San Antonio

• 1. Introduction

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  San Antonio holds a distinction that most American cities cannot claim: a name given by Spanish explorers on a specific day, the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua, the 13th of June 1691. The expedition came upon a river and a Payaya settlement, and the name they gave it has endured for more than three centuries. Today that city is home to 1.43 million people, making it the seventh-most populous in the United States and the second-largest in Texas. Its greater metropolitan area reaches 2.76 million residents. But population figures alone do not explain what makes San Antonio unusual. This is a city whose downtown hosts five 18th-century Spanish missions, one of which became one of the most mythologized battlefields in American history. It is a city where roughly 64 percent of residents identify as Hispanic, the largest majority-Hispanic population of any large American city. It draws approximately 32 million visitors a year. And it sits at a crossroads, straddling the divide between South and Central Texas, anchoring the southwestern corner of the urban cluster Texans call the Texas Triangle. How did a Payaya encampment by a river become all of this? The answers run through colonial politics, revolution, immigration, disaster, and the deliberate movement of an entire hotel three city blocks.

• 2. From Yanaguana to Villa

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  The Payaya people called the place Yanaguana, meaning "refreshing waters". Their settlement near the San Antonio River Valley and the San Pedro Springs area was their home long before any European arrived. When the 1691 Spanish expedition passed through, they recorded the name San Antonio and moved on. Permanent settlement waited nearly three more decades. Father Antonio de Olivares visited in 1709, determined to establish a mission and civilian presence. The viceroy gave formal approval in late 1716, motivated partly by the desire to block French expansion from La Louisiane to the east and to prevent illegal trading between French traders and the Payaya. He directed Martín de Alarcón, then governor of Coahuila y Tejas, to build the complex. Disagreements between Alarcón and Olivares delayed everything, and construction did not begin until 1718. Olivares built the Misión de San Antonio de Valero, later known as The Alamo, as well as the Presidio San Antonio de Bexar, the bridge connecting them, and the Acequia Madre de Valero, a water channel essential to the settlement's survival. He did this with the labor of the Payaya and the Pastia people. On the 5th of May 1718, the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar was formally commissioned on the west side of the San Antonio River. The cluster of families that gathered around the presidio and mission became Villa de Béjar, destined to grow into the most important town in Spanish Texas. A planned migration from the Canary Islands added a new dimension to the settlement. On the 14th of February 1719, the Marquis of San Miguel de Aguayo proposed to the king of Spain that 400 families be transported from the Canary Islands, Galicia, or Havana to populate Texas. The plan was approved but narrowed in execution. By June 1730, only 25 families had reached Cuba, and 10 had been sent toward Veracruz before Spain ordered the resettlement halted. The remaining group, led by Juan Leal Goraz, marched overland from Veracruz. They arrived at the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar on the 9th of March 1731. Marriages along the journey had reshaped the group; what arrived was 15 families totaling 56 persons. The first baby born of Canary Islander descent in San Antonio was María Rosa Padrón. These colonists formed the nucleus of the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas, and several older San Antonio families still trace their descent from those original isleños.

• 3. Revolution and Aftermath

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  The Battle of Bexar, fought in December 1835, gave Texian forces under Ben Milam control of San Antonio from Mexican troops commanded by General Martin Perfecto de Cos, who was Santa Anna's brother-in-law. That victory proved short-lived. The following spring, Santa Anna marched on the city. A volunteer force under James C. Neill had occupied and fortified the deserted Alamo mission; when Neill departed, command passed jointly to William Barrett Travis and James Bowie. The Battle of the Alamo ran from the 23rd of February to the 6th of March 1836. Every defender died. The fallen were recast as martyrs for Texas freedom, and the phrase "Remember the Alamo" became a rallying cry that carried the Texian Army through its eventual defeat of Santa Anna. Juan Seguín organized a company of Tejano patriots who fought at the Battle of Concepción, the Siege of Bexar, and the Battle of San Jacinto, and he later served as mayor of San Antonio. Threats on his life from political opponents and sectarian newcomers forced him from office in 1842. He would be the last Tejano mayor of the city for nearly 150 years, and by 1850, Tejanos no longer constituted a majority of San Antonio's population. The Mexican-American War, which followed American annexation of Texas in 1845, proved catastrophic for the city. By the war's end, the population had been reduced by almost two-thirds, down to 800 inhabitants. Recovery came through migration. By 1860, at the outbreak of the Civil War, San Antonio had rebuilt to 15,000 people. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York's Central Park, traveled through the region in the 1850s and published his observations in a book about Texas in 1859. He described San Antonio as possessing a "jumble of races, costumes, languages, and buildings" with a quality of "odd and antiquated foreignness" that only New Orleans could rival.

• 4. Germans, Cattle, and Rails

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  Following the Civil War, San Antonio grew as a center of the cattle industry, still a frontier city with a cultural mix that set it apart from most American cities. German immigrants who settled smaller surrounding towns, including New Braunfels, Castroville, Boerne, Comfort, Fredericksburg, and Bulverde, were eventually drawn to San Antonio for work. Their footprint remained visible for generations; by the early 1900s, an estimated one-third of San Antonio's population was ethnically German. Streets and buildings still carry German names: Wurzbach, Huebner, Jones Maltsberger, Wiederstein. Many descendants of those immigrants spoke Texas German, a dialect that evolved in isolation from Germany, described as an anglicized-German hybrid with a Texas accent, through the fifth and sixth generations. Speakers of Texas German could still be found in New Braunfels and Fredericksburg well into the modern era. The Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad arrived in 1877, the first railroad to reach the city, linking it to major markets and port cities. Texas was the first state where major cities developed primarily by rail rather than by waterways, producing a different pattern of urban growth than the established coastal cities of the eastern seaboard had followed. San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth all grew as interior rail cities rather than ports. At the beginning of the 20th century, the downtown streets were widened to accommodate streetcars and modern traffic, and many older historic buildings were demolished in the process. That loss of architectural heritage was irreversible, though the city retained enough of its colonial core to underpin a thriving tourism economy more than a century later.

• 5. A City of Missions and Memory

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  On the 5th of July 2015, the city's five missions were collectively designated UNESCO World Heritage sites, making them the 23rd American site on the World Heritage list and the first in Texas. The four missions in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, along with The Alamo, form a continuous chain along the San Antonio River. Two years after the UNESCO designation, in 2017, San Antonio received a second international recognition: UNESCO named it a City of Creativity for Gastronomy, one of only 26 such cities in the world at the time. The Alamo itself sits in downtown San Antonio and is Texas' top tourist attraction. The River Walk, which meanders through downtown, ranks as the second-most-visited attraction. Between 2009 and 2013, the River Walk was extended by 13 miles, creating a landscaped path along the San Antonio River from Brackenridge Park through downtown to a southern end near Loop 410 South past Mission Espada. The new Mission Reach, completed in 2013, created over 15 miles of biking, hiking, and paddling trails connecting the missions to downtown. Among the city's more unusual cultural landmarks is the Fairmount Hotel, built in 1906 and San Antonio's second-oldest hotel. It earned a place in the Guinness World Records as one of the heaviest buildings ever moved intact. In 1985, over the course of four days, the building was relocated to a site three blocks south of the Alamo at a cost of $650,000. Kiddie Park, established in 1925, is the oldest children's amusement park in the United States. The McNay Art Museum holds the distinction of being the first museum of modern art in Texas.

• 6. Military, Economy, and Population

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  San Antonio earned the nickname "Military City, USA" by hosting one of the largest concentrations of military bases in the country, including Lackland Air Force Base, Brooke Army Medical Center, Randolph Air Force Base, and Fort Sam Houston. Lackland is the Air Force's sole location for enlisted basic training; more than 35,000 new recruits pass through annually. Fort Sam Houston is home to the Military Education and Training Campus, described as the largest medical education center in the world, running 30 programs with more than 24,000 annual graduates. The city's broader economy generated a gross domestic product of approximately $121 billion in 2018. Tourism contributed an estimated $13.6 billion in economic impact in 2017 and supported over 130,000 jobs. The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center alone hosts more than 300 events annually and draws more than 750,000 convention delegates from around the world. San Antonio is headquartered to two Fortune 500 companies: Valero Energy and USAA. H-E-B, ranked as the fifth-largest private company in the United States, is also based there. The South Texas Medical Center, located about 10 miles northwest of downtown, is a conglomerate of hospitals, clinics, research institutions, and higher-education facilities. Demographically, the city's Hispanic population has grown from 51.3 percent in 1970 to 63.9 percent in the 2020 census. Tejanos had lost majority status by 1850 and did not regain it until 1968. The city's population has nearly doubled in 35 years, from just over 650,000 in 1970 to an estimated 1.2 million by 2005. The annual Fiesta San Antonio, the city's signature event, carries an economic impact of $340 million on its own. The San Antonio Spurs, founded in 1967, have won five NBA championships, with titles in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014.

• 7. Weather, Water, and Risk

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  San Antonio sits on the Balcones Escarpment at an altitude of approximately 662 feet above sea level and draws its primary drinking water from the Edwards Aquifer. Its climate is transitional humid subtropical, tipping toward hot semi-arid on the city's western edge, with very hot humid summers and mild winters. July and August tie as the average warmest months, with average highs reaching 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The highest temperature ever recorded was 111 degrees Fahrenheit on the 5th of September 2000. January is the average coolest month; the lowest recorded temperature was 0 degrees Fahrenheit on the 31st of January 1949. Snowfall is rare. Since recordkeeping began in 1871, the National Weather Service has recorded 32 instances of snowfall in the city, roughly once every four years. The record single snowfall was 16 inches, set on the 13th of January 1985. The February 2021 North American winter storm dropped 4-6 inches on the city and caused widespread rolling blackouts. San Antonio and New Braunfels, 40 miles to the northeast, rank among the most flood-prone regions in North America. The October 1998 Central Texas floods resulted in $750 million in damage and 32 deaths, placing them among the costliest floods in U.S. history. In 2002, from the 30th of June to the 7th of July, 35 inches of rain fell in the San Antonio area, causing widespread flooding and 12 fatalities. Two reservoirs built to use recycled treated wastewater for power plant cooling, Victor Braunig Lake and Calaveras Lake, were among the first such facilities in the United States, impounded in 1962 and 1969 respectively, reducing demand on the Edwards Aquifer. Despite its flood and heat exposure, San Antonio is considered the safest major city in Texas when it comes to tornadoes, though two F4 tornadoes have struck the city, one in 1953 and another in 1973.