Sea of Mud: The Retreat of the Mexican Army after San Jacinto, An Archeological Investigation

Two forgotten weeks in 1836 and one of the most consequential events of the entire Texas Revolution have been missing from the historical record—the tale of the Mexican army’s misfortunes in the aptly named “Sea of Mud,” where more than 2,500 Mexican soldiers and 1,500 female camp followers foundered in the muddy fields of what is now Wharton County, Texas.

In 1996 a pediatrician and “avocational archeologist” living in Wharton, Texas, decided to try to find evidence in Wharton County of the...