Describes the history of the Spanish missions in the San Antonio, Texas, area, now preserved as the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park.

The story of the missions is a compelling human drama that is a vital piece not only of California history, but also of American history. Indeed, many keys to California's past lie in the stories of the 20 missions that stretch along the state's west coast from San Diego to San Francisco. This vital series is compatible with the mission-based curriculum used in fourth-grade California classrooms. It resonates equally with all social studies programs that explore the defunct notion of colonialism and its controversial role in the history of the United States, and with curricula that seek to explore the interaction of different cultures and the rights and voices of indigenous peoples.

Learn about the rich history of Mission San Antonio de Padua: how it started, the people who ran it, the indigenous population, and its legacy today.

Sparked by the opportunity to explore his personal passions, David Kroese turns away from a rewarding yet languishing career and begins the adventure of a lifetime. What happens next evolves into a tour of all four hundred-plus units in America's National Park System -- a perfect way to celebrate the 2016 National Park Service centennial. The Centennial: A Journey Through America's National Park System details David's compelling centennial explorations to 387 parks in 360 days. The story continues through December 2017, when he becomes one of fewer than fifty people known to have visited all 417 national parks. His personal expedition is a poignant exploration into quintessential America as told through its historical and natural wonders. Delve into diverse locations from Hawaii to the Rockies, New England to the Caribbean, Charleston to the California desert, Alaska to American Samoa. Join David and experience the inherent marvels within America's unique landscape and fascinating history, revealed in engaging context, poetic descriptions, and heartfelt appreciation. The Centennial: A Journey Through America's National Park System is an odyssey of self discovery and fulfillment through the nation's soul.

More than a million tourists visit religious landmarks in San Antonio, Texas, each year, observing and sometimes participating in religious activities there. The San Antonio Missions National Historical Park--managed by the National Park Service, in cooperation with the Catholic Church--is one of hundreds of religious places in America and around the world where tourists have become a familiar presence. In Blessed with Tourists, Thomas S. Bremer explores the intersection of tourism and commerce with religion in American, using the missions and other San Antonio sites as prime examples. Bremer recounts the history of San Antonio, from its Native American roots to its development as a religious center with the growth of the Spanish colonial missions, to the modern transformation of San Antonio into a tourist destination. Employing both ethnographic and historical approaches, Bremer examines the concepts of place, identity, aesthetics, and commercialization, demonstrating numerous ways that modern market forces affect religious communities. By identifying important connections between religious and touristic practices, Bremer establishes San Antonio as a distinctive source for anyone seeking to understand the interplay between the religious and the secular, the traditional and the modern.

Few American cities enjoy the likes of San Antonio's visual links with its dramatic past. The Alamo and four other Spanish missions, recently marked as a UNESCO World Heritage site, are the most obvious but there are a host of landmarks and folkways that have survived over the course of nearly three centuries that still lend San Antonio an "odd and antiquated foreignness." Adding to the charm of the nation's seventh largest city is the San Antonio River, saved to become a winding linear park through the heart of downtown and beyond and a world model for sensitive urban development. San Antonio's heritage has not been preserved by accident. The wrecking balls and headlong development that accompanied progress in nineteenth-century San Antonio roused an indigenous historic preservation movement—the first west of the Mississippi River to become effective. Its thrust has increased since the mid-1920s with the pioneering work of the San Antonio Conservation Society. In Saving San Antonio, Texas historian Lewis Fisher peels back the myths surrounding more than a century of preservation triumphs and failures to reveal a lively mosaic that portrays the saving of San Antonio's cultural and architectural soul. The process, entertaining in the telling, has reverberated throughout the United States and provided significant lessons for the built environments and economies of cities everywhere.

This is the first general history of San Antonio, Texas, the seventh largest city in the nation. Its past is complex and ranges across 300 years, from the community’s origins as a tiny Spanish frontier town to its contemporary status as a vital American mega-city. Site of some of the most violent struggles between warring empires and people—historians believe San Antonio may be the most fought-over city in U.S. history—it is perhaps most celebrated for the iconic 1836 Battle of the Alamo. The city is also home to four beautifully restored Spanish missions, which in 2015 UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site and have become integral to San Antonio’s robust tourist economy along with the fabled River Walk. This study weaves together a series of environmental, social, political, and cultural pressures that have shaped life in the Alamo City over the last three centuries. Residents have long fought to protect and utilize water and other resources even as they have struggled to achieve equal rights and build a more open and democratic society. Activists from all sectors of this multicultural city have believed deeply in its promise even though they have had to push hard to secure and expand its potential. Their efforts were every bit as intense in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they have been in the twenty-first. Written for a general audience, but with a scholarly attention to detail and nuance, San Antonio: A Tricentennial History immerses readers in the city’s fascinating and fraught past.

The rich, multicultural heritage of San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country provide the backdrop for this first comprehensive guide to the culturally significant vernacular buildings of this diverse and historic region: structures designed and constructed by the people who used them rather than by professional architects or builders. A valuable, easy-to-use resource for heritage travelers, historic preservationists, and local historians, A Field Guide to the Vernacular Buildings of the San Antonio Area pairs incisive interpretive essays with detailed building descriptions, photographs, and architectural renderings. Featuring contributions from noted architectural historians and preservationists including Ken Hafertepe, Lewis Fisher, Maria Pfeiffer, and Sarah Z. Gould, this handy, generously illustrated guide will not only provide context and insight for understanding the importance of these buildings but will also engage readers with the challenges of preserving our cultural heritage as represented in the built environment. Professional and avocational preservationists, along with interested travelers and general readers, will appreciate the thorough discussion and analysis of such well-known sites as the San Antonio Riverwalk, the San Antonio missions, and the public buildings of the historic Westside district. Reaching beyond the immediate vicinity of San Antonio, the book also offers expert commentary on the German settlements in Central Texas and east of San Antonio, providing an inclusive and inviting survey of how settlers of various origins placed their unique imprints on Texas.