DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll let the creek do most of the talking. Now, most rivers in Texas will brag about themselves if you give them half a chance. San Pedro Creek is a little different.
It doesn't have to say a word. The story comes to it. It starts in 1709, out in the wild country north of here.
Two Franciscan fathers — Antonio Olivares and Isidro Espinosa — are making their way through land that most Europeans had never laid eyes on, when they come upon something that stops them cold: an Indian campsite, sitting right there at a set of natural springs, a mile and four tenths north of where you are right now. Those springs are the headwaters of this very creek. The fathers looked around, took it all in, and named the creek San Pedro.
Then they did something that turned out to matter quite a bit — they wrote down that this was a superior site for a settlement. Superior. That word did some work.
Nearly a decade passes. Then, on May 1, 1718, Father Olivares comes back. This time he brings company — Martin de Alarcon, Spanish governor of Coahuila and Texas.
Together, right here on San Pedro Creek, they founded Mission San Antonio de Valero. Four days later, on May 5, 1718, Alarcon selected a site near San Pedro Springs for a presidio and the founding of Villa de Bejar — and the marker tells us exactly what they called the spot: the place called San Antonio. Two missions in five days.
The Spanish weren't wasting any time. But you can't build a city on ceremony alone, and whoever was runnin' things in the 1720s knew it. An irrigation canal system — an acequia, if you want the proper word — began drawing water from San Pedro Springs and carrying it south along the creek.
That water went to the families of the first settlers. To the presidio soldiers. To the Canary Island settlers who had made their way to this edge of the world.
The creek wasn't just scenery. It was the reason anyone could stay. Time rolls forward.
The Spanish presidio becomes a royally decreed municipality, and that municipality becomes the city of San Antonio. And San Pedro Springs, the whole reason any of this started, doesn't retire quietly. By 1878, San Antonio's first streetcar line is running — from Alamo Plaza all the way out to San Pedro Springs, which by then had become a popular tourist destination, a place where people gathered for social events, cultural events, the whole sweep of public life.
The same springs that fed the first settlers' fields were now the destination at the end of the line. That is a long arc for a set of springs. From an Indian campsite in 1709, to a mission and a presidio in 1718, to an acequia feeding a young city in the 1720s, to a streetcar terminus in 1878.
The creek just kept running through all of it, doing what it had always done — making the next chapter possible.
What the marker says
In 1709 Franciscan fathers Antonio Olivares and Isidro Espinosa came upon an Indian campsite at the natural springs (1.4 miles north) which form the headwaters of this creek. They named the creek San Pedro and noted the area as a superior site for a settlement. On May 1, 1718, Olivares and Martin de Alarcon, Spanish governor of Coahuila and Texas, founded Mission San Antonio de Valero near here on San Pedro Creek. On May 5, 1718 Alarcon selected a site near San Pedro Springs for a presidio and the founding of Villa de Bejar "at the place called San Antonio." An irrigation canal (acequia) system, began in the 1720s from San Pedro Springs and extending south along the creek, provided water for the families of the first settlers, presidio soldiers, and Canary Island settlers. San Antonio's first streetcar line, which began in 1878, operated from Alamo Plaza to San Pedro Springs, then a popular tourist destination and site of numerous social and cultural events. The San Pedro Springs, creek, and irrigation system played vital roles in the founding and early development of the Spanish presidio and mission settlement and royally decreed municipality which became the city of San Antonio. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995