Spanish missions in Texas

In addition to the presidio (fortified church) and pueblo (town), the misión was one of the three major agencies employed by the Spanish crown to extend its borders and consolidate its colonial territories.

The eastern Tejas missions were a direct response to fear of French encroachment when the remains of La Salle's Fort Saint Louis were discovered near Matagorda Bay in 1689, and a response to the first permanent French outposts along the Gulf Coast ten years later.

As buildings became more elaborate, mission occupants learned masonry and carpentry under the direction of craftsmen contracted by the missionaries.

Although colonial law specified no precise time for this transition to take effect, increasing pressure for the secularization of most missions developed in the last decades of the 18th century.

This mission system was developed in response to the often very detrimental results of leaving the Hispanic control of relations with Native Americans on the expanding frontier to overly enterprising civilians and soldiers.

A church called Santa María de las Caldas was built by the Franciscans in 1730, after the establishment of Texas's final mission, Nuestra Señora del Refugio.

In the first few years of the new Republic of Mexico—between 1824 and 1830—all the missions still operating in Texas were officially secularized, with the sole exception of those in the El Paso district, which were turned over to diocesan pastors only in 1852.

In 1779, Antonio Gil Y'Barbo led a group of settlers who had been removed from Los Adaes to the area to settle in the empty mission buildings.

Reestablished in 1762 on the Nueces River with the new name of San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz (del Cañon).. Reestablished in 1762 on the Sabinal River with the new name of Nuestra Señora de la (Purísima Concepción) Candelaria del Cañon.