During the Mexican Administration of Texas, the Gonzales Road connected the settlement of Gonzales in the DeWitt Colony to San Antonio de Bexar and crossed Cibolo Creek, or Rio Cibolo, about twenty two miles east of San Antonio. From its origins near present day Boerne to its junction with the San Antonio River, the Cibolo cut through the countryside and created a few natural fords, including one through the Francisco Herrera Land Grant and the Erastus "Deaf" Smith Land Grant that became known as the Cibolo Crossing. Accounts in letters and diaries of participants in the Texas Revolution place the crossing as a rendezvous and marshaling point for early settlers and troops, including efforts to bring reinforcements to the defense of the Alamo. Erastus "Deaf" Smith, who owned land on the east side of the crossing, is said to have watched Mexican troops from a tree near the crossing as troops prepared to retrieve a cannon from the Gonzales Colony in 1835. On February 28, 1836, Captain J.J. Tumlinson and Captains Albert Martin, John W. Smith, and Juan Seguin took relief forces to the Cibolo Creek Crossing to await Fannin's forces. After the annexation of Texas by the U.S. in 1845 and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the Gonzales Road was later integrated into a route through Yorktown, and the original crossing at Cibolo Creek was abandoned. The crossing remained important to events surrounding Texas independence and its history.