The Columbia Historical Museum will be hosting a special program Saturday, October 21, 2023, featuring Chris Kneupper discussing “The Forts Velasco: Gone … but No Longer Lost.” The event is free and open to the public.
The program will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday. The Columbia Historical Museum is located at 247 East Brazos Avenue in West Columbia in the old First Capitol Bank building.
Kneupper is a retired research scientist at Dow Chemical, an avocational archaeologist and a Texas master naturalist. He has lived in Brazoria County for over 45 years. In 2020 he published a Cradle of Texas Chapter Master Naturalists’ article on “Chronological and Archaeological History of the Forts Velasco” and contributed to another article on “A Geophysical Investigation of the Old Velasco Site at Surfside Beach in Brazoria County.”
Kneupper is a charter member of the Brazosport Archaeological Society and a long-term member of the Texas Archaeological Society who has participated in many excavations in the county and around the Lone Star State. He is also a member of the Sons of the Republic of Texas.
He sits on the board of the Cradle of Texas Conservancy, a local land trust that has a long-term goal of financing and managing the proposed building of a replica of the 1832 fort near its former site at Surfside Beach.
Fort Velasco was originally constructed by Mexican soldiers at the present day location of Surfside Beach in Brazoria County. The fort sat on the northeast bank at the mouth of the Brazos River on the Texas Gulf Coast. The name Fort Velasco also applied to at least three other forts built at practically the same location, one during the Texas Revolution and two during the Civil War.
“Old Velasco at the original mouth of the Brazos River played a more significant role in early Texas history than is generally recognized today,” said Michael Bailey, current curator of the Columbia Historical Museum. “First, as the main port of entry for Austin’s Colony, then as the site of several strategic military forts and the towns of Velasco and Quintana, and finally as home to various government posts – a whole lot of Texas history passed through this port – before declining in the late 1800s. In recent decades, there has also been great local interest in building a replica of the first military fort built in 1832, when Texas was part of the Mexican Republic.
“Named originally Fortaleza de Velasco, the name was also used for the town which grew up around the site for some decades afterward,” Bailey said. “The town of Velasco was eventually moved upstream in 1891, becoming part of Freeport in 1957, and the name disappeared from the maps. Interestingly, the 1832 fort was in existence for only a very short time but was the site of an early confrontation between Texas colonists and the Mexican military called the Battle of Velasco.”
The Treaties of Velasco which recognized Texas independence from Mexico were signed at Fort Velasco on May 14, 1836. Velasco received a Texas state historical marker in 1965 acknowledging the 1832 conflict between the Mexican Monarchy forces and the Texian colonists.
October is Texas Archaeology Month. For more information about Chris Kneupper’s talk about Fort Velasco at the museum Saturday, contact Michael J. Bailey, curator of the Columbia Historical Museum, at (979) 345-6125. The Columbia Historical Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Light refreshments will be served at Saturday afternoon’s program.