Domingo Teran de los Rios, governor of the Spanish colonial province of Texas, arrived at what's now south San Antonio in 1691 and encountered a hospitable group of Coahuiltecan Indians. They were living on the banks of the a river they called "drunken old man going home at night" (named for its curves). The date happened to be Saint Anthony's Day, so the governor named the spot San Antonio. Word spread that the Coahuiltecan Indians were friendly (easily dominated), and in 1718 a Franciscan priest established a mission called San Antonio de Valero (Valero was the viceroy of Mexico at the time). A military contingent founded a presidio at San Antonio that same year and by 1731 there was a civilian settlement called Villa de Bexar. In order to boost the non-Indian population at Villa de Bexar, Spain allowed 55 colonists to immigrate here from North Africa's Canary Islands. Four other missions were established in the intervening years - San Jose, Concepcion, San Juan, and Espada.
By 1794, the heathen-converting function of the missions had become less important to the Spaniards as San Antonio grew and was made the capital of Spanish Texas. They were gradually secularized, beginning with San Antonio de Valero. By 1810, Mission San Antonio had been turned into a garrison for a calvary unit from Alamo de Parras in northern Mexico. The shortened name for the place was Alamo ("cottonwood" in Spanish), which eventually became applied to the garrison as well.
Following the Mexican Revolution of 1821, San Antonio became part of the Republic of Mexico. That same year, Stephen F. Austin came to the war-torn town and negotiated a land grant from Mexico which allowed him to bring 300 Anglo-American colonists into Texas. By 1836, San Antonio had an Anglo population of 3,500. When General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna seized the Mexican presidency and abolished the 1824 Mexican constitution, many Texans (both Anglos and Hispanics), refused to recognize his dictatorship. This led to the famous Battle of the Alamo in March 1836 in which every Texan defender was killed. In the midst of the Alamo siege, Texas leaders declared independence from Mexico, which they later won at the Battle of San Jacinto.
Immediately following the Alamo siege, the city was more of less abandoned by non-Hispanics until German settlers began arriving in the 1840s. They established the historic King William district (named for King Wilhelm of Prussia) and erected trilingual street signs in German, English, and Spanish. After the Republic of Texas was annexed to the U.S. in 1845, other groups began moving to San Antonio, and today it has grown to be the second largest city in the state, with a population of about a million people.
San Antonio Missions National Historical Park San Antonio is the only city in the U.S. with five Spanish missions within its city limits. All were built along the San Antonio River, establishing a pattern around which the modern city eventually developed. The Alamo (originally Mission San Antonio de Valero) was the first, (est 1718). The other four were established as mission between 1720 and 1731, although the stone chapels that stand today were begun in the 1740s and 1750s. Three of the missions, San Juan, Espada and Concepcion, were moved from earlier sites in East Texas because of French and Indian pressures (in East Texas, they attempted to missionize Caddo Indians, who eventually revolted, in San Antonio it was the more docile Coahuiltecans). The fourth, San Jose, is considered the "queen of the missions" because of its historic successes and because it is the most impressive architecturally, All four of the mission chapels are active Roman Catholic parishes which serve the surrounding communities. They're administered cooperatively by the National Park Service, the state of Texas, and the local Catholic archdiocese.
San Jose Mission (2200 Roosevelt Ave and Mission Rd) Founded in 1720 (two years after the Alamo) by Fray Antonio Margil de Jesus as Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, this important Texas mission settlement was moved along the San Antonio River several times before settling at its present site in 1740. The chapel/sacristy was designed and built between 1768 and 1782 in the Churrigueresque, late Spanish Renaissance style and is considered one of the finest examples of Spanish mission architecture in the United States.
Today it is the most well restored of the San Antonio missions and serves as headquarters for the entire historical park. The surrounding compound has been restored so that visitors may view Indian quarters, granary, mill, kilns, convent, and Spanish residence. An horno - a small domed shaped oven made of tufa limestone - stands in the courtyard. The mission dwellers burned wood inside until the oven was hot, then the coals were raked out, food inserted, and the hornos sealed until the food was cooked.
The chapel's asymmetrical front features a bell tower on one side and a flat-topped, ventilated facade on the other. In the middle of the roof, is a large dome which makes that section of the church taller than the building's entire length. The sculptured entryway is said to have been carved by descendants of the original artisans at Spain's Alcazar. On the south side of the building (the sacristy) is "Rosa's Window," bordered by stone scrolls and foliage. At least two stories offer an explanation for the window's name: that the sculptor worked on it for five years while mourning the death of his wife Rosa, or that it was somehow associated with St. Rose's Day.
The Park Service has established several interpretive exhibits in parts of the Indian quarters near the main entrance to the complex, including a six-minute audio-visual presentation on the church's history. At noon on Sunday, there is a mariachi mass at the church.
King William Historic District is a 25 block district on the east bank of the San Antonio River, established by German settlers in the late 1800s and named it after Prussia's King Wilhelm I. At the time it was the most elegant neighborhood in San Antonio. Over the years it decayed, but many of the distinctive Victorian houses built between the 1850s and the 1920s are now being restored to their former glory. King William Street itself has the most striking set of homes.
La Villita National Historic District "The Little Town" developed as a Spanish squatters' settlement along the east bank of the San Antonio River, next to the original Mission San Antonio de Valero, in the mid-to late 18th century. In the mid-19th century, Anglo, European immigrants began arriving, La Villita's adobe huts were replaced by sturdier limestone buildings, and the district became the town center. In the early 20th century, it declined into a virtual slum until artists and other "bohemian" elements moved in during the 40s and 50s and renovated the old structures. Today it is a showcase for middle-of-the-road artists and craftspersons. Many of the crafts now hail from Mexico and Central America, including pottery, weavings, jewelry and clothing.
Hemisfair Plaza This 92 acre site was the sight of San Antonio's World Fair in 1968.
Tower of the Americas is 750 feet high and symbolizes the desire for achievement. The observation deck is open from 8am-11pm Admission: $2
Paseo del Rio, the Riverwalk, is an example of a successful urban renewal project. Once lined with ramshackle houses, the river now is a prime attraction a few steps below the business district.
The Alamo The Spaniards established Mission San Antonio de Valero as a halfway point between northern Mexico and their short-lived East Texas mission (the route they plied became known as El Camino Real, "the Royal Road," which Anglos later called the Old San Antonio Road). The mission started out on the San Antonio River's west bank, at its junction with San Pedro Creek, but was moved upriver to its current site in the 1720s, it was a thriving mission community with acequia-irrigated farmlands, a cattle ranch, granary, chapel, and convent, as well as blacksmith, carpenter, and textile shops. As the Texas missions began declining in the late 18th century because of problems with migrating Apaches, the Catholic Church secularized Mission San Antonio and distributed the farmlands among the mission Indians. The church them leased the abandoned mission grounds and buildings to a Spanish calvary unit from northern Mexico's Alamo de Parras in the early 1800s, and the compound gained the nickname "El Alamo."
The Alamo was used as a Mexican military garrison until early in 1836 when a citizens' uprising drove the army out of town and seized the old mission, cannons and all. This was just one of many such uprisings against the Mexicans and the Santa Anna dictatorship, which had been happening throughout Texas in the mid-1830s. President Santa Anna not only ordered the Mexican army to march on Texas, he led them himself. A force of approximately 6,000 troops left Mexico City in February 1835. At first, the Texans assumed that the Mexican army would bypass San Antonio to hit the center of the Anglo colonies in San Felipe. When the scouts spotted Santa Anna's front guard and realized that San Antonio was going to be the target, it was really too late to mount an effective defense. The majority of the Texan troops had already left town to join Sam Houston's army, leaving just a small to defend the Alamo. When General Santa Anna arrived with a force of soldiers which outnumbered the Texans 12 to 1.
The legendary battle of the Alamo lasted 12 days. James Bowie of "Bowie knife" fame was supposed to lead the defense but fell ill the day after the Mexican army lay siege to the Alamo, so William Travis took command. Santa Anna flew a red flag, the Mexican symbol for "no quarter, no mercy, no surrender" while the colonists flew the Mexican flag to which they had added the numeral "1824," the date of the Mexican constitution. Although the defenders (many of whom were of Mexican descent) were outnumbered, the superior marksmanship of the frontiersmen inside the Alamo held off the Mexican troops without a single Texan death until the walls were finally breached on March 6. The Mexican troops killed every one of the defenders and lost about 1/3 of their own.
After the battle, the Alamo was again abandoned. Beginning in 1845, a succession of other tenants leased the buildings from the Catholic Church, including the U.S. Army (and the Confederate army during the Civil War) and a couple of mercantile interests who used the chapel as a warehouse. The state bought the chapel from the Catholic Church in 1883. In 1903 the Daughter's of the Republic of Texas bought the "long barracks", where most of the defenders were killed, and the state turned over the remainder of the property to the DRT shortly thereafter. The heavily restored chapel and long barracks are the only buildings remaining from the original mission compound.