Our San Antonio logo gathers the Texas end of that story into a Texas longhorn — the cattle breed that built the open range — and a Lone Star over “1845,” the year of statehood and the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Texas place. Printed black-and-white with the worn look of a branding iron or a rodeo poster, the longhorn and star read as Texas in shorthand — cattle country, the Lone Star, the open range — set over the deep Spanish-colonial city the missions built.
The river was Payaya homeland — one of many Coahuiltecan peoples of South Texas — and they knew it as Yanaguana long before it carried a Spanish name; a 1691 expedition reached it on St. Anthony's feast day and gave the river his name. In May 1718 Fray Antonio de Olivares and the governor Martín de Alarcón founded Mission San Antonio de Valero and the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar on its banks. Over the next thirteen years four more missions followed up and down the river — the largest concentration of Spanish colonial missions in North America.
Why People Visit San Antonio
People come to San Antonio for the River Walk and the Alamo, but the city rewards anyone who follows the older thread: a chain of five Spanish missions along a quiet river, a downtown laid out by Canary Island colonists in 1731, and a Tejano culture you can hear in the music and taste in the food. It's warm, walkable, and layered — three centuries of South Texas history sitting right alongside the modern city.
