Aqueduct
San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built by the Franciscan friars in 1731, the stone aqueduct was used to carry the water from the San Antonio River to irrigate the lands in the vicinity of Mission San Francisco de la Espada. The aqueduct is still in an excellent state of preservation and still in use after more than 200 years. The massive round arches that span the Piedras Pintas Creek, though only a few feet high, resemble the arches of the Roman aqueducts built by the Caesars. It is only structure of its kind in this locally that remains today. It is said to be the only aqueduct of its kind in the United States. A park has been developed by the San Antonio Conservation Society to provide a proper setting for this small monument to the faith and ingenuity of man. A stone house on the property is known to date from the Spanish era.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built by Franciscan friars in 1731, this stone aqueduct carried water from the San Antonio River to irrigate the fields of Mission San Francisco de la Espada. Its round arches span Piedras Pintas Creek in a design that echoes the great aqueducts of Rome. Remarkably, the structure survives in fine condition and still moves water nearly three centuries later—often called the only Spanish colonial aqueduct still functioning in the United States.
Why it matters
It is a rare surviving piece of the Spanish mission irrigation system that made European settlement of Texas possible.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Mondini-Ruiz Art5.3 mi away · 1415 South Presa Street, San Antonio, TX
- Contemporary at Blue Star5.6 mi away · 116, San Anonio, TX
- Bent Easel Art Gallery5.6 mi away
- Magical Realism Photography Studio5.7 mi away
- Stone Metal Press5.7 mi away
- Alba DeLeon Studio5.7 mi away
Attractions
- Mission San José2.3 mi away
- Former Mission 4 Drive In2.6 mi away
- Tower of the Americas6.1 mi away · 739 East César E. Chávez Boulevard, San Antonio, TX
- Yanaguana Garden6.2 mi away
- La Villita6.4 mi away
- River boat boarding6.4 mi away
Food & drink
- Margaritaville6.4 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
- Taco Bell6.5 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
- Chipotle6.5 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
- Which Wich?6.5 mi away
- McDonald's6.5 mi away · 101 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX
- Starbucks6.5 mi away · 849 East commerce, San Antonio, TX
Places to stay
- Grand Hyatt San Antonio6.3 mi away · 600 East Market Street, San Antonio, TX
- The Monarch San Antonio6.3 mi away
- Marriott Riverwalk6.4 mi away
- Hilton Palacio del Rio6.4 mi away
- Marriott Rivercenter6.4 mi away · 101 Bowie Street, San Antonio, TX
- La Quinta Inn6.4 mi away · 303 Blum Street, San Antonio, TX
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Roy and Madge Hearne House
San Antonio, TX
When the railroad reached San Antonio in 1877, new neighborhoods rose on the high ground near San Pedro Springs. Here, cotton broker Roy Hearne and his wife Madge — a granddaughter of Sam Houston — built a home in the 1910s, hiring architect Atlee B. Ayres and contractor Eugene Davis. Its eclectic blend of prairie, craftsman, mission, and neoclassical styles, from granite and green tile roof to original mosaic floors, reflects the confident taste of the railroad-era city.
Acequia de Arriba
San Antonio, TX
An acequia is a communal gravity-fed irrigation ditch, a system Spanish colonists brought to Texas and the greater Southwest and adapted from centuries of Iberian and North African practice. San Antonio's Spanish missions, founded in the early 1700s, depended on a network of these ditches — the acequias madre and their branches — to water fields and sustain settlement in the semi-arid landscape. The "acequia de arriba," or upper ditch, was one strand of that lifeline, and the community associations that governed water-sharing were among the region's earliest civic institutions.
Mission San Francisco de la Espada Dam, Ditch and Aqueduct
San Antonio, TX
To make Mission Espada permanent, Franciscan missionaries and their Indian laborers built a dam, irrigation ditch, and aqueduct on the San Antonio River between about 1740 and 1745. The 270-foot dam curved "the wrong way" yet held, and the aqueduct — where tradition says goat's milk was mixed into the mortar — carried water over Piedras Creek to fields of maize, beans, melons, and cotton. Surviving floods, raids, and secularization, the works were repaired in 1895, saved by the San Antonio Conservation Society in 1941, and named a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
The Matamoros Road
San Antonio, TX
The Matamoros Road ran some 330 miles from San Antonio to the Rio Grande, a route so old it was worn by Indians and Spaniards before Anglo settlers ever arrived. A journey of six to eight weeks across a bandit-haunted, water-starved land, it taught teamsters to hide gold in grain sacks and bored-out axles. During the Civil War it became the great "cotton road," the Confederacy's lifeline: ox-drawn carts hauled bales south past cotton snagged in the mesquite and returned laden with guns, ammunition, and cloth that ran the Union blockade.