With apologies to folks if this grow tiresome...

Smithwick made about eight miles that first day....

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm

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At the Salado I spent the night with a couple of men who were improving a place there.


...and later, after losing his rifle in the Guadalupe and turning back wrote...

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When I got back to the cabin on the Salado, where I had so lately passed the night, I was amazed to find it plundered and deserted, with horse tracks all around it. Further on the road was torn up and trampled, evidently the result of a skirmish. Near by lay a blood-stained blanket. Unable to even conjecture what it all meant, I kept on towards San Antonio, meeting with no solution of the mystery until within a few miles of town, where I came to a Mexican rancho, and was then told that the Comanches had been on a raid, killing a Mexican vaquero and running off a drove of horses, after which they had met up with the rangers, who had started back to the Colorado. The Indians were in such numbers that, while a portion of them kept the rangers engaged, a detail got off with the horses. For some reason the rangers did not pursue them. So far from coming in for a treaty, the red devils had come in on a raid.

My hosts of the Salado, who had fled to town, there much surprised to see me, as, indeed, were all my company. The two men with whom I had stayed over night said I had been gone less than half an hour when the yelling demons charged down on their cabin from the direction in which I had gone, and, inasmuch as I was mounted on a slow steed, they were sure that I had been run down and killed, and had so reported in town.


North of 410 where we left it, Nacodoches, four lanes wide, meanders for two miles past older neighborhoods, business and apartment complexes. The Salado running north-south maybe a quarter mile east.

Finally Nacodoches Road opens up on the approach to the creek, the creek itself at that point come from the northwest and then is directed south at the base of a tall bluff, visible in the background of this pic. One hundred and seventy three years ago the location of this pic would qualify for wilderness status today.

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West (upstream) of the crossing of the modern roadway, the creekbed has been flood-controlled into oblivion.

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On the downstream side of the road lies a park with soccer fields, the creek running through a band of woodlands at the base of the bluff, behind this landscaping business. Almost dry in this drought, mostly carrying runoff from lawns and such...

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All that can be said with a certainty here is that the creek always turned south at the base of that bluff, but after more than 100 years of enclosed ranching and farming, and then another forty years of increasingly heavy urbanization, who can say where the mud in the creek came from or how much it resembles the prairie stream of 1838?

Another minor drainage (nowadays in a concrete ditch) feeds in here too. This spot is prone to flooding, and was likely often wet in 1837 too. Dunno if the road really did cross the Salado at this very place back then or where exactly Smithwick stayed overnight, but likely that tall bluff was a familiar landmark to travellers like Smithwick, and to them Comanches what tore through there the next morning.

Worth noting that, maybe ten miles downstream from this point, and maybe four years later, a major fight against Mexican troops would take place on "the prairie around Salado Creek"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salado_Creek_(1842)

Birdwatcher

"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744