Sacred Springs

The Indigenous Cultures Institute revived that tradition 14 years ago with the Sacred Springs Powwow, which is held annually in October. 

Water wasn’t the only critical resource available at the springs, Reid says. Located at the convergence of the rocky terrain of the Hill Country and the coastal grasslands, the area provided access to a variety of food sources, from ancient bison to turtles, and pecans to prickly pear. Indigenous people also relied on the abundance of chert—a stone found in riverbeds and within limestone outcroppings—to make projectile points, knives, and scrapers.

“Chert is a good quality tool stone,” says Reid, a lithic analyst who’s studying the Spring Lake site and the Comal Springs site in New Braunfels for her doctoral dissertation. “My research is looking at the stone tools and the debitage—the byproduct of making stone tools—from different excavations to understand how tools were made and the technological shifts that happened through time.”

The first Europeans to encounter the San Marcos Springs were Spanish explorers in the 1690s. They gave the river its Spanish name and camped at the springs. The Spanish moved three missions to San Marcos in 1775, but the outposts lasted only a few years. No archaeological evidence of the mission structures has been found, and their exact locations are a mystery.

Spanish accounts refer to multiple Indigenous groups congregating at spring sites along the Balcones Escarpment, Reid says. Records from the Domingo Terán de los Ríos expedition in 1691 refer to the Cantona Indians camping at the San Marcos and Comal springs. Around 1600, tribes including the Tonkawa from Oklahoma and the Lipan and Comanche from the Great Plains began moving into Central Texas and displaced the earlier inhabitants of the area.

Following the Texas Revolution in 1836, the Republic of Texas built Post San Marcos at the river’s headwaters in 1840 to protect a new road between San Antonio and Austin. The post was disbanded after one year, but Post Road still runs adjacent to Spring Lake.

A few years later, in 1845, Edward Burleson, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, bought a 640-acre portion of an old Spanish land grant including the San Marcos Springs. Burleson built a cabin for his family on the hill overlooking the springs, and his family raised crops and animals in the river valley.

Burleson also built the first dam on the San Marcos River, located roughly where Kerbey Lane Cafe sits today. The dam powered mills and became a commercial center for San Marcos, but it also changed the face of the San Marcos Springs. With the springs submerged under the lake’s surface, weary travelers no longer encountered the marvel of water gushing out of the ground.

Today, the Meadows Center protects Spring Lake and offers glass-bottom boat tours that provide a view of the springs bubbling up from the bottom of the lake. It’s a magical sight—and the latest chapter in the story of this persistent place.