Spanish Missions of the Central Gulf Coast
Goliad and Refugio now home to the historic sites
The Gulf Coast of Texas has a robust history, from the bold stories of the natives to European development of this “New World,” Texas. In 1721, Presidio La Bahía and Mission Nuestra Señora Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga were located on Garcitas Creek, at the site of the ill-fated Fort St. Louis, built by La Salle in 1685.
Mission Espíritu Santo’s second site was located on Tonkawa Bank at Victoria’s Riverside Park. In the 1990s, an archeological dig validated the site. Site two for Presidio La Bahia and the third for Mission Espíritu Santo was on the Guadalupe River, northwest of Victoria near Mission Valley. Stone buildings were built in 1726. These remains are visible, and the owners have a bed and breakfast. So make a reservation at Spirit Inn of Mission Valley and experience early Spanish Texas.
Rendering of Nuestra Señora Del Refugio — to be reconstructed adjacent to its original site currently located under Highway US 77 in Refugio.
The last site for the Presidio and Mission is on the San Antonio River near Goliad. They moved here in 1749 to deter encroachment of the English and French. Mission Espíritu Santo flourished here. At the mission’s peak, it had more than 40,000 head of cattle, but by the 1780s, only 8,000 head remained.
In the 1930s, the ruins of the Mission Espíritu Santo were surveyed and restoration began, and it is now part of the Texas State Park System. The Presidio La Bahía remained in ruin until the mid-1960s when rancher/philanthropist Kathryn O’Connor’s Foundation funded the restoration. In 1967, the presidio was designated a National Historic Landmark. Today one can tour the presidio and its grounds. On Sundays at 5 p.m., mass is said in Our Lady of Loreto Chapel, serving the community since 1779.
CROSS PURPOSES West side of Presidio La Bahía looking toward Loreto Chapel with the museum entrance in the foreground.
In Refugio, Karankawa Chief Fresada Pinta requested a new mission. In 1791, Father Manuel Silva, the Superior of Missions in Texas, and Chief Pinta chose a high bank on Goff Bayou near the Cayo of Refugio, just northwest of Long Mott, as the first site of Mission Nuestra Señora Del Refugio. This site proved to be unhealthy.
In 1793, the second site, at the mouth of the Guadalupe River, was called Rancho de los Mosquitos. Its name provides a clue as to why it was moved for a final time in 1795 to Rancho de Santa Gertrudis on the Mission River, now the town of Refugio. Little remains of this last mission. Archeological studies were done — one in 1936 by Monsignor Oberste and another by TxDOT while making improvements to U.S. Highway 77, uncovering the foundations of the cruciform chapel.
So if you drive through the south end of town on U.S. Highway 77 and pass a stately Catholic church, you’ll be driving over what was once considered, by a traveler in the 1820s, “one of the most beautiful missions in Texas” — even in ruin.
Currently, the third attempt to build a replica of Mission Nuestra Señora del Refugio is under way. The goal is a museum that tells the stories of the native Texans and of Spanish Colonial Texas. The third time may be the charm.
