Romantic Mount Bonnell was seen at a wedding in 1856. This is an article from the Austin American Statesman in the early 1900s. Read by Jeanine Plumer.
Although love, Is much talked about now, the word romance is pretty well out of style.
Maybe one cause for the disappearance of romance is that romantic places do not abound as they used to. A case in point is Mount Bonnell, now almost in the middle of town and far from romantic. But not so in the old days! Writing of Mount Bonnell, an early historian of Texas relates the legend of ‘’Antoinette’s leap as told by a reliable gentleman, good citizen, and gallant soldier.’’
According to this story, Antoinette was a beautiful Spanish maiden, who came to Texas with the first explorers who established missions near San Antonio.
CIBOLO, The chief of the Comanches, was so charmed by the beautiful senorita that he and his warriors raided the Spanish settlement, abducted Antoinette, and fled with her to the Comanche camp far up the Colorado River. While her parents and friends mourned her as lost forever, her betrothed lover, the brave Spaniard Don Leal Navarro Rodriguez mounted his favorite steed and set out in hot pursuit. In time he rescued her, But on the way home, as they crossed the summit of Mount Bonnell, they were surrounded by savage Comanches. Don Leal killed Cibolo But a moment later was pierced by many arrows, fell dead at the feet of Antoinette. She kissed him farewell, murmured her last prayer to God, and threw herself over the precipice to instant death.
Since almost every mountainous locality has a hill that is called Lovers Leap, this legend may not be completely factual.
True or not, it established Mount Bonnell as the romantic spot of Austin. As early as 1857, a newspaper article said, ‘’at the present day, lovers meet here atop MT Bonnell to interchange vowels before an altar whose foundation is the Eternal Rock and whose canopy the Azure Vault of Heaven.’’ Indeed, according to the canons of modern custom, the Swain who for the first time ascends to the peak of the mountain in company with an unmarried daughter of Eve, and does not, at the foot of the dwarf, cedar, pledge his hand and heart, his faith, and through to the fair object near him, is deemed henceforth and forever a traitor to gallantry, and unworthy of lovely women’s smile. Poetry aside, Major Buck Walton reported to his wife, in a letter written in May of 1856 that an Austin couple met last Sunday for the first time. Engaged one another right off, and this morning were married, at sunrise on the top of Mount Bonnell.
