Penatuhkah Comanche Trails Partnership

Welcome To The Penatuhkah Comanche Trails Partnership

The Penatuhkah Comanche Trails Partnership is a coalition of Chambers of Commerce, Visitors Bureaus, historical non-profits, the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, and private landowners in the area. This Central Texas association plans to develop a landscape conservation plan to protect and interpret the traditional lands and resources of the Penatuhkah Band of the Comanche people as well as promote heritage tourism in the region.

The Penatuhkah Comanche Trails Partnership encompasses approximately 15,000 square miles in the heart of Texas. This area coincides with the homeland of the Penatuhkah band of the Comanche Nation from about 1750 to 1875. The views, ecology, heritage, and history of this area sacred to the southern Comanche lend it tremendous potential to provide tourism opportunities for Texans seeking to learn of the extent of the great Comanche Empire.

Mission

The Penatuhkah Comanche Trails Association promotes the restoration, conservation and interpretation of Comanche Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) and the history and traditions of the Penatuhkah Comanche band in Texas. This partnership creates economic opportunities for all partners through heritage and ecotourism programs that tell the stories of this significant history at the places where it happened and encouraging a Comanche presence in their Texas homeland.

Goals

The Penatuhkah Comanche Trails Partnership will use its expertise concerning the significant Traditional Cultural Properties (TCP) in our target area to agree on the suitable purposes of those TCPs and restore them to Comanche awareness and use. The Penatuhkah Comanche Trails Partnership is knowledgeable of places other than TCPs in our target area that can tell the Penatuhkah story and will develop ways to tell the story. And the Penatuhkah Comanche Trails Partnership will deliver programs that promote the areas Penatuhkah Comanche history and its economic development.

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Grand Opening of the Penatuhkah Comanche Trails

It’s open! Along the Pecan Bayou in Early, Texas, at the Early Town Center, the Penatuhkah Comanche Trails was officially dedicated this past weekend. The two-day cultural celebration honored the rich history and heritage of the Comanche people. This special event featured traditional ceremonies, Comanche dancers, educational presentations, artifacts, and meaningful community connections that provided opportunities to come together, learn, and celebrate an incredible milestone.

Representatives from Chambers of Commerce, museums, historical societies, and landowners of sites of cultural importance from twelve communities have united under the auspices of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma to stimulate heritage tourism across Central Texas through a driving trail. Participating towns include Goldthwaite, Paint Rock, Ballinger, Cross Plains, Coleman, Comanche, Early, DeLeon, Brownwood, Menard, San Saba, and Santa Anna. Frontier Texas, Texas Forts Trail, and the Texas Midwest Community Network are also involved. Each community was provided a booth showcasing how it fits into the trail and why visitors should explore those cities to discover more of this remarkable history.

Two special events took place during the event. A twenty-five-foot-tall tipi built by Darren St. Ama of Savage Saint Ironworks of Brownwood was dedicated and blessed by tribal elders and medicine men from the Comanche Nation of Lawton, Oklahoma. In addition, the elders also bent and blessed an Indian Marker Tree. The tree points to the location near San Saba, Texas, where the 1847 Treaty between the Penatuhkah and Germans of Fredericksburg was signed.

The Trails honors the heritage of the people that ruled Texas in this area two hundred years ago. The tipi and the tree are just two of the stops on the driving trail following the traditional nomadic path of the Penatuhkah Comanche. Come see the rest of it.

Resources

Pelon, Linda Nash. Issues in Penatuhkah Comanche Ethnohistory (Thesis), Arlington, TX: University of Texas at Arlington, 1993.

Hämäläinen, Pekka . Comanche Empire, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2008.

Pelon, Linda. Texas Comanche Land Revisited, Abilene, Texas: H. V. Chapman and Sons, 2019.

The Comanche Empire

Pekka Hamalainen

Comanche Land Revisited

Linda Nash Pelon

Comanche Marker Trees of Texas

Steve Houser, Linda Pelon, Jimmy Arterberry

Get Involved

Research for the Penatuhkah Comanche Trails began in 1991 with a small group in Santa Anna, Texas. In 1993 they visited the Comanche Tribal headquarters in Lawton, OK and invited the Comanche Nation to come to Santa Anna to evaluate of cultural resources that our research team believed were Comanche Cultural Properties. The Tribal Council/Business Committee accepted the invitation. They sent their education director who recognized one of the suspected TCPs as a Comanche sacred site. Tribal Chairman Wallace Coffey and a Comanche delegation returned to this area of West Central Texas accompanied by the late Thomas Wahnee, a Comanche traditional spiritual leader and Elder, to re-bless this site and “release the ancestors.” This was the beginning of a relationship between area ranchers, researchers, and area residents that has lasted over 30 years. We are currently building relationships with a new generation of Comanche leaders and an expanded number of Texas stakeholders.

The Penatuhkah Comanche Trails partnership was founded in June 2019. It currently includes ten community Chambers of Commerce and Visitor Centers, five local museums, Texas Midwest Community Network, Texas Forts Trail, Frontier Texas, National Park Service, and The Comanche Nation of Oklahoma.

We were fortunate to have National Park Service assistance shortly after the founding of the PCTP. A grant funded by the NPS Rivers and Trails Conservation Assistance program (RTCA) provided planning and technical assistance which resulted in a strong start for this new organization. Unfortunately, the COVID epidemic interrupted our planning process but organization and development continued. The PCTP is now celebrating the preview of our Texas Penatuhkah Comanche Trails through May 2025. We welcome new partners and tourists within our trail region!

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