River Walk & Missions Story

Welcome to the Alamo. It began as the Misión San Antonio de Valero, one of the early Spanish missions in Texas, founded in the 18th century by Catholic missionaries. The mission was secularized in 1793 and abandoned. About ten years later a military unit, the Second Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras, was housed here, and it likely gave the place its name: álamo is Spanish for cottonwood tree.

During the Texas Revolution, Texian forces took the fort in December 1835. On March 6, 1836, the Mexican Army overran it at the Battle of the Alamo, and the defenders, including James Bowie and Davy Crockett, were killed. Afterward the site served as an Army depot and even a wholesale grocery. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas worked to save it, and in 1905 Adina De Zavala and Clara Driscoll persuaded the state to buy the remaining buildings.

Today it's part of the San Antonio Missions World Heritage Site.

This is the Alamo Cenotaph, also called The Spirit of Sacrifice. It commemorates the Battle of the Alamo, and it was the first Alamo monument built in San Antonio. There had been one earlier monument in Austin, but it was lost in a Capitol fire. The state of Texas provided 100,000 dollars for it during the 1936 Texas Centennial, and commissioned the local sculptor Pompeo Coppini.

Mayor Maury Maverick dedicated it on November 11, 1940. The shaft rises sixty feet from a base forty feet long, in grey Georgia marble and pink Texas granite. It shows images of the garrison's leaders and 187 names of known defenders, based on the research of historian Amelia Williams. Later research found that some people listed were not actually there, and the count of Alamo combatants has grown.

The inscription honors the heroes who, it says, chose never to surrender nor retreat. It was built to mark the battle's centenary.