A Week in Castroville, Texas

Landmark Inn State Historic Site

Henry Castro chose this site to build his house, store, stage stop and post office because it was 25 miles or one days wagon ride from San Antonio. On this site, 27 people established this European style village in 1844 and called it Castroville. This state historic site has a number of preserved buildings.

This Carriage House, part of the State Historic Site is now used as a Bed and Breakfast.

San Antonio Missions National Historic Park

This chain of missions established along the San Antonio River in the 1700s is a reminder of one of Spain's most successful attempts to extend their domination north from New Spain (Mexico). The goal of the expansion was to find riches. As the realization of riches faded, the new goal was to spread the Catholic faith among the Indians. The most famous of the missions is Mission San Antonio, commonly called the Alamo. We have visited the Alamo many times, so this time we decided to spend the day visiting the rest of the missions in the National Historic Park. We started at the most northern mission and traveled south.

Mission Concepcion

This is one of the country's oldest original stone churches.

Religious services are still held to this day.

Mission San Jose

The National Historic Park is headquartered at this Mission.

The size of the complex testifies to San Jose's reputation as the "Queen of the Missions."

The altar area was very beautiful.

Mission San Juan Capistrano

 Missions Espada

This southern most mission was originally named San Francisco de la Espada

We had a very beautiful day and enjoyed our travel along the historic Mission Trail. We arrived at our destination, the Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR on November 2 for another season of volunteering.