Fodor's Expert Review San Jacinto Museum of History

Alfred Finn, a Houston architect, designed this 570-foot-tall monument, which rises over the site (in nearby La Porte) where Sam Houston triumphed over General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the final battle of the Texas Revolution of 1836. The cenotaph, built between 1936 and 1939, is made of concrete and 100-million-year-old Cordova shellstone quarried north of Austin. At its top rests a nine-point, 35-foot-tall star weighing 220 tons. The park also includes the San Jacinto Museum of History; The Jesse H. Jones Theater for Texas Studies, which shows a movie about the battle called Texas Forever!; the Battleship Texas; and the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Library, covering Texas history.