Pixiq

I am a Texan.  

From the time I was a small boy I can remember my parents hauling all over the state showing me culturally and historically important sites and teaching me how to be a Texan.

As I think back those are happy times.

Fast forward thirty years and now I am a dad myself, and like my mom and dad, I think it’s important for me to share those same lessons with my kids and instill in them, the same pride of place which was taught to me three decades prior.  Therefore, we hit the road often.

It wasn’t long ago that I took my family on a big swing down the Texas Indepence trail.  Like many, we’ve been to the Alamo many times but this time, we decided to go to lesser known sites and envelope ourselves in a significance pieces of history that took place 175 years ago.

Our first stop was outside of Gonzalez at Cost, Texas.  Cost is the site of the first shot of the Texas war for independence from Mexico and inspired the "Come and Take It" flag in which Texans rallied around after that fateful day in October of 1835.

From there we traveled to Washington on the Brazos near Brenham.  Washington on the Brazos is the site where delegates from the fledgling country convened and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836.  The declaration, authored by George Childress, was debated and signed in a little wooden shack just up the bank from the Brazos River.  It is a place of quiet contemplation and I sense that my kids realize that as they run their hands across the stone marker and explore the empty space of the convention hall.

From a distance, La Porte, Texas looks like an industrial town full of refineries.  However, as you get closer to the San Jacinto battleground you start to notice immense murals depicting the final battle in the war for Texas Independence painted on the side of the petroleum storage tanks.

Then you see it.

Pointing skyward 567 feet in the air and topped with a 220-ton Texas star, the San Jacinto Monument is a fitting tribute to the battle that took place on April 21, 1836.  At the battle, Sam Houston led his band of Texas volunteers against a well armed and well organized Mexican Army under the leadership Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.  

In 18 minutes the battle was over and a nation was born.