Editor’s note: This is another in an ongoing series of articles we call “Marking History” looking at the stories behind the hundreds of historic markers scattered about the Crossroads.
We are here because the river is here.
Victoria’s founder chose the town’s location almost 200 years ago simply because the Guadalupe River was close by and fordable near town.
Both the original townsite and the river were named for Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, with the river receiving its name more than 130 years before the town’s founding.
Hidden in the story of how the river was named is the unusual mention of the capture, by Spaniards, of Jean Jarry, “a naked, aged, and confused Frenchman” usurping New Spain’s shores, living with Native peoples north of the Rio Grande, in southeast Texas.
Presently, near the bridge over the Guadalupe River, along the 700 block of South Moody Street and surrounded by debris deposited by high waters which have since receded, sits a historical marker simply titled “Guadalupe River.”
A brief text on the marker summarizes the local history of the river.
First, a brief description of the Guadalupe River and of the general importance of waterways to American history may serve as a helpful introduction.
“America has more than 250,000 rivers — over 3 million miles — dissecting the fields, cities and forests of the nation. These aren’t just any rivers; these are world-class rivers. Rivers have shaped the basic facts of America. Rivers have shaped where we live,” Martin Doyle, a Duke University professor of river science, recently wrote.
The Texas State Historical Association described the Guadalupe River in an article written by Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl.
“The river rises in two forks in western Kerr County,” Smryl wrote. It travels 239 miles through Kerr, Kendall, Comal, Guadalupe, Gonzales, DeWitt and Victoria counties.
The upper river flows, in part, across the Edwards Plateau — the place of its beginning, the “southernmost unit of the Great Plains.” This portion of the river, fed by perennial springs, is clear and has a number of waterfalls.
“The lower Guadalupe is generally much quieter and has more sand bars that lend themselves to camping and day use,” Smryl wrote. (This includes the passable portion of the river which made the Victoria area ideal for settlement.)
The Guadalupe River flows past Victoria and meets with the San Antonio River before entering San Antonio Bay, southwest of Matagorda Bay.
Back to the Guadalupe River historical marker on South Moody Street. Its first sentence reads, “Discovered in this vicinity on April 14, 1689, by Alonso de Leon.”
All the land over which the river flows belonged to Spain and was called New Spain at the time of the Spanish discovery and naming of the Guadalupe River in 1689. Native peoples had lived along the river’s banks for, perhaps, tens of thousands of years at the time of its discovery by Spain.
When news reached Spanish officials, in the mid-1680s, that the French had founded a colony on the northern Gulf Coast, they sent Alonso de Leon to “find the foreign interlopers and extirpate their colony,” according to a state historical association article.
De Leon would lead four expeditions north of the Rio Grande in southeast Texas.
De Leon’s first two expeditions found no evidence of French colonists; however, he was sent on a third expedition, launched in May 1688, “in response to news that a White man dwelled among Indians in a rancheria (temporary settlement) to the north of the Rio Grande.”
This third expedition is when de Leon captured Jarry.
De Leon’s fourth expedition discovered the ruins of Fort St. Louis near present day Victoria and named the Guadalupe River in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, all during the month of April in 1689. Jarry went along, as a prisoner, on this final expedition.
Sadly, Jarry fades from the historic record after this expedition.
Moving forward in time to another April day, this one in 1824, and the final two sentences of the historic marker, “Here, at a ford, used since Indian days, Empresario Martin de Leon founded the town of Victoria in 1824.”
On hand at the Victoria Regional History Center is a copy of A. Carolina Castillo Crimm’s “De Leon, a Tejano Family History,” a superb source for information on Victoria’s founding.
“On April 8, 1824, [Martin] de Leon … respectfully petitioned for permission to found a colony on the Guadalupe River in Texas,” Crimm wrote. “De Leon promised, as empresario, to bring 41 families from Nuevo Santander at his own expense to establish the town of Villa de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Jesus [later named Victoria].”
Thus, Victoria was born of a passable spot — a ford — in the Guadalupe River.
One final note: In 2017, Texas A&M University Press published a book titled “Of Texas Rivers & Texas Art.” One of the authors, Andrew Sansom, wrote a moving tribute to rivers and human history.
“Like human life itself, rivers move and flow through the landscape, through the legends of humanity, and through different nations and cultures, transforming and evolving as they make their winding journey from their sources to their final destinations.”
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