San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site provides several customized guided tours for adults, schools, and homeschool groups. Click on the table below to learn how to book a tour.
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At San Felipe de Austin, we educate people of all ages on the story of Mexican Texas. A school tour with us here at San Felipe de Austin can be a great accompaniment to any Texas history curriculum, including for students in 4th Grade and 7th Grade. We offer a variety of school tour options to fit the educational goals of your classroom and educate students via first-person narratives, interactive media and discussions, and visual aids. Learn more about the individual options we offer below.
School Tour Options
We offer three different tour options to connect with the educational goals of any classroom.
Museum Gallery Tour
- Total Time: 2 Hours
- Cost: $4 per Student
- Our Museum Gallery Tour is best fit for teachers looking to strengthen their students' understanding of the timeline and major events of Mexican Texas history as well as the story of Texas Independence. In this tour, students learn Stephen F. Austin's role in bringing new residents to Texas, early conflicts between the Mexican government and Texans, progression to war, the Runaway Scrape, and eventual destruction of the town of San Felipe de Austin. Students learn these concepts through interactive discussions and media as well as first-person narratives of those living during this time. The tour is conducted via six separate stations, each lasting 20 minutes. This tour does not include our outdoor exhibit, the Villa de Austin.
Villa de Austin Tour
- Total Time: 2 Hours
- Cost: $4 per Student
- Our Villa de Austin Tour is best suited for teachers looking to bolster their students' understanding of what life was like for those living in the San Felipe de Austin community 200 years ago. Students are led through various businesses of the town including the printing office, Farmer's Hotel, courthouse, commercial kitchen and bake oven, and more. While learning about these businesses, students also gain understanding of how these businesses benefited the town and the people living there. This tour is conducted via six separate stations, each lasting 20 minutes. Students are taken outdoors into our non-temperature regulated buildings. This tour does not include time in the indoor museum gallery.
Comprehensive Museum Tour
- Total Time: 3 Hours
- Cost: $6 per Student
- A combination of our Museum Gallery and Villa de Austin Tours, our Comprehensive Museum Tour is best suited for teachers looking to give their students a well-rounded and comprehensive understanding of the events happening in and around San Felipe de Austin as well as the stories of those behind these events. Students explore both the indoor museum gallery and the outdoor Villa de Austin. The tour is conducted through nine stations, each lasting 20 minutes.
Additional Information
- Tours are given on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tours can be booked for either morning or afternoon time slots.
- Students can bring a picnic lunch or school-provided sack lunch to enjoy on our outdoor, covered map plaza or outdoor picnic tables either before or after their tour.
- Teachers, 1-to-1 Student Aids, and bus drivers are all free of charge. We also allow one free chaperone for every 10 students. Additional chaperones are charged $5 each.
- Teachers and chaperones may be asked to help facilitate aspects of the tour.
- No food or drinks are allowed inside the museum gallery. Water may be carried while touring our outdoor exhibits.
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San Felipe de Austin offers tours specifically designed with multi-aged learning in mind. For homeschooling families, organizations, and co-ops under 50 school-aged learners, we recommend our “Learning Together” self-guided tour.
Learning Together: A Self-Guided Tour for At-Home Learners
This tour allows families to work together to help solve a variety of questions and clues for two separate activities during their tour.
In our traditional museum gallery, students will be given a list of questions to send them on a scavenger hunt. The answers to these questions can be found around the gallery. Learners can work together to help find the locations of answers and have a representation of what they learned to take home with them at the end of the day.
In our outdoor exhibit, the Villa de Austin, learners are transformed into detectives: solving clues to discover all the businesses and people that occupied our town 200 years ago. This activity is structured to take learners to many of the outdoor buildings, find visual clues, and use critical thinking skills to solve riddles.
For both of these activities, staff and volunteers will be stationed around the indoor and outdoor portions of the museum to answer questions, provide hints, and help navigate students’ learning.
This tour is best suited for groups of less than 50 school-aged learners. For larger groups, please contact us to find the best tour suited for your needs.
Booking a Tour
To learn more about our programming or to book a tour, please contact Nicole Shadle at nicole.shadle@thc.texas.gov or call 979-885-2181.