Alamo Plaza

You're standing on Alamo Plaza, in the middle of downtown San Antonio. Face the low stone building with the carved front. That's the Alamo's chapel. Look at that stone face for a moment. It's smaller than most people expect, and the real surprise is how close this place came to being treated as just another piece of property.

The Alamo began as a mission, Misión San Antonio de Valero, founded in 1718 to convert the Native people of this region to Christianity. The mission settled on this spot in 1724, after a hurricane wrecked its earlier buildings.

Then the mission simply ran out of road. It was secularized in 1793 and then abandoned. About ten years later a Spanish cavalry company moved in, and it most likely gave the place its nickname, Alamo, Spanish for cottonwood tree.

Then came March 6, 1836. Mexican troops overran the Texian defenders here, and men like James Bowie and Davy Crockett died inside these walls.

Here's the part the legend tends to skip. The Alamo's fame did not make it a shrine right away. Starting in 1849, the U.S. Army rented it as a supply depot. After 1876, the non-chapel buildings of the compound operated as a wholesale grocery store. Picture sacks of flour stacked where the defenders made their stand.

The turn came from two women. Adina De Zavala and Clara Driscoll worked to save what was left, and in 1905 they persuaded the Texas legislature to buy the remaining Alamo buildings.

The plaza around you had its own champion, too. In the late 1800s, a city alderman named Anton Wulff designed and supervised its layout. Local business leaders thanked him with a gold-topped walking stick, engraved with words of appreciation. Not a bad reward for landscaping.

So when you look at that chapel, remember it survived the battle, and then it survived the grocers.

Now walk north about 200 meters, roughly three minutes, to the next stop. As you go, glance back to the east side of the plaza, where the Menger Hotel, opened in 1859, still stands beside the plaza.