Adina de Zavala

🏛️The era

Adina de Zavala grew up in a Texas that was still within living memory of its own founding. The Revolution of 1835–36 and the decade of the Republic were not distant chapters to her generation. They were family stories, told by people who had known the participants, and in her case by people who carried her grandfather's name.

By the time she came of age in the late nineteenth century, the state was changing fast. Railroads were reaching San Antonio, the city was growing, and old adobe and limestone buildings from the Spanish and Mexican eras were being torn down or buried under new storefronts. Many people saw those crumbling walls as an obstacle to progress rather than something worth saving.

Across the country in these same decades, women were organizing into clubs, patriotic societies and civic associations. The Progressive Era gave many of them a public role that politics and the professions still largely denied them. Saving historic places, building libraries and marking important sites became one of the most visible ways women shaped their communities, and Texas was no exception.

👥People & events

Adina de Zavala's story begins with her grandfather, Lorenzo de Zavala, a statesman who became the first vice-president of the Republic of Texas and died in 1836, the year of independence. She never knew him, but she grew up hearing vivid accounts of the Revolution and the Republic. Those stories shaped her sense that the places where that history happened deserved protection.

In 1889 she gathered a group of women who became known as the De Zavala Daughters. They erected Texas' first historical markers and worked to preserve San Antonio's Spanish missions. Her group later became a chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and by 1893, as its president, she had persuaded the owner of the property next to the Alamo church to give the chapter the first chance to buy it.

That property mattered to her because of a conviction she held firmly: hidden under the wooden facades of the commercial buildings beside the church were the remains of Mission San Antonio de Valero, the structure known in 1836 as the Alamo's long barracks. Many people then thought of the church alone as the Alamo. She believed the barracks were just as important, and later evidence proved her right.

In 1908, when she heard that the two-story long barracks were about to be torn down, she acted. She barricaded herself inside the buildings and stayed for three days and nights. The standoff drew wide attention, and the effort ultimately prevented the demolition. The broader fight over how to care for the Alamo divided the preservation community for years, but the walls she defended survive. Her work did not end there: she also championed Mission San Francisco de los Tejas in East Texas and San Antonio's Spanish Governor's Palace.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Historic preservation in the United States was largely built by private citizens, and very often by women, long before government agencies took it on. Adina de Zavala belongs to that tradition. She worked in the same spirit as the women who saved George Washington's Mount Vernon in the 1850s, groups that treated old buildings as documents of the nation's past.

Her insistence that the long barracks mattered also raised a question preservationists still ask: what exactly are we saving, and whose story does it tell? She argued for the mission as a whole, the Spanish colonial foundation as well as the 1836 battle. That pushed people to see the Alamo as a layered site with a past longer than a single siege.

The Alamo is now among the most visited historic places in the country, and her campaign to mark sites and protect Spanish missions helped lay the groundwork for how Texas remembers itself. When you see a historical marker anywhere in the state, you are looking at a practice her small group of women started.

🧭If you visit

This marker sits in the heart of downtown San Antonio, close to the places Adina de Zavala fought to save. Take a moment to imagine the area around the Alamo as she knew it: crowded with commercial buildings, with the old mission walls hidden under wood and signage.

When you visit the Alamo, look past the famous church facade to the long barracks beside it. Those are the walls at the center of her 1908 standoff. Knowing that someone once locked herself inside to keep them standing changes how they look.

To build a full day around her legacy, head to the Spanish Governor's Palace downtown, then follow the San Antonio Missions south of the city center. Together these sites show the Spanish colonial history she spent her life defending. Plan for walking, wear comfortable shoes, and check current visitor information before you go.