Mission San Francisco de la Espada (Mission St. Francis of the Sword)
San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established in San Antonio in 1731. May have been named for statue of St. Francis in the chapel which, according to tradition, once grapsed a sword. One of the few missions near which descenants of the Indian converts and spaniards still live, Espada is considered by some to date back to Mission San Francisco De Los Tejas, founded in East Texas in 1690. A succession moves eventually brought it here. The original buildings at Espada, the farthest south of the five missions near San Antonio, were undoubtly of adobe. A wall surrounded the church (usually called a chapel), friary, granary,and work shops. Extensive farms and pastures lay nearby. By 1745 the Indians produced grain and beans, and the missioned owned 1,150 head of cattle and 750 sheep. One of the few remaining early structures is the southeast bastion (fortified round tower), which is the only mission fort left intact in San Antonio. Its three-foot rock walls, which contain holes for cannons and muskets, support a vaulted roof. Composing Espada's once-vital waterworks are a dam (one mile north), an irriation ditch, and a fine aqueduct (near this site)--the only extant spanich aqueduct in the United States.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in San Antonio in 1731 after a long migration from an earlier East Texas mission, San Francisco de la Espada was the southernmost of the city's five Spanish missions. Within a generation its Indian converts were raising grain, cattle, and sheep behind a walled compound of chapel, friary, and workshops, guarded by a fortified stone bastion still standing today. Its dam, irrigation ditch, and aqueduct — the only surviving Spanish aqueduct in the United States — watered the fields.
Why it matters
Espada is a rare living link to Spain's colonial frontier in North America, where mission communities of Native converts and settlers laid the deep Hispanic and Catholic foundations of modern Texas.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Mondini-Ruiz Art6.5 mi away · 1415 South Presa Street, San Antonio, TX
- Contemporary at Blue Star6.8 mi away · 116, San Anonio, TX
- Bent Easel Art Gallery6.8 mi away
- Magical Realism Photography Studio6.8 mi away
- Stone Metal Press6.8 mi away
- Alba DeLeon Studio6.8 mi away
Attractions
- Mission San José3.5 mi away
- Former Mission 4 Drive In3.8 mi away
- Tower of the Americas7.2 mi away · 739 East César E. Chávez Boulevard, San Antonio, TX
- Yanaguana Garden7.3 mi away
- La Villita7.5 mi away
- River boat boarding7.5 mi away
Food & drink
- Margaritaville7.6 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
- Taco Bell7.6 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
- Chipotle7.6 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
- Which Wich?7.6 mi away
- McDonald's7.6 mi away · 101 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX
- Starbucks7.6 mi away · 849 East commerce, San Antonio, TX
Places to stay
- Grand Hyatt San Antonio7.4 mi away · 600 East Market Street, San Antonio, TX
- The Monarch San Antonio7.5 mi away
- Marriott Riverwalk7.5 mi away
- Marriott Rivercenter7.5 mi away · 101 Bowie Street, San Antonio, TX
- Hilton Palacio del Rio7.5 mi away
- La Quinta Inn7.6 mi away · 303 Blum Street, San Antonio, TX
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mission San Juan Capistrano
San Antonio, TX
Franciscan missionaries founded Mission San Juan Capistrano on the San Antonio River in 1731, moving a mission first established in East Texas in 1716 to ground easier to defend. Dedicated to converting the region's Coahuiltecan-speaking peoples, it endured Apache raids and epidemics before flourishing by the 1760s with surplus harvests and large herds. Secularized in 1794, its stone chapel and convent were restored in the 1960s, yielding artifacts of three centuries of occupancy.
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.
Salado Valley
San Antonio, TX
Fertile and well-watered, the Salado Valley was a favored dwelling place of South Texas Indian peoples long before Spanish explorers named Salado Creek in 1709 and Canary Island colonists made it a town boundary of San Antonio in 1731. It witnessed Santa Anna's march in 1836 and, in 1842, both the victorious "second battle of the Salado" and the tragic Dawson Massacre. Crossed by the great roads to Goliad, Gonzales, and Nacogdoches, the valley later became home to Fort Sam Houston in 1876 and Brooks Field in 1917.
Spanish and Mexican Land Grants
San Antonio, TX
This land carries some of the deepest layers of Texas history: home first to the Coahuiltecan peoples, then granted in the 1720s and 1730s to the Spanish missions of San José and Espada, and crisscrossed by branches of the El Camino Real. From these ranch lands, vaqueros drove cattle east to help supply Bernardo de Gálvez's campaigns against the British during the American Revolution. Over the following decades, Spanish and Mexican land grants passed to soldiers and prominent Béxar families like the Pérez and Navarro clans.