San Pedro Springs have been nourishing and providing fresh clear water from what is now known as the Edwards Aquifer for thousands of years. A DAR El Camino Real marker stands nearby, attesting to the importance of these springs to the travelers along the road, the Native Americans of yore, and the settlers who made their homes here.
From Edwards Aquifer.net: (
visit link)
"The San Pedro Springs are located a few miles northwest of downtown San Antonio and the Alamo. They emerge at an elevation of about 663' through a fault at the base of a limestone bluff. At the surface the Austin chalk limestone is present on the southeast side of the fault and the Pecan Gap chalk on the northwest (Brune, 1981).
The site is much more than just Springs. It is one of the most important places in all of the southwest United States, and no web page of a few thousand words can begin to describe the pre-historic and historic significance of the Springs and surrounding Park.
The Springs and a small natural lake just below the Springs were a favorite meeting place and campsite for native Americans for thousands of years. The bones of mastadons, giant tigers, dire wolves, Colombian elephants, and extinct horses have been found here, along with projectile points and stone tools. In early historic times, a band of Coahuiltecan Indians known as Payayas called the Springs and their village there Yanaguana.
After European settlement, the site was the social and recreational center of San Antonio for many decades, and a number of important old roads, including the Camino Real (King's Highway) radiated from this point. Early travelers would sometimes confuse these Springs with another major cluster of springs four miles to the northeast, San Antonio Springs. A nearby street, Calle del Camaron was named for the abundant crawfish that were found in the Springs and Creek. Limestone quarried from just northwest of the Springs provided stone for many of the town's early buildings.
Spring e is the largest. Springs a and b, in front of the bandstand, were sealed by the City Parks and Recreation Department many years ago to divert more flow to the other Springs. There were many additional springs in the area where the swimming pool is today; their locations have been lost to history.
In 2014, artist Susan Dunis created a series of paintings for these pages that depict a family of Lower Pecos natives on a sacred pilgrimage to the Edwards springs sites about 4,000 years ago. Each painting illustrates a different aspect of cultural importance of the Edwards springs.
In this painting, the fifth in the series, the theme is the use of the springs for gathering food and tools, and their use for simple pleasure and relaxation. While the younger family members take a swim in the sun-drenched springs, the men are selecting chert for point-making, collecting wild grapes, and fishing.
Spanish exploration and settlement
By 1680 the Spanish had begun to fear French expansion into lands claimed by Spain, and between 1709 and 1722 several Spanish entradas, or formal expeditions, made their way across Texas. These explorers realized the gentle plain below San Pedro Springs was a strategic spot for a permanent stronghold against French incursion. Father Isidro Felix de Espinosa, one of the leaders of an expedition in 1709, gave the Springs their name and provided the first known description:
We crossed a large plain in the same direction, and after going through a mesquite flat and some holm-oak groves we came to an irrigation ditch, bordered by many trees and with water enough to supply a town. It was full of taps and sluices of water, the earth being terraced. We named it agua de San Pedro....
Espinosa's description of an irrigation ditch with sluices and terraces has often been interpreted as evidence that native Americans were practicing irrigation here or that earlier Spanish settlers were already present. However, I. Waynne Cox pointed out there is no evidence for either interpretation in any other text or in the archaeological record (in Houk, 1999). There is no evidence anywhere else in the San Antonio River valley that inhabitants became farmers. M. B. Collins has suggested that because the plant and animal resources were so rich and diverse, efficient hunting and gathering prevailed and the labors and limitations of food production were looked upon with disdain (Collins, 1995). The terraces referred to by Espinoza may have been natural limestone outcroppings that were later quarried. In this region, limestone layers erode at different rates, resulting in hillsides having a stair-step appearance that can be mistaken as man-made.
Another Franciscan missionary, Antonio de San Buenaventuara y Olivares, also arrived with Espinosa's 1709 expedition and became interested in this area of Texas and the intelligent Papaya Indians. He began a nine year campaign to build a mission here. He got his chance in 1718 when Martin de Alarcon, a Spanish soldier of fortune and governor of the province of Texas, was sent to establish a presidio and settlement. Many delays in mounting the expedition led to acrimony between Alarcon and Olivares, and they took separate routes to their destination. On May 1, 1718, Olivares broke ground just west of San Pedro Springs, built a hut of brush and grapevines, offered Mass, and named his mission San Antonio de Valero. This marked the establishment of San Antonio's first permanent settlement by Europeans. Meanwhile, Alarcon chose the creek just below the Springs for the site of the Royal Presidio, which became the focal point of Spanish defense in western Texas and San Antonio.
Olivares' little mission later became known as the Alamo and the shrine of Texas liberty. So originally, the mission was not on the San Antonio River where the famous battle was fought, but here at San Pedro. After establishment west of the Springs in 1718, the mission was moved in 1719 to the east side of the Springs where farmland was better, and then was moved to the location now occupied by St. Joseph's church. Hurricane floods destroyed it in 1724 and the mission was then moved to its final location on the banks of the San Antonio River (Noonan-Guerra, 1987).
By January of 1719, Alarcon was directing the construction of San Antonio’s first irrigation canal, or acequia, to carry water from the Spring headwaters toward agricultural lands. Eventually, a system of seven canals diverting water from both San Pedro and San Antonio springs would form the framework around which present-day San Antonio grew up. There are many streets in San Antonio, such as Saint Mary’s, South Flores, and Presa, that were originally laid out to follow the contours of the canals. This explains their still meandering nature, although the canals are long gone.
By replotting the metes and bounds of land grants that bordered the canal, I. Waynne Cox established that the first canal at San Pedro started on the eastern edge of the Springs and flowed southeast 1,308 feet to the east of San Pedro Creek, where it turned slightly more to the east to intersect a projection that is now Richmond Avenue. It then paralleled the general course of present day Richmond Avenue and discharged into the San Antonio River where the Municipal Auditorium is today (Cox, 2005).
In 1729, not long after the city's first acequia was in operation, San Pedro Park was established when King Philip V of Spain declared the land surrounding the Springs to be an ejido, or public land. Two years later, in 1731, the ejido was used for the first time in the public interest when the commander of the Royal Presidio designated it the temporary farming land of 56 men, women, and children who had just arrived from the Canary Islands. As such, the land around the Springs was also the site of San Antonio's first permanent settlement by European civilians. Until their arrival, the only colonists had been the military and religious missionaries.
The remains of an acequia that can still be seen in the Park today (photo below) were not from the first acequia, they are a remnant of the Alazan Ditch, built in 1874 by Anglo businessmen. The old world masters that constructed the first acequias were highly adept at designing and executing perfectly functioning canals, while the Alazan Ditch, with a design dictated by City Hall, never functioned correctly. A casual inspection of the canal’s remains today will reveal that it starts at a higher elevation than most of the spring outlets. In 1874, after work had begun, the press reported the city engineer had “discovered that water will not run uphill” (San Antonio Express, April 16, 1875).
Though declared a public land in 1729, it took more than a century for the area around the Springs to take on the appearance of a modern day park. It remained little more than an outpost where armed travelers could graze their pack animals and obtain water. Around 1785, Philip Nolan, one of the first English-speaking adventurers in New Spain, brought his pack train to the site and skirted Spanish law to establish a trading network that created American-style commerce in Texas. . . ."