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.
The missions came first, but the town proper came in 1731, when fifty-six colonists from the Canary Islands — sent across the Atlantic by the Spanish crown — laid out San Fernando de Béxar around a central plaza and began the church that became San Fernando Cathedral. It was the first organized civil town in Texas, and their plaza is still the heart of downtown. For the next century San Antonio was the most important town between the Rio Grande and the Louisiana line — the capital of Spanish, and then Mexican, Texas.
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.
