Misión San Francisco de los Tejas

Texas highway 21 follows the route of the old San Antonio Road, also called El Camino Real de los Tejas. This road connected places like Natchitoches, Nacogdoches, and San Antonio with the road systems in Mexico.  If you follow it west from Nacogdoches, there are a number sites of interest along the way, including the Caddo Mounds near Alto, and Mission Tejas State Park, near Weches.

The justification for this park is the supposition that the first Spanish mission in East Texas, San Francisco de los Tejas, was located in this general area. 

It is not surprising that the precise location is unknown, since the mission was little more than a few log structures. We don't know exactly what any of these structures would have looked like, but there is a small log chapel there to help us imagine:

As you can see, the natural setting is rather stunning, especially in autumn. 

If the building is not really Spanish colonial, it's at least interesting. Notice the hatchet-style door handle:

The interior is charmingly rustic. 

As, you can see, there is space for worship services and other meetings. I imagine that it would be hard to fall asleep on those log benches! I'd like to someday convince some of my students to come out here and put on short plays from the Spanish Golden Age for campers. Since the original mission was established during the seventeenth century, I think it would be appropriate to give people a little taste of the entertainment of the period.

The builders of this replica obviously had some fun with it. Notice the image of a dove that appears in the masonry of the mantel:

No park in Texas is complete without a "lone star." This one is on the floor at the entrance to the log chapel:

There is at least one authentic Spanish construction in the park: a stretch of the original Camino Real that you can walk on.

For those who would rather fish, there is a little pond full of bream:

Finally, there is also a bit of authentic nineteenth-century Anglo-Texas history in this park. 

This is the Rice family home. Apparently they were involved in logging. The home was moved here at some point from its original location.

Even if the original site of San Francisco de los Tejas is unknown, Mission Tejas State Park is a fantastic place to imagine what it would have been like for the Spanish friars to try to establish a mission in an endless forest. I can't think of a better reason to visit a park.