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Colonial America

Mission San Francisco de la Espada Dam, Ditch and Aqueduct

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Water was vital to the permanency of San Francisco de la Espada Mission, therefore Franciscan missionaries built a dam, irrigation ditch, and aqueduct. The 270 foot dam rose eight feet above a rock ledge crossing the San Antonio River, the lime salts of which gradually cemented gravel, rocks, and layers of brush which formed the dam, regarded as an engineering feat as it curved "the wrong way". Water transported by Espada ditch crossed Piedras Creek via this aqueduct on which construction continued from 1740 to 1745. According to tradition, goat's milk served as a cementing agent in the mortar used in Espada Aqueduct, the only such structure in the United States. Relative prosperity followed for a generation as this alluvial valley produced crops of maize, beans, melons, calabashes, sweet potatoes, and cotton, but deterioration had set in at Espada before the secularization of the mission in 1794, when only fifteen sick or aged Indians remained in the mission. Even so, dam, ditch, and aqueduct survived nearly a century of Indian attacks, ravaging floods, and controversy, both secular and clerical. The ditch had fallen into disuse for some fifteen years when, in 1895, the newly formed Espada Ditch Company repaired the dam, and enlarged the ditch while changing its course. When disaster again threatened to overtake this singular Spanish-American colonial irrigation project, in 1941 the San Antonio Conservation Society purchased this property to insure its preservation. Further assurance came in 1965, when the United States Department of Interior designated Espada Aqueduct as a Registered National Historic Landmark.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

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.

Why it matters

The Espada aqueduct is the only Spanish colonial aqueduct still functioning in the United States, a rare feat of frontier engineering that let a mission community farm the arid Texas plain.

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    6.4 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
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    6.5 mi away · 101 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX
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