Founded in 1793, Nuestra Senora del Refugio was the last Spanish mission established in Texas, created to consolidate and continue the conversion efforts of two earlier, struggling coastal missions. Its everyday function centered on religious instruction and cultural assimilation of local Karankawa, Coco, Copane, and other coastal native groups, whom Franciscan friars sought to baptize, catechize, and settle into a sedentary mission life built around farming and cattle ranching. The mission's ranching operation grew substantially over time, with herds of cattle and horses grazing the surrounding coastal prairie, though chronic food shortages and irregular supply lines periodically undermined its self-sufficiency. Native residents moved in and out seasonally, often leaving to forage or fish along the coast in ways that frustrated missionaries' hopes for permanent settlement, and the mission endured periodic raids by Comanche and other inland groups. As Spanish and later Mexican mission policy shifted, the site was formally secularized in 1824, its remaining goods and livestock transferred to nearby La Bahia (Goliad); a brief attempt to revive it followed, but the mission was permanently abandoned by 1830 with fewer than two dozen native residents remaining. During the Texas Revolution the site and its ruined mission structure also became associated with the 1836 skirmish and eventual town of Refugio. No visible above-ground remains of the mission survive today; archaeological traces lie beneath the grounds of the present Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church in downtown Refugio, and the site now functions primarily as a marked historical location and modest heritage-tourism stop commemorating Spanish Texas's mission era.