The day after the Battle of San Jacinto, Texian scouts captured General Santa Anna near Vince’s Bayou in present-day Pasadena. They led the Mexican general back to the Texian camp, where he sat with an injured Sam Houston under an oak and agreed to a ceasefire.
The tree the two generals sat beneath became known as the Surrender Tree.
The Surrender Tree was the site of a pivotal moment in Texas’s history, but it also grew on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, which connects the city of Houston to Galveston Bay. Dredging of the bayou began in the 1870s, and by 1914, it was wide enough and deep enough for ocean-going ships to sail directly to the Port of Houston.
The transformation of Buffalo Bayou into the Houston Ship Channel was key to the city’s economic growth, but it came at the cost of the Surrender Tree. This development, along with hurricanes and erosion, ate away at the banks of the Battleground and by 1924, the tree had been washed away.
The original marker, which matched the other eighteen, disappeared at the same time. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas replaced it with the current marker, engraved with a copy of William Henry Huddle’s painting “The Surrender of Santa Anna,” in 1936.