| What makes it historical? |
When Spanish explorers failed to discover the fabled Cities of Cibola and other gold-rich fantastical places, the Spanish Empire focused instead on spreading the Catholic faith through missions. Their first major effort above the Rio Grande was to establish six missions near the border of Louisiana as a buffer against the French! When the first of those missions failed, it got moved further southwest to the San Antonio River in 1718, where it became Mission San Antonio de Valero, or the Alamo!
Though the Alamo isn’t part of the park, it was the vanguard of the next wave of missions: San José in 1720, then Concepción, San Juan, and Espada in 1731! Run by Franciscan missionaries, these missions managed huge crop fields and herds of cattle, mostly with the hands of Coahuiltecan laborers, who faced the tough choice of giving up their cultural identities or face a long-running drought, already rampant European diseases, and raids by the Apache and Comanche!
As Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, it began to turn mission control over to ranchers and private ownership. By 1824, these four missions had all been secularized and sat for almost a hundred years before greater interest in their preservation took hold! |
| Where is this place? |
Mission Concepción
- 807 Mission Rd
San Antonio, TX 78210
Mission San José
- 6701 San Jose Dr
San Antonio, TX 78214
Mission San Juan
- 9101 Graf Rd
San Antonio, TX 78214
Mission Espada
- 10040 Espada Rd
San Antonio, TX 78214
From Austin: ~82mi (132km) — 1.4hrs
From Dallas: ~276mi (445km) — 4.6hrs
From El Paso: ~554mi (892km) — 9.3hrs
From Houston: ~197mi (318km) — 3.3hrs |
