We live in a golden age of Texas urban history.
For decades, historians and journalists tended to ignore the complicated stories of our metropolitan areas, even though 90% of Texans live in cities and their surrounding suburbs. It was easier to concentrate on — and to consecrate — the state’s rural history, especially tales from the mythologized frontier days of the 19th century.
In the past few years, more notable books have been devoted to the big cities.
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Some of them are celebratory: “The Rise of Houston as a Global City” by Geoffry Scott Connor. Others are cautionary: “The Cost of Cool: Austin’s Tech Growth and the People Left Behind” by Jon Roberts. Still others use traditional research tools to burrow beneath the surface of a city’s self-image: “Inside the Loop: A Political and Economic History of San Antonio” by David R. Johnson.
In fact, more than two dozen such Texas urban histories have reached your columnist’s bookshelves.
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In this periodic series called “Texas Urban Tales,” we will share five things that the authors — or others — have unearthed about one city’s history.
Our first contribution comes from Joel Daniel Kitchens, a retired associate professor and humanities reference librarian at Texas A&M University.
These are five things — some of them from the Alamo City’s early years — that struck him as crucial yet little known after he researched and wrote “San Antonio and Its Missions: Three Centuries of History, Memory and Heritage” (Texas A&M University Press, 2026).
Antonio de Tello and a scandal at Mission Valero (The Alamo)
San Antonio Academy cadets surround a memorial at Mission Valero (The Alamo) during Fiesta’s 135th Battle of the Flowers Parade on April 24, 2026 in San Antonio, Texas.
Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Images
Modern visitors to San Antonio’s missions often assume the stone churches were built when the missions were founded. However, the missionaries were not trained as stonemasons. Church construction had to wait until sufficient funds could be raised to tempt a master mason from central Mexico to the frontier.
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As such, it was not until 1740 that master mason and sculptor, Antonio de Tello, 27, arrived in the village of San Fernando to begin work on four of the mission churches, as well as the new parish church. In May 1744, the cornerstone at Mission San Antonio de Valero was laid.
Unfortunately, Tello’s personal life was not in alignment with his holy commission.
On August 21, 1744, a gunshot shattered the peaceful evening. According to official testimony taken by alcalde Don Alberto López Aguado y Villa Fuerte, the victim, Matías Treviño, accused Tello of shooting him at point-blank range.
When asked for a motive, the dying man stated he had accused his wife, Rosa Guerra, of having an affair with Tello. When Tello was interviewed in the safety of Valero’s sanctuary, he denied having illicit relations with Treviño’s wife. Tello freely admitted to shooting Treviño, but claimed he believed the man was an Apache about to attack him.
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As the investigation progressed, evidence mounted against Tello and Guerra. Later, Aguado led a company of presidio soldiers to arrest Tello, but the man had escaped. With the primary suspect gone, charges against Guerra were not pursued.
How the Alamo got its ‘hump’ (with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)
A San Antonio Academy cadet carries flowers to a memorial at The Alamo during Fiesta’s 135th Battle of the Flowers Parade on April 24, 2026 in San Antonio, Texas. The parade honors the heroes of the Alamo and Goliad and celebrates the victory at the Battle of San Jacinto.
Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Images
The bell-shaped façade of the Alamo is its most recognizable architectural feature. However, at the time of the 1836 battle, the building looked very different.
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The U.S. Army is largely responsible for its current appearance, but not everyone thought the changes were an improvement. In 1846, San Antonio made a convenient staging area as the Army prepared for war with Mexico. Sergeant Edward Everett’s Illinois volunteer regiment arrived in August and billeted near the Alamo.
A month later, while on evening guard duty, Everett was shot during a brawl and crippled. After convalescence, he was reassigned to the assistant quartermaster, who employed him making drawings, plans and estimates to convert the Alamo into a storehouse.
When hostilities ended in 1848, Everett and most other soldiers returned home, but the Army remained in San Antonio. The new quartermaster, Major Edwin Burr Babbitt, declared Everett’s efforts inadequate. However, the Army balked at Babbitt’s demands and directed him to use the existing facilities.
Babbitt wanted a large arched roof over the Alamo, but the existing façade was not structurally strong enough. He hired architect John M. Fries, recently from Germany, to improve the building.
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Architectural historians have debated what inspired Fries’ façade design, but back in civilian life, Everett was not impressed: “I regret to see by a late engraving of this ruin that tasteless hands have evened off the rough walls as they were left after the siege, surrounding them with a ridiculous scroll, giving the building the appearance of the headboard of a bedstead.”
Everett’s drawings are held by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth.
Coda: In 1908, during the so-called “Second Battle of the Alamo” between Adina De Zavala and Clara Driscoll’s factions of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, then-Gov. Oscar Colquitt offered to tear off the now-familiar façade and restore the building to something closer to the 1836 appearance.
The DRT declined, saying no one would recognize it!
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San Antonio has long been a tourist town
Mission San José, founded in 1720 by Spanish Franciscan missionaries.
John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images
The city has long depended on tourism for a significant part of its economy, but this goes back further than many imagine.
Before current theme parks, HemisFair (1968), or even construction of the River Walk (1930s), tourists came to San Antonio. The city had been a regional center since the mid-1800s, but traffic increased exponentially after 1877 when the railroad arrived.
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Some tourists came hoping a warmer and arid climate would cure their tuberculosis. Cowboys drove their herds to rail hubs and afterward, spent some of their earnings in the casinos, bars and brothels. Other tourists were from the cultured upper class, who fled bitter Northeastern winters to spend the season in more hospitable climates.
Early sights to be seen included: the Alamo and the other four missions, the Chili Queens serving early Tex-Mex foods on the plazas, the Battle of Flowers and additional attractions which railroad ad writers and civic boosters described with torrents of superlatives.
A visit to San Antonio was “A foreign tour on American soil!” as one ad from the Chicago Tribune in February, 1911 declared.
One writer for Sunset, the lifestyle magazine for Southern Pacific Railroad, asked readers, “Why Go Abroad?” when San Antonio held sights just as exotic as the Holy Land, Spain’s Alhambra or the Orient.
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But some visitors, including writer Stephen Crane, warned “trolly cars are merciless animals” and make “really coherent history look like an omelet.” Tourists’ interests would only last as long as there were tangible remains of the missions, which looked more “romantic” the more they fell into ruins.
Pedro Huizar, artist of Mission San José
An ornately framed window at Mission San José in San Antonio.
VW Pics/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
In the 1770s, as the stone church at Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo was being constructed, Pedro Huizar arrived to decorate the church. His beautiful work, particularly the sacristy window, is the source for multiple historical legends.
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According to the stories, Huizar was either a renowned artisan, the King of Spain’s favorite sculptor, descended from those who decorated the Alhambra, sent specifically by the King to decorate Mission San José; or he was a highly skilled young sculptor from Spain, starting his career by coming to the colonial frontier.
In both stories, his sweetheart, Rosa, awaited his return to Spain. Tragically, Rosa either tired of waiting for Huizar and married another man; or, she took passage on a ship to the New World, but was lost at sea.
Heartbroken upon hearing the news, Huizar poured his anguish and grief into his work and created the stunning embellishment around the sacristy window, now named “Rosa’s Window” for his lost love.
But the historical record reveals a different story. Pedro Huizar was a mestizo from further south in Mexico, who arrived in San Antonio with his wife and children. After his decorative work on the missions was completed, he assisted with the secularization of the missions by surveying lands. His sons were respected elites in the area.
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When Samuel and Mary Maverick arrived, they rented the Huizars’ house downtown. Pedro Huizar’s descendants still live in San Antonio, representing an important legacy of a fascinating past.
Missions as temporary work
Members of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation pause in silence during their 25th annual sunrise ceremony and run in front of the Alamo to honor ancestors buried inside the mission-era church in September.
Robin Jerstad/San Antonio Express-News
One aspect of San Antonio’s Spanish missions that seems to get lost is that a mission was theoretically supposed to be temporary.
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The mission system was intended to be a more humane policy of colonization by the Spanish in the Americas. Missionary friars were to go out on the Texas frontier and recruit willing Coahuiltecans to join the missions. The missionaries would not only convert them to the Catholic faith, but also instruct them in the necessary vocational skills to build and survive as a frontier Spanish village.
Once the new village reached the point of self-sufficiency — estimated to take only 10 years — the mission church would be turned over to the new Spanish subjects as their parish church. The missionaries would then move further out into the frontier to begin the process anew, thus continuing to expand the Spanish Empire.
That was the theory, but reality was very different. Some historians believe the mission system failed as European diseases killed numerous Coahuiltecans, which required the friars to recruit new Indigenous people and begin their remedial training all over again.
Additionally, changes beyond the missionaries’ control were made as European empires clashed, made peace, and changed maps. The Spanish Crown, which had financially supported the Texas missionary efforts for years, decided to discontinue these funds and instructed the missionaries to conclude their work much faster than expected.
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Despite these challenges, the communities begun at San Antonio’s missions continued to grow and evolved into the richly multicultural city we know today.
Please send tips and questions to mbarnes@statesman.com