By Bob Bowman
Special to the Journal

Los Adaes is an East Texas ghost town that never made it to East Texas.

Between l721 and l773, it was the colonial capital of Spanish Texas, but when the Republic of Texas emerged and the Texas boundary between the Republic and Louisiana changed, Los Adaes found itself stuck in Louisiana.

Time has obliterated all traces of the old capital, but it's still a shrine that intrigues Texas tourists who make their way to the old outpost deep in the piney woods near Robeline, La.

Texans are so fascinated by the presence of a Texas shrine in Louisiana that Robeline's businessmen rarely miss a day pointing out the black-topped road that leads to the ghost village and a stone monument.

Robeline established the Los Adaes Foundation in l972 with the goal of getting the site placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

That was achieved in l978 and the site offers visitors a good look at what Los Adaes looked like when it was a colonial capital.

Nuestra Senora del Pilar de los Adaes dates back to the early l700s when Spanish soldiers, padres and settlers pushed across the Sabine River (today's Texas-Louisiana border) and into the midst of the Adae Indian territory.

As a safeguard against French encroachment from Canada by way of the Mississippi, East Texas was temporarily occupied by the Spanish between l690 and l693 with Los Adaes and Mission San Francisco de los Tejas.

By l694, Spanish fear of the French had subsided, East Texas was abandoned and the Spanish frontier had receded to below the Rio Grande River.

But in l699, when the French founded their first colony in Louisiana, Spain's title to Texas was again threatened. The French had decided to use Louisiana as a base for smuggling French goods into Mexico by way of Texas, alarming Spanish authorities.

Once again, the Spanish decided that missions, forts and a civil authority should be established in East Texas. Ironically, it was a Frenchman, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, who had been chosen to guide the Spanish party to the very doorsteps of the French.

St. Denis led the Spanish through the forests of the Adae, and near what is now Robeline, the group built a crude church and a few log dwellings only 12 miles from the French outpost at Natchitoches.

The padres worked among the Indians and trade flourished between the Spanish and French posts until 1719 when war broke out between the two countries.

Natchitoches' French commander, feeling that he should perform some war-like duty, sent a French "force" of seven soldiers to capture the Spanish fort at Los Adaes.

Only two occupants were at Los Adaes that day. The French commander ordered seizure of the two Spaniards, church equipment and the chickens pecking away in the mission yard.

Flapping their wings in an effort to escape, the chickens frightened the Frenchmen's horses, which knocked down the French leader.

The French returned to Natchitoches with one prisoner and the chickens, but the noise made by the chickens at the mission had made possible the escape of a Spaniard to spread the news of the French raid on Los Adaes.

Word of the French invasion in Texas reached the other missions in the vicinity and the frightened Spaniards in East Texas fled to San Antonio. Spanish authorities feared that the entire northern frontier of the New Spain was endangered by the French assault on Los Adaes.

The result was an expedition into Texas in l721 by the second Marquis of San Miguel De Aguayo, governor and captain-general of the province of Coahuila and Texas.

One of the original missionaries to Los Adaes, Father Antonio Margil, and a small band returned to Los Adaes with this expedition. The church was rebuilt and across a small valley, a fort was constructed and equipped with 100 soldiers and six cannon pieces. The fort was apparently well-planned and built to endure. It had six sides and was made of rock with three bastions at opposite corners, each commanding two sides of 50 varas (33.33 inches) in length. The fort was also surrounded by moats and was large enough to house a governor's mansion, chapel, barracks, stables and some 300 soldiers.

That same year, Aguayo set up headquarters at Los Adaes and it became the first capital of Texas. It was to remain so about 52 years.

Los Adaes and Natchitoches bickered a lot over boundaries, illegal trading and slave-stealing most of the time, but not everyone was hostile. At one point, the young daughter of the commander of Los Adaes; slipped away to Natchitoches to marry a French soldier.

The Texas outpost began to decline in l769 when a year-long famine ravaged the countryside. Finally, in l773, the surviving soldiers and settlers packed their belongings on the backs of mules and started back across the Sabine, content to leave the outpost to the French.

This time, they were gone for good--and Los Adaes was left to rot in Louisiana.

(Bob Bowman of Lufkin is the author of more than 30 books about East Texas and author of the forthcoming book, "Forgotten Towns of East Texas.")

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