San Jacinto, one of the world’s decisive battles.
San Jacinto, where, with cries of "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!" Sam Houston and his ragged band of 910 pioneers routed Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President and Dictator of Mexico and self-styled "Napoleon of the West," with his proud army, and changed the map of North America!
The actual battle of San Jacinto lasted less than twenty minutes, but it was in the making for six years. It had its prelude in the oppressive Mexican edict of April 6, 1830, prohibiting further emigration of Anglo-Americans from the United States to Texas; in the disturbance at Anahuac and in the battle of Velasco, in 1832; in the imprisonment of Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas," in Mexico in 1834. Immediate preliminaries were the skirmish over a cannon at Gonzales; the capture of Goliad; the "Grass Fight," and the siege and capture of San Antonio . . . all in 1836. The Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, officially signalized the revolution
The San Jacinto Monument is a 567.31-foot (172.9 m)[1] high column located on the Houston Ship Channel in Harris County, Texas near the city of Deer Park. The monument is topped with a 220-ton star that commemorates the site of the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive battle of the Texas Revolution. The monument, constructed between 1936 and 1939 and dedicated on April 21, 1939, is the world's tallest monumental column and is part of the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site.
By comparison, the Washington Monument is 555 feet 5⅛ inches tall. The column is an octagonal shaft faced with Texas Cordova shellstone, topped with a 34-foot (10 m) Lone Star - the symbol of Texas. Visitors can take an elevator to the monument's observation deck for a view of Houston and the USS Texas.
The San Jacinto Museum of History is located inside the base of the monument, and focuses on the history of the Battle of San Jacinto and Texas culture and heritage. The San Jacinto Battlefield, of which the monument is a part, was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1960, and is therefore also automatically listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[2] It was designated an Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1992.[3]
A panel on the side of the monument at San Jacinto today underscores the importance of the battle after more than a century and a half of reflection: "Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the States of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty."