Highmountain
Hero Member
I always intended to check this out when I lived in Central Texas and never got around to it. During my research on the Texan Santa Fe Expedition of 1841 I came across an incident and never could find where it had been recovered anytime later.
In 1841 when the Expedition left from Brushy Creek [Kinney Fort] and rolled north across the prairies they discovered early the wagons were overloaded and would never survive the trip over that kind of terrain. They camped at [now] Mankin's Crossing on the San Gabriel [now] midway between Georgetown and Taylor and redistributed the loads, discarding a lot to create space for redistributing the remainder.
One of the things they dumped into the San Gabriel was a wagonload of lead carried by a wagon belonging to Jose Antonio Navarro, one of the big guns of early Texas history. Navarro made it back to Texas eventually after imprisonment in Mexico and he might have gotten around to recovering the lead, but if he did so it was never mentioned anywhere I looked for evidence he had done it.
The Gabriel evidently had alligators in it in those days and there might even have been some hesitation on the part of people of the time to try to dive [assuming it was deep enough to dive]. The surviving diaries and accounts by members describe the soldiers occupying themselves while they were camped shooting alligators. In fact, one of the members on guard accidently shot and killed another member that night thinking him to be a Comanche.
A trip with a good metal detector to Mankins Crossing might just provide a surprise for someone.
Jack
In 1841 when the Expedition left from Brushy Creek [Kinney Fort] and rolled north across the prairies they discovered early the wagons were overloaded and would never survive the trip over that kind of terrain. They camped at [now] Mankin's Crossing on the San Gabriel [now] midway between Georgetown and Taylor and redistributed the loads, discarding a lot to create space for redistributing the remainder.
One of the things they dumped into the San Gabriel was a wagonload of lead carried by a wagon belonging to Jose Antonio Navarro, one of the big guns of early Texas history. Navarro made it back to Texas eventually after imprisonment in Mexico and he might have gotten around to recovering the lead, but if he did so it was never mentioned anywhere I looked for evidence he had done it.
The Gabriel evidently had alligators in it in those days and there might even have been some hesitation on the part of people of the time to try to dive [assuming it was deep enough to dive]. The surviving diaries and accounts by members describe the soldiers occupying themselves while they were camped shooting alligators. In fact, one of the members on guard accidently shot and killed another member that night thinking him to be a Comanche.
A trip with a good metal detector to Mankins Crossing might just provide a surprise for someone.
Jack
