HistoricSiteMarkers
Colonial America

The Pajalache Acequia (Ditch)

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Constucted early in the 18th century by the Pajalache Indians as a part of their irrigation system, began here in La Villita and ended at Mission Concepcion. The padres and the Indians travelled in canoes between these places, as the acequia was wide and deep. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Early in the eighteenth century, the Pajalache Indians helped build this acequia, a hand-dug irrigation canal that carried San Antonio River water from La Villita down to Mission Concepcion. So wide and deep was the channel that, by tradition, padres and Native people paddled canoes between the two places. Part of the Spanish colonial mission system's remarkable network of gravity-fed waterways, the acequia sustained the fields that fed a young frontier community.

Why it matters

It preserves the Spanish colonial acequia system built with Native labor, an engineering legacy that made mission San Antonio possible and still shapes the city today.

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