married her sister Apolinaria in January 1880. The couple had nine children. In November 1880 Garrett, running as a Democrat, was elected sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico. He set out immediately to track down Billy the Kid ( Henry McCarty ). After killing the Kid's cronies Charles Bowdre and Tom O'Folliard, Garrett captured Billy and brought him to trial in Mesilla, New Mexico, on a charge of murder. While awaiting the hangman's rope at Lincoln, however, the Kid escaped, only to be killed by Garrett in Fort Sumner on the night of July 14, 1881. To Garrett was subsequently attributed The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid , published in 1882, although Garrett's closest friend, Marshall Ashmun (Ash) Upson, claimed to have written every word. In 1884, after failing to be elected a state senator, Garrett became captain of the LS Texas Rangers, a group of rangers sent by Governor John Ireland to the Panhandle to protect ranchers from rustlers. He served only a few weeks and then moved to Roswell, New Mexico, where he devised irrigation plans. He had insufficient funds, however, and was forced out and moved to Uvalde, Texas, where he lived from 1891 to 1896. In 1896 New Mexico governor William T. Thornton asked him to become the Dona Ana County Sheriff. Thornton wanted Garrett to find the abductors of Albert J. Fountain , a former Texas state senator, who had disappeared near what later became the White Sands Missile Range. In 1899 Garrett brought ranchers Jim Gililland, Bill McNew, and Oliver Lee to trial in Hillsboro, New Mexico. All were defended by Albert B. Fall and acquitted. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Garrett customs collector in El Paso in 1901 but did not reappoint him in 1906. Garrett returned to his ranch in the San Andres Mountains in southern New Mexico. On February 29, 1908, a cowboy named Wayne Brazel allegedly shot him in the back of the head while they rode a lonely road between Organ and Las Cruces, New Mexico. Garrett was originally buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Las Cruces. In 1957 his body was reinterred in the Masonic Cemetery across the street. He was a Democrat and agnostic.

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Bradburn, John [Juan] Davis

1830

John (Juan) Davis Bradburn was born in Virginia in 1787, moved with his family to Christian County, Kentucky, by 1810, and became a trader at Springfield, Tennessee. He was not a member of the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition in 1812 but joined efforts to reconstitute the filibuster after its defeat, likely as part of filibuster leader John Smith T's failed effort to invade Texas in 1814. This brought him into company with many veterans of the first filibuster in Natchitoches, who filled the Eighteenth Regiment of Louisiana volunteers, who gathered to defend New Orleans from the British later that year . Bradburn was elected third lieutenant of Buard's company, but the regiment failed to arrive at the Crescent City before January 8, 1815, when Andrew Jackson defeated the British. After the war Bradburn joined Henry Perry , a veteran of the Gutiérrez-Magee endeavor, who was planning a second attack on Spanish Texas . Stationed in the Nacogdoches area, Bradburn funneled men and equipment to Perry at Bolivar Peninsula and Perry's Point (Anahuac) in 1816. Perry and Bradburn joined Luis Michel Aury , who had recently been appointed governor of Texas by the Mexican revolutionary government in exile on Galveston Island, a staging area for a descent on La Bahía . Before Aury's plans matured, Francisco Xavier Mina arrived with funds, men, and a new plan to attack Soto la Marina, Tamaulipas, and join Mexican guerrillas. The group sailed in April 1817 and easily took the Spanish fort. Upon joining the patriots at Fort Sombrero in Guanajuato in July, Bradburn became second in command of the American volunteers. A successful siege by the royalists forced the insurgents to evacuate, and Bradburn was one of the few to escape. He managed to join Vicente Ramón Guerrero near Acapulco and served the cause until December 1820, when he defected to Agustín de Iturbide , commander of the Spanish army. Iturbide, a native Mexican, was secretly planning a coup to expel the Spaniards, and Bradburn apparently served as intermediary between Iturbide and Guerrero in uniting the diverse Mexican factions in order to defeat the Spanish. The union of the two allowed the promulgation of the Plan de Iguala in February 1821, and the Spanish soon admitted defeat. Once independence from Spain was achieved, Bradburn remained in the Mexican army as a lieutenant colonel and an aide to Iturbide. He married a titled heiress, María Josefa Hurtado de Mendoza, whose family-owned property on the Zócalo, the House of Tiles. Bradburn survived the numerous political changes of the 1820s and in 1830 was appointed commander of a new garrison on Galveston Bay. Commandant Gen. Manuel de Mier y Terán ordered him to locate a site for the fort, a military town, and a customhouse, to be named Anahuac. Bradburn chose Perry's Point, overlooking the mouth of the Trinity. The Law of April 6, 1830 , endeavored to "Mexicanize" Texas by limiting future immigration from the United States and to encourage native Mexicans to populate Texas. Bradburn encountered hostility from his fellow Anglo-Americans when he tried to carry out Mier y Terán's orders, which included inspecting land titles, issuing licenses to Anglo lawyers, and enforcing the customs laws of the nation. The exemption from paying tariffs granted to Austin's colonists had expired, and the federal government expected the revenue to pay for the six new military posts guarding the entrances to Texas. William B. Travis was among the leaders opposing Bradburn, and he violated the military laws governing the post by words and deeds calculated to stir a rebellion. When Bradburn arrested him and other leaders of the movement, emotional outcries on the Brazos started a force marching to attack Anahuac. The rebels invaded the village on June 10, 1832, and Bradburn agreed to an exchange of prisoners-Travis and the other Anglos in exchange for nineteen cavalrymen ambushed by the insurgents the previous day-and withdrawal of the insurgent force. The

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Briscoe, Andrew

1835

Andrew Briscoe, merchant, patriot, judge, and railroad promoter, was born on November 25, 1810, on the plantation of his father, Parmenas Briscoe, in Claiborne County, Mississippi. He made several trips on horseback between Mississippi and Texas before settling in Texas, where he registered in 1833 as a citizen of Coahuila and Texas . With a shipment of goods he opened a store in Anahuac in 1835. Briscoe opposed the irregular collection of customs dues by Mexican authorities at Anahuac and presented resolutions of protest at a mass meeting there and later at Harrisburg. When he attempted to trade to DeWitt Clinton Harris goods with unpaid duties, both he and Harris were arrested by Mexican officials. They were released when William B. Travis and his volunteers came to drive Antonio Tenorio out of office ( see ANAHUAC DISTURBANCES ). In July Briscoe wrote to the editor of the Brazoria Texas Republican justifying the action taken. In August he received a congratulatory letter from Travis. Briscoe was captain of the Liberty Volunteers at the battle of Concepción and followed Benjamin R. Milam in the siege of Bexar . He was elected a delegate from his municipality with Lorenzo de Zavala and attended the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos, but evidently because of the urgency of reentering military service he did not remain until its close. At the battle of San Jacinto he was captain of Company A, Infantry Regulars. In 1836 Briscoe was appointed chief justice of Harrisburg by Sam Houston . When his term ended in 1839, he began dealing in cattle and trying to promote a railroad. In 1839 he planned a road from Harrisburg to the Brazos River. In 1840, when the project was abandoned, about two miles had been graded and laid with ties. That year, in a paper entitled "California Railroad," he gave a complete plan for building a railroad from Harrisburg to San Diego via Richmond, Prairieville, Austin, and El Paso. In 1841 he secured a charter from the Republic of Texas for the Harrisburg Railroad and Trading Company, of which he was president. In the spring of 1849 Briscoe moved his family to New Orleans, where he engaged in banking and brokerage until his death, on October 4, 1849. He was survived by his wife, Mary Jane Harris Briscoe , and four children.

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Fort Anahuac

1830

On this site first known as Perry's Point, a fort, established in 1830 by General Manuel Mier y Teran for the purpose of halting Anglo-American colonization was named Anahuac, the Aztec name of Mexico City, then the capital of Texas. The imprisonment here of settlers in Austin's colony brought the first open rebellion to Mexican rule in 1832. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

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Williamson, Robert McAlpin

1827

(1804-1859) Crippled by disease at 15, with a leg permanently bent at the knee, wore a pegleg which like his two natural legs was covered with his trousers. Hence he was nicknamed "Three-Legged Willie." Settled in Texas in 1827 to practice law. Here at Fort Anahuac in 1832, he made an heroic stand against the commandant, Juan Davis Bradburn, who had jailed his client and friend, Patrick C. Jack, and William Barret Travis (later Alamo commander). Bradburn and associates made a false agreement to exchange Jack and Travis for Mexican soldiers captured earlier by Williamson's men. Following a confrontation, Bradburn at last gave up the Texans, resigned his command, and left Fort Anahuac. But after this betrayal, Williamson took up cause of Texas independence, fighting with words and then with arms at Battle of San Jacinto. A district judge and a justice of first supreme court of the Republic (1836-39), he also served as a lawmaker, 5th throug 9th congresses (1840-45). In a noted episode, a ruffian is said to have drawn a Bowie knife, saying, "This is the law," but Judge williamson covered it with his pistol, declaring, "This is the constitution which overrules the law."

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Anahuac, Texas

Music in Anahuac

Songs About Anahuac

Artists From Anahuac

Rivers & Roads in Song near Anahuac

History of Anahuac

Where Travis Sat in a Brick Kiln RoadyGoat

The Alligator Capital Throws a Party Every September RoadyGoat

The Marsh Decides Whether a Gator Is Male or Female RoadyGoat

Travis, William Barret

Garrett, Patrick Floyd Jarvis

Bradburn, John [Juan] Davis

Briscoe, Andrew

Fort Anahuac

Williamson, Robert McAlpin

Things to Do in Anahuac

Everything Near Anahuac