San Antonio

San Antonio,¹ mostly in Bexar County, Texas, is located at the source of the shallow river of the same name,² at an escarpment that marks the eastern edge of Edwards Plateau, which is part of the Great Plains. It has a metropolitan population of 1.952 million,³ with 1.409 million within the city limits.⁴ The city grew to regional significance in the later 19th century as a cattle ranching center, but only became a large city after World War II when air conditioning made southern USA cities easier to live in. UNESCO honors the San Antonio Missions as a World Heritage Site. These were built by Francican Catholic Christians in the 18th century back when the area was part of España (Spain). The most famous, the Alamo, became a nationalist monument for English-speaking immigrants from the USA to México, who rebelled against their adopted nation in the hope, eventually realized, of becoming a USA state that permitted slavery.^{5, 6}

The tallest conventional building is the Marriott Rivercenter (546 feet, 1988), which is said to resemble a giant chair. The Tower of the Americas (729 feet, 1968) is an observatory tower with a rotating restaurant at the top. An older tall building is the Tower Life Building (504 feet, 1929).⁷

In nearby Bandera County is the Hill Country State Recreation Area, a tourist attraction.⁸

Historical maps

Riverwalk, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, United States of America

Footnotes

1. Named after the Christian figure who is called Saint Anthony in English.
2. The San Antonio rivers flows most of the way to the sea before joining the Guadalupe River, which flows into San Antonio Bay of the Gulf of Mexico.
3. 2012 metropolitan figure from world-gazetteer.com, accessed February 6, 2013. Another similar 2012 figure of 1.942 million is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_statistical_areas, accessed May 15, 2018.
4. 2013 figure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Texas#100_largest_cities_in_Texas_by_population, accessed May 15, 2018.
5. Slavery was abolished by the USA within a generation of the annexation of Texas.
6. The set consists of Mission Concepción, Mission San José, Mission San Juan Capistrano, Mission Espada, Mission Valero ('the Alamo'), and Rancho de las Cabras. The last is beyond the city limits. 'The Alamo' is a major tourist attraction according to http://www.touropia.com/best-places-to-visit-in-texas/, accessed May 15, 2018, as is the city in general.
7. Information about buildings comes from emporis.com, accessed May 31, 2018. A transmission tower built in 1947 reaches 966 feet.
8. http://www.touropia.com/best-places-to-visit-in-texas/, accessed May 15, 2018.
9. Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), "Tables of the World's Largest Cities." In 1900 it was the largest city in Texas.