Winner, Presidio La Bahia Award, 2004
San Antonio Conservation Society Citation, 2005

La familia de Leon was one of the foundation stones on which Texas was built. Martin de Leon and his wife Patricia de la Garza left a comfortable life in Mexico for the hardships and uncertainties of the Texas frontier in 1801. Together, they established family ranches in South Texas and, in 1824, the town of Victoria and the de Leon colony on the Guadalupe River (along with Stephen F. Austin's colony, the only completely successful colonization effort in Texas). They and their...