What is the oldest tree in Gonzales, Texas?
The tree we map for Gonzales is the Sam Houston Oak, a live oak of undocumented age standing beside the Braches House off CR 361, about 13 km east of town. Sam Houston and as many as four hundred Texans camped under it on 13 March 1836 as they began the retreat known as the Runaway Scrape, the night after word reached Gonzales that the Alamo had fallen. It is on private land but stands plainly visible from the public road.
The Sam Houston Oak stands beside the Braches House off County Road 361, about 13 km east of Gonzales, Texas, reached by car; there is no public transit this far into rural Gonzales County, and neither Houston nor San Antonio, our nearest published cities, is within a 30-minute day-trip radius. The house and the land the oak stands on are private, and visitors cannot enter. The tree is plainly visible from CR 361, a public dirt road, and a Texas historical marker has stood at the roadside turn since 1936, so the site is easy to find even though the tree itself cannot be approached. No age has ever been published for it, only that it was already large enough in 1836 for several hundred men to camp beneath. One account places Santa Anna's forces under the same tree about three weeks later; no reliable source confirms it, so treat it as a story attached to the tree rather than a fact about it.
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