San Antonio: A Tricentennial History

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.
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San Antonio: A Tricentennial History

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.
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San Antonio: A Tricentennial History

San Antonio: A Tricentennial History

by Char Miller
San Antonio: A Tricentennial History

San Antonio: A Tricentennial History

by Char Miller

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Overview


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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781625110497
Publisher: Texas State Historical Assn
Publication date: 10/04/2018
Series: Fred Rider Cotten Popular History Series , #25
Pages: 180
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author


A longtime professor at Trinity University (1981–2009) and resident of San Antonio, Char Miller is now W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College in Southern California. Among his dozens of publications related to America’s environmental and urban history are Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas (Trinity University Press, 2004) and the edited collection On the Border: An Environmental History of San Antonio (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001). 
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Prologue xi

1 Yanaguana 1

2 Urban Prospect 9

3 Revolutionary Space 19

4 Forces of Americanization 35

5 Recovery and Development 50

6 A New Day 65

7 All Quiet on the Southwestern Front 80

8 Turbulent Twenties 92

9 Deals Old and New 104

10 The Economy of War 117

11 Conflict, Consensus, and Change 130

12 Future Shining? 145

Restoration: An Afterword 158

Notes 162

Index 178

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