La Bahia Presidio Goliad
— the walls that remember the spring of 1836.
Not only on a wall.
La Bahia Presidio Goliad, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Presidio La Bahia has held its limestone walls above the San Antonio River since 1749. Spanish soldiers, Mexican federalists, and Texan revolutionaries each passed through the gate in turn. On Palm Sunday of 1836, more than three hundred prisoners under Colonel Fannin were marched out and shot on Santa Anna's order. The chapel of Our Lady of Loreto still holds services on Sundays.
The place, in three passes.
Presidio Nuestra Senora de Loreto de la Bahia sits on a low bluff above the San Antonio River, about a mile south of present-day Goliad, Texas. The fort was founded in 1721 on Matagorda Bay, moved inland in 1726, and reached its current site in 1749. The stone walls and chapel that stand today date largely from that 1749 construction, with substantial restoration in the 1960s funded by the Kathryn Stoner O'Connor Foundation. The site is owned and operated by the Catholic Diocese of Victoria.
The presidio is built from local cretaceous limestone quarried within a few miles of the site. The outer walls run roughly a quadrangle, with bastions at the southwest and northeast corners overlooking the river bottom. The chapel of Our Lady of Loreto stands at the northwest corner of the parade ground, its single nave and small bell tower little changed since the eighteenth century. The 1960s restoration replaced much of the wooden interior framing but kept the original stone wherever it still stood.
Palm Sunday 1836 fixed the site in American memory. Colonel James Fannin's command, captured after the Battle of Coleto, was held in the chapel for a week and marched out on March 27 to be executed by order of Santa Anna. About 342 prisoners died; a smaller group escaped or was spared. The cry that followed at San Jacinto three weeks later, Remember Goliad, bound the massacre to the founding of the Texas Republic.
